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Here is the second in a series of articles designed to assist with the fundamental information required to begin a search engine marketing campaign. In Part 1 of this series: Brainstorm you have researched who your audience is, its demographics and how to reach them. You’re working on making the list of 5-10 search phrases or keywords. Now you should review the online competition for these phrases or keywords.

Determining Competition

After you have identified possible additions to your search phrase list, you need to research further to find out if there is a good chance you will achieve your prized top search engine ranking or if the competition for that phrase is already saturated. While it can be tempting to target only search phrases which are very well liked and searched hundreds of thousands of times in a single month, you must also consider the likelihood of you being able to obtain a ranking higher enough to capitalize on all of that great traffic. Many, many search terms are so saturated by competitors that it would be highly unlikely that you would achieve a high enough ranking to reward your time and efforts. Therefore, it is often worthwhile thinking about those search phrases that may not have quite the same level searches each month, but likewise do not have as many websites targeting that term.

Both WordTracker and WordStream have tools that may help you to determine the competition for your target keyword phrases.

For all of us on a truly strict budget, there is an alternative, though not nearly as effective answer. Enter each identified search phrase at Google, using quotations around the phrase (e.g. “discount computers”). Google will then show the search results for all pages that target that phrase exactly as entered. View under the search box and you’ll view the number of results Google matched. This number represents the total quantity of web pages that Google has identified as targeting that exact search phrase. This number represents your competition. Take note of this number for each of your identified search phrases and soon you will be able to determine which of your search phrases have the most competition and which have less competitors and therefore a better chance of obtaining top ranking.

To complete this series look for part three: Selecting Your Keywords

For more information about seo marketing make sure you check out seo basics, and The Cab System This article, Search Engine Optimization Analysis – Part 2: Determining Competition has free reprint rights.

Tags: search engine marketing analysis, search engine optimization, search engine optimization tips, SEO, SEO basics