Beating the Big Boys: help analyzing keywords in a very competitive space
-
Hi all!
Long time Pro member first time question asker!
We are in real estate in Barcleona and, although we create tons of content (daily blogs, free ebooks, videos) we have never properly optimized our root domain page for any keywords that might bring us specifically real estate related traffic from Google.
Our website is www DOT SuiteLife DOT com.
My question is about keyword analysis. We've had this sort of paralysis whereby we're nervous to start link building etc… for the wrong keywords. The problem we have is that most all keywords in our space are VERY competitive. So far the two tools we've used are:
-
Google Keyword tool: About the top 20-40 keywords we'd like to go after are rated as HIGH competition.
-
SEOmoz Keyword tool: Only the really too-obscure or long tailed keywords related to our business fall under a 50 rating.
We were wondering if anyone could shed some light on how to further analyze keyword possibilities for our homepage when it seems like anything with any decent search traffic is super competitive.
Please let me know if there's any important info that I've left out!
Thank you SO much in advance for any advice/help. The SEOmoz community is so amazing! Rock on guys and gals!
~ Benny
-
-
Hi Benny,
First, I love your domain name... that is awesome!
I hear you in being in an industry with highly competitive keywords. Our main keywords we are targeting are in the 75-80 range according SEOmoz tools.
It looks like casamona.com may be a competitor in your space as they are ranking high for MANY keywords that I tried. One bit of advice I can give is analyze their website using OpenSiteExplorer.org to see if you could potential get links in the same areas that they are getting links. You can also check out their anchor text as well - giving you further insight into what is working for them.
Maybe try playing around with your homepage text. You only mention the phrase, "Barcelona Real Estate" in your meta title and description - having some text on your homepage using those keywords and variations will probably help. Also, if I were you, I would maybe play around the the title tag. It looks like just one long string of text. Maybe try breaking it up a little to something like: Barcelona Real Estate | Rent or Buy Real Estate in Barcelona or Barcelona Real Estate | Rent or Buy in Barcelona Today | Suite Life.
And don't worry about how competitive your keywords are. Just keep at it and/or go after long-tail variations and you will see some great returns.
Good luck.
Mike
-
Note, competition in the Google Keyword tool is the competition of advertisers on AdWords. Not the competition of organic search.
The SEOmoz keyword tool isn't perfect, but you're off to a good start. Anything under 50% is generally "good to go after."
by "whereby we're nervous to start link building etc… for the wrong keywords." do you mean anchor text to use in the backlinks you build? Because you SHOULD NOT control the anchor text of the backlinks you build. If you have two, just two, backlinks with the same keyword stuffed anchor text you're setting yourself up for a penalty.
There are 1000s of tools out there that will help you judge competition. As well as thousands of SEOs that will tell you to look at 15 different metrics to make a competition assessment. But, I'm just going to give you one that has never steered me wrong.
Type:
allintitle: "keyword"
in Google. If there are under 2000 results you have a REALLY good chance of pulling on the first page if you simply have the keyword in your title tag. Nothing in SEO is a perfect science, but the "under 2000 rule" has been tried and true for the last 10 years.
Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Competitive Keywords on Adwords
We are in a very competitive industry for adwords and would like to know what is the best way to find low searched keywords with a low cpc - it is the low cpc we are really after. Thanks
Competitive Research | | webguru20140 -
Long tail keywords / Close variations of keywords / Duplicate Content
In a classified site, people usually search for the same item with different keywords which are often very close to each other and point to same set of results: e.g. honda civic for sale
Competitive Research | | razasaeed
used honda civic for sale
civic for sale
used civic for sale
used civic All the above keywords should actually lead to same results i.e honda civic for sale. Our competitor is creating a page for each one of these www.sitename.com/q/honda-civic-for-sale/
www.sitename.com/q/used-honda-civic-for-sale/
... and so on Basically they create a page for each high traffic keyword they encounter where as we have very structure search. How to compete with that ? They are ranking on all these long tail keywords because of separate landing pages though most of the pages are duplicate of each other. 98% same content (all are showing honda civics) Should we go that route OR optimize our single page focusing on keyword with highest traffic and hope google will rank us for the related keywords as well ?0 -
Could duplicate content be helpful to the original source?
Greetings Mozzers, I'm wondering if duplicate content could potentially function as a "link" in Google's eyes. Since they know I have content first and then someone else just uses it, Google could maybe think of that as a recommendation that the content is good? Reason I ask is, when I first starting going after a keyword for a company I wanted to go after two (2) separate regions, let's say "San Antonio" and "Dallas". My non-region based keyword started to rank for "San Antonio Keyword" because the content on the San Antonio page was too closely related. So i'm wondering if maybe having that content so close/duplicate may have boosted the original page because it was kind of like a recommendation? Thoughts, Information, Clarification, any and all are welcome and appreciated!
Competitive Research | | MonsterWeb280 -
Is this keyword stuffing?
This is one of my competitor's sites. I ran the on-page report card and the word Hyundai is on the page 102 times, and 67 times in the body. Here is the link: http://www.rosenhyundai.com I would love to hear your guys opinion, if this is keyword stuffing and could it get penalized by panda? Thanks for your help.
Competitive Research | | PeterRota0 -
Help link building
Í am looking for a good company to help me on high cuality link building . Please can someone give any recommendations of good seo companies
Competitive Research | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Tool for finding what keywords a competitor ranks for?
Does anyone know of any good tools that display what keywords a competitor ranks for? I have many competitors that I know get a lot of traffic, but I'm not entirely sure where the traffic comes from so it would be nice to plug in their url and get a general overview of what keywords they rank for and what positions.
Competitive Research | | shawn810 -
How do I find the best converting keywords
I rank decently on local search for some of my keywords but find that the traffic coming to my site is not from those keywords. I also find that they never convert to sales queries. Is someone able to help me out with that? Thanks My domain is www.hykano.com
Competitive Research | | Skwtayler0 -
What is the right way to due a competitive Link analysis?
Trying to use the saturation report suggestion with no luck for google.com,and looking for away to benchmark either Pagerank or page authority to figure out how many links are required to overr take competitors from diversified sources. What is the process to do this to get the best results for the client.
Competitive Research | | bmcfarlane0