What Is Keyword Competition? - How To Improve Your Ranking Chances

What are keywords?

Keywords are words or phrases that search engines, such as Google, use to help rank your web pages. The higher rank your page is given, the higher up in the Search Engine Response Pages (SERPs) that your site will appear. Your aim is to be ranked to the first page.

There are two types of keywords:

Short-Tail Keyword: Words or phrases that are less than 4 words

Long-Tail Keywords: Phrases that are 5 words or more in length

What Are Search Engines?

Search Engines are automated software programs that roam the web building databases of the content. The content that is collected is added to the engine index. When a query is input at an engine's site your input is checked against the search index. URL's that are selected are then displayed on the SERP, based on their ranking.

Search engines use the content of your web page to calculate the ranking. Note that it is the PAGE that is ranked and not the total website itself.

What is Keyword competition?

Keyword competition is an indication of the difficulty of obtaining a high ranking for your website in the market based on your keyword. A simple measurement is how many other web pages will you need to beat for that first page listing.

Choosing your keywords?

The golden rule for keyword selection is to discover keywords that get a High amount of Searches (number of people using your keyword in their search) and Low Competition (number of entries in the SERP when your keyword is used) i.e. number of other pages satisfying your keyword.

When selecting your keyword, you should always consider looking for long-tail keywords. These will give you more directed traffic and will provide you with less competition.

Therefore there are 2 steps to Choosing Keywords:

Use a keyword tool, e.g. Google AdWords, to discover how many Searches there are for a particular keyword - you want something over 2,000 searches per month. Then discover how much Competition there is for this keyword. Use your chosen keyword in a search engine to see how many pages are generated (competition). - You want search results of something less than about 60,000 pages. When using your phrase in the search engine, put it in quotation marks so that you will be returned an exact match. E.g. "keyword phrase".

So remember - High Searches - Low Competition.

Things to Look Into When Doing a Website Audit

Many businesses go online these days. This is because there are more opportunities when using the internet. Businesses can freely advertise their products no matter where they are. They can easily reach more possible clients and also get feasible clients which can turn into income in the future. There are more chances for a business to become successful in the online world especially if they know the techniques on how to do it.

Many online businesses today get into website auditing to make sure that their website and all the methods done with it are working well for the business. This is the method of checking on the performance of a particular website and all the operations happening and done in it. This is how an online business owner can check on how their website is doing for their business and income. Though it is not yet really been introduced to many, website audit systems are being used by many online businesses these days. It is proven to measure the success rate that a website can give to a business.

When performing a website audit, there are certain things to look into to make sure that you are fully taking advantage of what it can give for your business. The first thing to check is the keywords that you are using. Keywords are often used for SEO techniques. You should make sure that the keywords are the ones that most web browsers are searching for most of the time. Choose on the best keywords to use for your contents so that you can have more web visitors.

Another thing to look into is the links that you have in your website. In doing an audit on the website, you should check if all of the links directed to your web pages are working well and good. Any broken link will mean loss of clients or visitors. You need to check on each and every link that you make before making it live. This way, you can be sure that all web visitors will be lead to your website for possible transaction or sales.

You should also look into your domain name. You should make sure that your core keyword is included in the domain name. Also, you should always check on how the letters were used in the name. Always check if it is using capitalized letters. Make sure that your domain name is not complicated so that it will be easier to search.

A person who has rich knowledge about computers and the internet can definitely make their own website audit. They just need to know the things to look into and how to check on each and every aspect of the website. Or if one is not familiar with it, they can just hire an expert to do it. There are now lots of web services companies that may help online businesses with their operations and methods.

How Do You Keep Up With Googles Algorithm Changes?

Google is constantly adjusting their algorithms to ensure their customer base gets the best possible results, and thus continue to use their services. This leaves webmasters in a situation where they continuously need to stay on top of the latest information on the subject, if there is information to be had, and adjust their tactics accordingly.

As a result, webmasters can spend countless hours reviewing and making adjustments to their website. If they hired an outside company to do their SEO work, they will second guess their investment and wonder if months or even years of efforts have gone to waste.

What's worse, there is little evidence to support all the theories about what the latest changes are. It is entirely possible that much of the information available on the internet can in fact be based on rumor or even deliberate misinformation. Google keeps their algorithms a closely guarded secret and what a coup it would be for someone to be able to brag about discovering one of these secrets. What's to stop someone from making something up, saying they discovered it, having it go viral, and turning it into an accepted fact?

Google adjusts their algorithms for a number of reasons. The main one is to give their searchers the best experience possible. In order to give them the best experience possible, search results need to be as relevant as possible. If you searched for "baby strollers" and the first result that came up was for a site who stuffed baby stroller keywords into their pages and attempted to outwit the search engine in other ways but offered zero value when you opened the page, your experience would not be good.

Google has little choice but to refine their algorithms as the creativity of people gets increasingly sophisticated. This results in temporary rankings that disappear as Google catches up. Perhaps the tricksters were able to maintain rankings long enough to make it worth their while. Perhaps not.

Fortunately, there are ways to avoid this situation entirely. The solution is incredibly simple and straightforward. Doing things properly in the first place will result in never needing to go back to the drawing board, never needing to worry about waking up to find out you have been banished from page one.

With all the misinformation in cyberspace, how do you know what is proper? The answer to this question is also simple. It is interesting to see how many SEO companies are unwilling to share their contact information, hide their domain ownership information, and use other methods to remain anonymous. Choosing a company with nothing to hide is a good start on your path to sleeping well at night.