There was a piece of the puzzle I was missing in my keyword research method. I was finding daily search totals, overall competing pages, but what I was not checking was how difficult it would be to beat the top pages already showing for my keywords.
This one small oversight is what causes a lot of duds when it comes to minisites based on keywords. You can have only a few sites come back as competition, but what if they are authority sites or all PR 5s? Don’t think it can happen? You’d be surprised.
It is difficult, notice I didn’t say impossible to outrank these kinds of sites with the methods we are using for these niche websites. First you want to know who your actual competition is. These are the sites that will be coming up when people search for your keywords, so there are no quotes involved here. I mean really, who actually searches with quotes?
So now you’ve identified your competition. If you have the google toolbar you can go to each site and find out the page rank for each site. OR you could get this handy dandy Firefox add on called SEO Quake. Seo Quake is a free easy to use add on. All you have to do is click the add to firefox button, and once it downloads restart your browser.
SEO Quake will allow you to quickly asses your competition. There will be a small bar below the search returns filled with tons of important information. You will be able to see the page rank for each site, as well as how many pages the site has indexed in google. It will also show you the number of inbound links which is important for you to know, as this is a number you may need to beat to overtake this site in the search engines. There is much more information provided in this add on but for today’s purpose we only need the page rank.
I suggest you take a look at the top 4 search engine results. Using the niche website internet marketing strategy you can easily beat out all sites with a page rank of 3 or less. If you have a site that comes up with a page rank of 4 you want to check and see if there is an exact keyword match in the title. If there is a keyword match in the title you don’t want to go forward with this keyword. Don’t get me wrong, you can beat it, but why bother. It’s going to take a bit of effort and there are much easier keywords to tackle. If there is NOT a keyword match in the title you can take on a page rank 4 site.
If you see a page rank 5 or above, forget it. It’s not going to be worth the effort, and you can find other keywords that will be much easier to rank for. You also want to be on the look out for “authority sites” These are sites that have categories below the listing. It looks something like this:
Internet Marketing @ Court’s Internet Marketing School
· Search
RSS subscribers. via Feedburner. Get new posts in your inbox! HOME · ABOUT · CONTACT · ARCHIVES · ADVERTISE · SEO WORDPRESS THEMES …
courtneytuttle.com/ – 65k –
SEO-Wordpress ThemesStarting A Blog (5263 Words) Starting A Flagship Blog SeriesGoogle PageRank is Updating More results from courtneytuttle.com »
If you take a look at the listing for Court’s site you will see there are at least 9 different ways a person can click on this site before they get to the second search result. You do not want to even try to compete for keyword placement when an authority site comes up. (so forget ranking for courtney tuttle lol)
I think you will find you have a lot more success with keywords actually ranking when you make sure to check what kind of page rank you are really competing against. This method definitely does work, but you have to know what you are up against.
The SEO Quake add on makes finding all this information very easy, in fact, it it right at your fingertips. There is only one more suggestion I will make regarding this add on. Don’t run it all the time. You will see a button in the bottom toolbar where you can click it to turn it off. It’s best to only run this add on when you really need the information it provides.
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SEO Quake is awesome when used with Google search operators but does anyone know how to filter by PR?
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Yes! I totally agree with Aesha, SEOquake is really very useful in knowing page rank, and it works so well when you are using mozilla instead of the google chrome.
I have the SEO Quake plugin but I am having trouble figuring out how to set it so that it automatically looks up a pages PR. I seem to remember a setting that I turned off so that it didn’t pull information on every page automatically when I had it on. However, now I find it convenient for when I am trying to do some back linking, I would like at least the google PR of a page to just show up. I have looked at every setting I can think of. Any idea where I can find that? I am using firefox.
Thanks
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not sure… you might try updating your firefox install, and make sure you don’t have Google instant turned on. those are things I’ve heard can cause that problem.
SEO Quake is a great tool provided you don’t overuse it. It is quite easy to get a temporary ban from Google. I would suggest using the “parameters requests delay” section and set it to at least 5000ms. That way if you have load parameters on for Google you won’t bombard them with requests.
i’m using seoquake but i don’t know how to sort the results by page rank … can you help me ?
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you don’t need to sort the results ~ just look at them. You may have to go into the settings area and tell seoquake to show the pagerank automatically. Then just look at the numbers and add them up.
i am using it for long time but today when i open my firefox and search in google as i set the seoquake as seobar it is not working but when i open individual site its working fine .
not sure what the problem is. You might check the FAQ at their site and see if there’s anything that tells you how to fix the problem.
interesting part is this its working fine with yahoo search.
I’ve been using the SEO Quake tool for a number of years, it is extremely useful to have although these days I only tend to use a handful of features on a regular basis.
The handy aspect is getting an overlay on any other search pages.
I have using SEO Quake very frequently.it is very useful to know page rark.SEO Quake is good works in mozilla rather than chrome.
I am impressed by the information that you have provided in this blog.It shows how well you understand this subject.Bookmarked this page and will come back for more.
SeoQuake is nice, and the plugin for Firefox is awesome! Couldn’t do without my Firefox!!!
I have no idea that there’s a add-on like this. Thank you for sharing. This can greatly help me.
Seoquake and other tools like SEObook’s tool bar are useful in accessing the strength of competition. However it’s really just the top 10 results who are your competitors. Yes, a PR5 may be diffiuclt, but it shouldn’t be avoided all together.
That all depends on what strategy you’re using. I wouldn’t spend the time trying to beat a PR5 with a squidoo lens.
I can’t live without SEO Quake plugin, even when I have those other excellent and paid softwares.
SEO Quake is a must for your arsenal.
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SEOQuake for FF is great! I use it all the time to check Pageranks of certain websites and to check the keyword density! I used to rely on SEO for Firefox, but that add-on just doesn’t cut it anymore.
One little thing though: you can’t turn on the toolbar ALL the time for checking Pageranks. If you do, Google will think you’re conducting automatic searches and will ask you to use Captcha to use the search engine. Just so it can check you’re not a bot.
I definitely agree. SEO quake is a useful tool and the good thing about it is you can disable it if you don’t need it. Firefox is a lot better than internet explorer.
That is a great tool. I have used it on a few of my blogs and it has really helped!
Thanks for the advice, it was frustrating me having the toolbar under every search result when i performed a search but like you say, you just switch it off in the bottom right corner and use it when needed.
Interesting application ~ I haven’t been using it in that way, but that would be pretty handy.
Jackie
The most useful feature of ‘SEO Quake’ that really sets it apart from all other similar tools is its ability to sort all search results by PageRank (PR), etc. that is immensely helpful to determine which Blogs, etc. to focus your SEO efforts on! As an example, you can sort the search results from highest to lowest PR, in descending order. Then, you can choose the ones with a PR of 3 or higher to put your blog comments & back links to your site.
Thanks,
I missed the post, been away but i’ll go and find it.
Cheers
@ A. Clark, there is actually some pretty concrete things you can do to find very profitable keywords. There is not much guess work or judgment involved if you know the steps to do it.
I used to have a terrible time with keyword research, and it’s probably the number one complaint I get here at this blog.
That’s why I put together Keyword Research Revealed. It shows step by step exactly what to do to find profitable keywords.
I’m going to be running a WSO over at the Warrior Forum for it tomorrow, so if you want it, and at a special price
check it out tomorrow.
I’ll stop by tomorrow and drop the link in.
Thanks for you comment!
Jackie
Hi there,
great post, yet another add-on for firefox!
Keyword research has been one of the areas i get a little stuck at, because I suppose its based on your own judgement.
Thank god for tools like these, they really help people analyse the data thats available. It helps give some guidance!
Great blog
Hi Jen,
Thanks for stopping by. Firefox ROCKS. I was hesitant at first too, but it is just soooo much better than IE.
There is really NO learning curve, it is pretty similar to IE, it just has more functionality.
Yes you can keep IE as well. I have both, although I never use IE anymore. My husband does need it for netflix though ~ it seems it will only take IE to watch direct movies.
If you have any other questions feel free to ask, but really, make the leap, you’ll never look back.
Jackie
I’m interested in getting the Firefox browser in order to take advantage of all of the great SEO research features it seems to off.
I’ve been very hesitant though and was just wondering. Is the learning curve steep for this? And also, can I keep my Internet Explorer in tact as a backup?
I’ve really enjoyed your blog. It’s quite informative.
Kindly,
Jen
Wow,you are doing a good job here
Come work for me
Hello Jackie!
Thanks for a nice reviw of our extention
If you have any ideas how we can improve it – let me know.
By the way, if you need a premium account at seodigger.com or at adsspy.com – just contact me.
Cheers, Gleb Suvorov
SeoQuake Team