Keyword competition - what's realistic?

how many pages can you realistically compete against?

[fom2001uk]

Let's take Google as an example. If you want to target a particular phrase, what kind of numbers would you be happy to compete against?

At first, I tried to go for phrases which had less than 100 competing pages (exact phrase match), but now I'm happy to compete against up to 500. What's the general take on competing numbers?

[garylo]

It depends on many variables. for example: how good are your competitors in optimizing their pages:-)

[Shak]

as 1 webmasterworld member would probably say:

"The more, the Merrier"

personally I have NO barriers, if there is money to be made, then "just bring it on" and 1 shall do the best.

Shak

(ps, I never had this sort of confidence a year ago, Webmasterworld has helped a lot along the way, especially knowing you have 1000s of Friends behind you is a great motivator)

[deejay]

Don't be too deceived by high or low search number returns. It really does depend on what you are searching for, and in what sort of writings that phrase might crop up.

"blue t-shirt" (to use a generic sort of phrase) returns 21,300 exact results.

"3/4 inch widget" might return 400.

I wouldn't rush to say that the widget phrase will be less competitive than the t-shirt though.. you have to consider usage.

While "blue t-shirt" returns a stack of exact matches, you have to take into account the number of those pages that are actually SALES pages for that item, and the number of those pages that are actually OPTIMISED for that phrase. Blue t-shirt is likely to crop up in any number of blogs: "Johnny looked so scrummy in his blue t-shirt and jeans"... celebrity descriptions: "Brad went for rumpled chic in a faded blue t-shirt"... casual mentions in creative writings, novels, and, this being the internet, about 5,000 results that are more to do with the removing of the t-shirt than the t-shirt itself. :)

On the other hand, '3/4 inch widget' is far more likely to return predominantly sales oriented pages... it's just a detail descriptive that your average writer wouldn't include.

It's very possible that you're actually competing against fewer and less optimised pages for blue t-shirt than you are for those widgets.

That's why I find it's important when you're checking result returns to drill down as far as you can into the results and look at where the optimised sales pages end, and where the casual mentions begin..... that's the number of pages you're actually competing against.

[skibum]

I'd choose attainable keywords more on intuition, quality [relevancy] of the phrase, and usually eliminate most single words off the bat.

Don't pay much attention to the number of matches returned.

[fom2001uk]

I appreciate all your comments and see that there is no black and white here, but if you have a process where you have to commit to selecting keyword phrases to go after (the client gets to see this list), you have to be really confident about the numbers you can compete against.

Can you see where I'm coming from?