This is the follow up post to How To Dial In Your Keywords – Part 1. If you haven’t read it yet then go back and do it now. You want to make sure you have a list of good keywords before you start checking out the competition.

The Competition

Once you have found your keywords based on the pointers I gave you in the last post you need to test them out against the real competition. If your competition is really darn good for a certain keyword then I would recommend you drop it and focus on the other ones.

How to check out the competition.

Install FireFox (I like to use Safari for my regular browsing but switch to FireFox for any SEO work).

Then install the SEO For FireFox plugin.

Once installed you will see an ‘SEO’ in the bottom right hand corner of your browser. To toggle it on and off just click the logo (color = on, duh). Then right click, or command click and choose on options. Change the following options to Automatic and the rest to Hidden: PR, Traffic Value, Age, Digs, Y! Links, Y Page Links and Yahoo Position.

Then go to Google and search for you keywords.

When the results come up you will now see a list under each result with the information we just specified.

This is what each means and how to interpret it.

PR – Page Rank

This is the popularity of a site with google. Basically the weight of the site. If your competition has a PR of higher than 4 or 5 then try another keyword. It is too much work for a new blog to beat these pages. However if there is only one site with a PR of 5 and the rest have a PR of 1 then you will be fine because you will easily be able to get on the top page for that ranking.

Traffic Value

Basically the higher it is the harder they are to outrank.

Age

Older sites rank better.

Diggs

Another test of popularity with the trendy social bookmarking website digg.com. The more diggs a site has the harder it is to outrank.

Y! Links

The amount of incoming links Yahoo shows for the site. Yahoo generally shows more links than google. The more incoming links a site has the harder it is to outrank. The quality of links is also important. If a site has a ton of inbound links but is not very old then these links are probably not very high quality and it may be easier to outrank than you think.

Y! Page Links

These are the number of pages inside the website, or the size of the website. Once again Yahoo has better data. Search engines usually like bigger websites so you may find it hard to tackle massive sites that are very keyword rich.

Choosing Keywords To Target

If you find your keywords are very heavily competed then drop them. Pick the keywords that get the most traffic for the least amount of competition and you will find it easy to rank well in google and the search engines. If you implement your keywords well you will have a good flow of traffic in no time.

Also read 8 Essential Strategies To Improve AdSense Cashflow for tips on finding high paying keywords.

Resources (sponsored)

PPC Bully: Let Your Competitors Work For You!
Uncovers Your Competitors Winning Combinations Of Keywords, Ads And Landing Pages, And You Can Dominate The Pay Per Click Playground.

InstaCash Keywords – I recommend you at least watch the YouTube video near the bottom.
Membership Site That Delivers Niche Keyword Lists In A Daily Basis.