Knowing when you can be Competitive

take the plunge or look for a better opportunity

[alphacooler]

Just thought it would be useful to have a thread on what different people look at when deciding to create a new site. Specifically, how do you know you can be competitive? Search results under 500k on google? Competitor doesn't have too many backlinks, etc. Let's hear it.

[MovingOnUp]

I don't worry so much about SEO. I just ask myself if I could make a more useful site or do a better job. In fact, I seldom start by looking at industries or other sites. Most of my sites have started when I wanted to find something specific, searched for it, and couldn't find what I wanted. Then I built a site to do what I wanted.

[alphacooler]

MovingOnUp,

I agree with your method that is a great way to start a site, but unfortunately stumbling onto something like that doesn't really happen that often, at least for me. I'd love to hear from some people who are more active in their approach. I guess it comes down to if you like to run multiple sites or just focus on one or two.

k

[GuitarZan]

Hey,

Right now my highest competition keyword, (still working on the site) is around 500,000 - More than I thought; oh well.

Obviously it hasn't ranked yet, so I can't tell if it what I do works.

Basically for most competitive words, I use them as my home page focus. I will go to the top results and see which sites are coming up. Are root (homepage) or subfolders pages listing at the top?

If subfolder pages (www.example.com/whatever), it can tell you a little bit, although anchor text is more important than on page stuff with google. The reason I say this is because a lot of sites that do SEO, will get links mainly to their home page. If their subpage is ranking, and you focus your home page on that keyword... You get the idea.

What else have I been doing? I have a software program that analyzes back links to the site, and says if they are recip or not. So I also check out what anchor text they are using.

You have to remember: 97% of websites are not optimized (From what I have heard). If you know what you are doing, you have a good chance of ranking. Just be prepared to wait with google.

Others will probably be able to add a lot more to this.

All the Best,

C.K.

[alphacooler]

what program do you use to check backlinks?

[mwack]

A popular one is called Arelis. It's a link exchanger in a box, basically. But a free one is a program called Traffic Warden. I use it and it works alright.

[rfung]

What information does finding a competitors' anchor text and quantity tell you?

[GuitarZan]

Hey,

Well if a competitor has 1000 links pointing to his site with the anchor text "red widget", and they are all from different sites - Do you want to go after that term? I don't think I would.

C.K.

[fallcool]

I am interested in traffic warden, but it is not free according to their website. So it is outdated or ...?

[nativenewyorker]

Please note that dropping names of the majority of products or software tools is against the Webmaster World TOS [webmasterworld.com].

[GuitarZan]

Hey,

Arelis gets mentioned all the time on WebmasterWorld. For some reason it seems to be that some products can be mentioned, while others can't.

C.K.