A good rule of thumb for competition and local searches when selecting keywords
-
I'm doing keyword research in the Google Keyword Tool and was looking and spending a lot of time looking at keyword competition and local searches. I'm trying to determine what is a good rule of thumb for what level of competition and local searches people have used when selecting the keywords they will optimize for. I've currently been trying to find ones that have less than 50% (moderate) competition and less than 1,000 monthly searches.
Also, which do you put more weight on the competition or the number of searches.
-
I don't know if you saw this. Its very good timing that Rand wrote a blog post about this very subject!
Check it out, as always its a worthwhile read.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-places-citations-5-tactics-to-earn-links-for-your-local-business
-
Eric,
Let me add that the keyword difficulty tool doesn't necessaraly apply to local search. A LOT of other stuff is looked at as far as local SEO.
You should check out David Mihm's bolg. It is one of the BEST resources available in local search.
-
That helps. thanks.
-
Citations are the "link" equivalent for local search. If you go to your places page, there is a section that says "more about this place" That is info google has scraped from other local sources that mention your businesses. They may or may not contain a link.
Looking at your citations and your competitors is a good area to work on improving your listing in Google Places.
Heres an image of a citation section.
-
Hi Roger,
What is a citation? What constitutes a strong or a weak constitute citation?
-
Oh and a strong listing you would be more focused on number of searches if you feel it's realistic you could rank for it.
-
Oh and a strong listing you would be more focused on number of searches if you feel it's realistic you could rank for it.
-
It depends how strong your citations are. If your new or ave a weak listing I'd pay more attention to competition?
-
Hi Pashmina,
For the total results, do you put each term into Google individually to find this result, or is there a tool where you can run multiple keywords at a time?
Eric
-
I would use more than the above two factors for selecting keywords. I think of the various research tools and metrics I pull from them as varying sieves to filter and boil down a list.
I'll start with hundreds, if not thousands of words and then narrow my list by adjusting the thresholds for each factor until I get a nice list. Along with monthly searches and competition, I'd immediately add the total number of search results for that keyword. For example maybe you start with a threshold of less than 5,000 monthly, 80% competition and less than 600K total results. And if you still have too many keywords you adjust your thresholds and tweak according to what makes sense for your market/audience and goals.
And go deeper and add more factor, like estimated CPC, SEO Moz difficulty score, or # of competitors and factors you can pull from other keyword research tools.
-
Don't fear competition because where there is competition there is also (usually) a lot of search volume and a lot of money changing hands. Instead attack with long, diverse copy to pull in the long tail queries.
-
I try not to take that into account when choosing keywords to optimize for organic. The competition may correlate to organic efforts but you can't let that dictate your optimization. You have to optimize for what your audience/clients are searching for. IMO.
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
-
Multiple keywords one page.
I want to focus on these 4 keywords. E-waste management
Keyword Research | | themesh
E-waste recycling
E-waste solutions
Brand name Do I need to create a separate page for each or can focus them from home page itself, With title tag like this E-waste Management and recycling company in _Cityname _| Brandname:0 -
Wrong page ranking for keyword.
I have a page i'm trying to rank for certain keywords around "emergency vet clinic" the page is domain.com/emergency-vet-care but my home page is the one that is ranking better and better. How can I get the other page to rank for e.g. "emergency vet care" , "emergency animal care" and the main page to rank for just regular vet care? My on page looks pretty good. I've also taken out most references to emergency care on the main home page except for the one link to it. Thanks
Keyword Research | | swagseo0 -
How can improve my keywords ranking?
My keywords are not in top in 50.So, what kind of activity we do to get in top in 50 rank?
Keyword Research | | surabhi60 -
Target multiple keywords on homepage?
Hello. I've got a situation in which I could use some help. A client is in the business of auto parts for European cars. He is VERY stubborn in wanting his homepage to rank 1st page for a keyword for each car brand, for example: audi autoparts bmw autoparts mercedes benz autoparts jaguar autoparts Basically, 15 keywords (one per brand) in total. How would you guys handle this? I can't seem to find a natural way to optimize a homepage for all these keywords at once. I've suggested landing pages for each brand/keyword, but he won't accept it. Is there anyway to do this or will this be a dispute with my client to convince him about the landing pages idea? Thanks a lot!
Keyword Research | | EduardoRuiz0 -
How to get search volume in Google's keyword planner
I want to know the search volume for ~1000 keywords that I discovered via ubersuggest. Yesterday I could have done this in 5 minutes, but I can't seem to get it to work in the new Google tool and would love some advice. When I either upload or copy and paste my list into the tool I can get it to give me search ideas with volume, but it has all the keywords I am uploading as 0 search volume (when I know that is not true and some of them have thousands of searches). I've tried "entering keywords to see how they perform" and also "searching for keyword ideas" (the second just because the first didn't try after my 10 tries) Any ideas about what I am doing wrong?
Keyword Research | | theLotter
Or is this a bug other people have been experiencing?0 -
A question about local longtail keywords
Hello all. This is my first interaction with SEOmoz, and I am still in my learning phases. I currently own a lawn fertilization company near Allentown, PA. I do the site for myself, and I am ranked number one for organic lawn care for my cities. My question may seem kind of elementary, but I just want to clear this up for myself. I want to start a side business doing SEO, and from what I gather step one is keyword research. I plan on building new sites to start as opposed to going in and fixing existing ones. So, I've been reading a lot on how to do keyword research and so forth. I will use my current business as a reference for my question. Should my main keywords be along the lines of "lawn care" and "lawn services", and then the location specific stuff be seperate? Or should my main keywords be "lawn care allentown, pa"? I plan on running my business solely for local businesses, so I am not to interested in competing with the entire world for keywords. I just wasn't sure how to differentiate my keyword research for local business. I hope that question made some sense. I am really starting to grasp the elements of SEO, but for some reason the keyword part of things perplexes me. Thanks for any responses!
Keyword Research | | GroundFloorSEO0 -
Question about keyword
I had read a post in SEOmoz about keywords. According to it, The best keywords are 1. High Volume (many searches/month) 2. Low Competition 3. High Value (large % of visitors convert) My question is how can i find about 2nd and 3rd point. High search volume is shown in many Tools including Google adwords, but how can we be sure to find keywords that are low in competition and at the same time high value.
Keyword Research | | seoug_20050 -
Effective keyword grouping - any suggestions?
I have a specific question regarding keyword grouping. Whenever I've have compiled a (long) list of keywords, I create smaller groups of keywords that can be targeted by a category or page. However, I find this to be quite labour-intensive as I'm doing this work manually through filtering in Excel. To illustrate what I mean, here's an example of a keyword list: baby shirt
Keyword Research | | DeptAgency
t-shirt for baby
pregnancy shirts
pregnancy gifts Normally I would create a list of root words, like this: baby
shirt
pregnancy
gift I would then manually filter the list on each root word and copy the filtered list to separate tabs, which would result in lists like this: baby
baby shirt
t-shirt for baby shirt
baby shirt
t-shirt for baby
pregnancy shirts etc. As you can imagine, this is a lot of work. So my hope is that you can help me out with a smart tool / Excel formula / ??? to automate this process. Thanks for any suggestions!0