Keyword Sniping: Research (1)

[SpyBoy]

So, this is the start of the case study on the Keyword Sniping tutorial. I will present here exactly step by step what i am doing, and the thinking and motivation behind. There will be a long series of posts, and once you are done reading through all of them, you'll know more than 99% of all webmasters about seo, and you ll be able to create keyword sniping website and getting ranked without any effort.

So, when i start to build a website, i start to brainstorm on completely random niches. As i said in the keyword sniping tutorial, i try to avoid tech savvy niches, and go for non web related niches. This is due to the fact that the visitors will be more happy clicking than the classical web users.

Please read the keyword sniping tutorial in the whitehat - trafic -seo - single keyword sniping section before proceeding, to get a general idea of what to expect from this method.

I also want to point out that this tutorial is written spontaneously, and i have not done the keyword research before, therefore if i do not find a proper keyword from the first time, do not worry, i will get another niche and analyze it. Anyway, from the way I analyze the competition you should learn how to analyze almost any niche.

So, to start off, i input in the google keyword tool [https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal] the keyword "fishing" (spontaneously coming to my mind, a general keyword, non tech savvy users) to built a site in this particular niche.

The results are tailored to the US market, so if you are from another country, make sure to adjust your results as well, in order to get the data that i get. I choose the option to see all columns (including cpc, google trends, etc..) and at the match type, i choose the "exact match" option. (If you have no idea what match type means, please read the KS tutorial)

Once i have the results, i arrange them according to the number of searches they get, in a decreasing order. (This is done by clicking once on the approx avg search volume)

Then I separate results according to the number of searches.

I will avoid results over 20,000 searches per month, because i am not trying to build an authority website on this subject, just a quick site to profit from the flow of traffic. (You ll most probably need an authority website to rank for keyword having over 20,000 searches)

The first category : 10,000-20,000 searches.

i have like 7 results.

keyword

-fishing lures 18,100
-fishing reels 18,100
-fishing rods 18,100
-ice fishing* 18,100 (looking at the trends results i see a high spike in the december--february period)
-fishing boat 14,800
-fishing report 14,800
-deep sea fishing* 12,100 (the only 3 words keyword)

Now i do a search for each keyword in google, and use the seo firefox plugin to quickly analyze backlinks, and competition

What i look when analysing competition?

Off page factors

-page rank [pr]
-number of links to the domain (if a domain is ranked, denoted by the [Y!Links] in seo for firefox plugin)
-numbers of links to that particular page (if a page is ranked, denoted by [Y!Page Links] in seo for firefox plugin)

On page factors

-keyword in title of the page [title]
-keyword in url (long url) [url]
-keyword in domain name [domain]

On page factors are not that important, but their presence there show me that the website owner optimize specifically for those keywords, so i would expect a fierce competition. Their absence, show that the website is not optimizing for that particular keywords, so it would be an easy target for me.

I should look at much more factors, like anchor text of the backlinks, page rank of the backlinks, etc... but for a quick analysis is very time consuming. Once i have decided exactly what keyword i want to purchase, i will proceed with a more detailed analysis of the competition.

Starting the research

fishing lures (top 3 results) 18,100 searches

nr1-extremelures.com pr=3, Y!Links= 4,120, Y!Page Links = 3780, title=yes, url=domain=partial

nr2-gofishin.com pr=3, Y!Links= 8,840, Y!Page Links = 1650, title=partial, url=domain=no

nr3-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_lure pr=5, Y!Links= infinite (this is a black hole website), Y!Page Links = 131, title=yes, url=yes, domain=no

Discussions:

We can see that extremelures.com is ranking above gofishin.com despite them having the same pagerank, and gofishin.com having way more backlinks.

A possible explanation for this is that extremelures.com optimize better for this particular keyword - see the title is optimized, and the url partially, while the gofishin.com does not have those attributes that strong.

Also, despite the fact that extremelures.com has less backlinks overall, it has almost twice as much links going to the homepage than gofishin.com, which has more deeplinks.

The wikipedia listing is on the third position, despite having a pr of 5, because the actual linking to the page is quite low (only 131 links) That listing lives on top only because of the domain authority, few links, and good on page optimization - see the title and the url.

The wikipedia ranking can be easily overcome, but the top 2 listings seems very solid websites with a good number of backlinks, and authority websites in their niche.

Also, they rank with their domain, not with a sub page, have to note this one as well.

Although the phrase fishing lures in exact match shows only 18,100 searches, if you choose the phrase match, you will see that there are 110,000 searches per month. This means that this particular phrase "fishing lures" is searched a lot in different combinations. Ranking for this particular phrase with a big website will get you easily over 1000$ per month (due to thier great number of combinations and long tail keywords), but this is not a project that you can engage within with a slim 10 pages keyword sniping website and obtain quick results.

For a several months project, or for an experienced seo pro, this keyword might seem like a easy target, but if you are just starting, i would suggest you avoid it.

fishing reels (top 3 results)

nr1-pennreels.com pr=5, Y!Links= 9,330, Y!Page Links = 8010, title=partial, url=partial, domain=partial

nr2-fish.shimano.com pr=5, Y!Links= irrelevant, Y!Page Links = 13100, title=yes, url=no, domain=no

nr3-reelfishingtackle.com pr=0, Y!Links= 970, Y!Page Links = 953, title=yes, url=yes, domain=yes

(This is a classic MFA-Keyword sniping website, not mine though)
note that nr4 is wikipedia, overthrown by the keyword sniping website.

Discussions:

Here he have a real example of a KS MFA website ranking in top 3 for this particular keyword, despite having a pr of 0, and around 1000 links. You can overthrown him for the third position, but the top 2 seem like solid websites, with plenty of backlinks (8,000 and 13,000). Notice that for fish.shimano.com i wrote at Y!Links irrelevant, this is because the Y!Links shows the number of links to the main domain (shimano.com), not the subdomain fish.shimano.com (Subdomains do not receive any link juice from the main domain, unless they are linked directly from there).

This can also be a good target, but for a more experienced seo, and in few months time span. Also fishing reels has 135,000 seaches as a phrase, which shows you that you have to get into this market with a big, multi paged website in order to profit from all long tail combinations.

fishing rods (top 3 results)

nr1-tackledirect.com pr=5, Y!Links= 5,360, Y!Page Links = 2660, title=yes, url=no, domain=no

nr2-consumersearch.com/fishing_rods pr=0, Y!Links= 37,400, Y!Page Links = 0, title=yes,
url=yes, domain=no

nr3-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_rod pr=5, Y!Links= infinite, Y!Page Links = 246, title=yes, url=yes, domain=no

The " anomaly here" is why a pr0 website, with 0 backlinks, ranks above wikipedia, pr 5 with a few number of links (240). Beside the obvious fact, that this sites got their positions from the authority of the main domain (wikipedia and consumer search), there is another aspect that influence the serps called relevant content. (Not quality content, relevant content).

To put more simple, consumersearch ranks above wikipedia, because google knows that when sometime searches for fishing rods, in most of the cases they want to BUY rods, not to read about the history of fishing rod, or how to build one - like wikipedia does.

The same example we can see in cases for the well known "credit cards" searches (ranking number 1, brings you more than 3000$ per day for this keyword). We can see the top sites are all a collection of affiliate links. Google does not list the wikipedia entry, because of their relevancy. (Although you could say that wikipedia has the most "quality content" of all of them).


ice fishing (top 3 results) 18,100 searches

nr1-icefishingworld.com pr=4, Y!Links= 1,740, Y!Page Links = 1590, title=yes, url=yes, domain=yes

nr2-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_fishing pr=5, Y!Links= infinite, Y!Page Links = 309, title=yes, url=yes, domain=no

nr3-icefishingtheoutdoors.com pr=4, Y!Links= 438, Y!Page Links = 329, title=yes, url=domain=yes

This is an example of a website that has "temporary anomaly traffic". If you look at google trends, you will see that in the december-january-february months, he receives like 4 or 5 times more traffic than in the rest of the time. It is obvious that ice fishing takes place in those months. Therefore, the number of searches, are a little bit flawed, because in reality, except for those three months, ice fishing will receive way less traffic than 18,000 searches, (but the number of searches indicated by google will be compensated in those 3 months, such that overall, they will have around 18,000 searches per month.)

If you build now a website for this keyword, and you barely manage to get ranked in february number one, then you will have to wait around a year to reap the fruits of your work. (If you work fast, and you get it done by the end of december-january, then you may have a nice good month).

Other than this observations, we can easily notice that the competition for this keyword is extremely low, and up to now, represents the best choice for a keyword sniping website- mostly the same number of searches as before, but way less competition. You see number 3 has only 300-400 links and number 1 only 1000-1500, not to be compare with other websites that had even over 10,000.


fishing boat

nr1-boats.com/builder/fishing.jsp pr=3, Y!Links= 36,000, Y!Page Links = 273, title=yes, url=yes, domain=partial

nr2-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_vessel pr=5, Y!Links= infinite, Y!Page Links = 60, title=yes, url=yes, domain=no

nr3-findafishingboat.com/ pr=4, Y!Links= 759, Y!Page Links = 481, title=partial, url=domain=yes

This is another easy target, compare to the previous ones. You can see the number 1 gets all his juice from the main domain, but the actual links to the page are few -273.

The wikipedia listing, not that hard to overcome (Wikipedia listing always have high pagerank because they are getting linked by other wikipedia listing, but their number of links usually do not support their position, and can be overthrown by keyword sniping website, as proved by the previous example, where the wiki was number 4, and a pr0 was in front of it)


fishing report

nr1-tpwd.state.tx.us/fishboat/fish/recreational/fishreport.phtml pr=5, Y!Links=irrelevant, Y!Page Links = 3730, title=yes, url=partial domain=no
nr2-azgfd.gov/artman/publish/cat_index_28.shtml pr=5, Y!Links= 17100, Y!Page Links = 513, title=yes, url=no, domain=no
nr3-txfishing.com pr=3, Y!Links= 87,900, Y!Page Links = 87,200, title=yes, url=domain=partial

These are mainly official websites, tx.us or gov, or with too many backlinks even to get started 87,000. No way you could make a sniping websites here.

deep sea fishing

nr1-swordfishingcentral.com pr=4, Y!Links= 4,970, Y!Page Links = 2460, title=yes, url=domain=partial

nr2-titelines.com/ pr=3, Y!Links= 2670, Y!Page Links = 76, title=yes, url=domain=no

nr3-fintalk.com pr=4, Y!Links= 12,400, Y!Page Links = 7,880, title=partial, url=domain=no

This is the first 3 words keyword- much easier to rank than the previous 2 words keywords.

Number 1 looks like a pretty good website. Number 2 seems like an easy target, few backlinks.
Number 3, is easy to overcome,because it is not optimized especially for these keyword, you can see that the title partially fit the keyword, this means that despite having plenty of backlinks, very few of them are anchored on the " deep sea fishing" keyword - and this is why it is ranked under number 2, which has only 76 exact links to the domain.

From all the keywords discussed here, i think it is the best one to optimize to, if you were to create a website in this niche (and perhaps the ice fishing keyword, but i do not like that one because has the time anomaly. If you are patient enough to see your results even after a year, you could give it a try as well).

This does not mean that you should necessary start optimizing for this keyword. We should take a look at the other category, with few searches, and see whether we can find some easy targets, which, despite their lower volume, can be more profitable due to the less competition and more quicker turn around time.

I have continued the research furthermore in this niche, using the sames techniques described above, with keywords having around 6,000-10,000 searches. I will just point out what looked like promising results for me.

crappie fishing - 9900 searches

nr1-crappie.com pr=4, Y!Links= 6,400, Y!Page Links = 4810, title=yes, url=partial, domain=partial
nr2-www.oxford.net/outdoors/Fishing/crappie.html pr=3, Y!Links= 2,860, Y!Page Links = 36, title=yes, url=partial, domain=no
nr3-thecrappiekiller.com pr=2, Y!Links= 175, Y!Page Links = 128, title=yes, url=partial, domain=partial

shark fishing - 9900 searches

nr1-notsoboringlife.com/shark-fishing/guide-to-shark-fishing pr=0, Y!Links= 9,580, Y!Page Links = 2880, title=yes, url=yes, domain=no
nr2-montauksharkfishing.com pr=3, Y!Links= 71, Y!Page Links = 69, title=yes, url=yes, domain=yes
nr3-anglersaddiction.com pr=3, Y!Links= 140, Y!Page Links = 115, title=yes, url=no, domain=no

fishing tips - 9900 searches

nr1-bassresource.com/fish/tipsindex.html pr=3, Y!Links= 11,200, Y!Page Links = 396, title=yes, url=partial, domain=no
nr2-mdc.mo.gov/kids/out-in/2001/01/4.htm pr=3, Y!Links= irrelevant, Y!Page Links = 14, title=yes, url=no, domain=no
nr1-rexhunt.com.au/fishing-tips-tips pr=4, Y!Links= 1,080, Y!Page Links = 4, title=yes, url=yes, domain=no

bass fishing tips = 6600

nr1-bassresource.com/fish/tipsindex.html pr=3, Y!Links= 11,200, Y!Page Links = 396, title=yes, url=partial, domain=no
nr1-largemouthbasstips.com pr=1, Y!Links= 165, Y!Page Links = 143, title=yes, url=partial, domain=partial
nr1-bassfishingtips.net pr=2, Y!Links= 155, Y!Page Links =130, title=yes, url=yes, domain=yes

As you can see here, even though the number of searches did not decrease too much from the previous examples, the competition on these keywords is much easier to outrank.
Instead of authority websites on these subject, the rankings are held in most of the cases by articles (pages withing unrelated websites) or low quality websites, with a small number of backlinks.

For the "crappie fishing", the number 1 position is hold by an authority figure, and although number 2 and number 3, are very easy to outrank, i will not start building a website in this niche because it may take quite a while to out rank the crappie.com websites.As i said, i want to make sure i can easily get number 1 position in the quickest amount of time, because that will get me most traffic, i am not satisfied with number 2 or 3.

The second keyword -shark fishing- looks promising and i think it is a good keyword for a keyword sniping website. Therefore, this will be a keyword i will go for with my keyword sniping case study.

The last two keywords "bass fishing tips" and "fishing tips" represents a perfect couple for a double keyword sniping example. In the first instance, i will rank for the 3 words keyword "bass fishing tips" and once this is done, i will focus on a wider,, more trafficked 2 words keyword "fishing tips".

[omoxx]

Great tutorial, but can you elaborate "although number 2 and number 3, are very easy to outrank" and "start optimizing for this keyword", please

I am not a total Noob, but I don't understand how can I easily outrank webs with PRn1, 2, etc.
Wouldn't be easier to use MSamurai or Traffic Travis to do the competition analysis?

Is there a formula/ tip to apply when you see the 10 first competitors for a KW and make a quick choice : should I stay or should I go to another KW?

I've read somewhere they advice to consider KW's with at least 3 competitors <50 in Page Backlinks among the 10 first competitors.

What's your opinion/ quick'n'dirty trick to outrank competitors?

Thanxxx

[omoxx]

Today I found this method to determine the strenght of competition through MSamurai or Traffic Travis:

Here’s their step-by-step strategy :

1. The first thing to look for is whether more than one competitor has a ‘Y’ (a Yes) in ALL the YAH, Title, URL, Desc & Head columns. If there is more than one site, we should pass on this keyword and move into the next one.

2. If no (and for this keyword it’s a ‘no’), we then need to look at the Pagerank of the each of the websites (PR column) and make sure that there are at least two sites with a Pagerank of 3 or below in the top 10. In this case, there are. In fact, 8 of them fall into this category.

3. We then need to look at the number of backlinks that each of these pages have pointing to them (BLP) and check that there are two sites with less than 50.