scared of too much competition

[babrees]

OK, so I have read Affi say don't worry about the competition when researching. But is there a figure that is too much?

I have a thought of a niche but shrank back when doing a keyword search on google to find that there 10,500,000 results!

Would YOU still go ahead?

[kungfumobiles]

Do some backlink research on Yahoo.com and Yahoo.co.uk eg. link:www.thetopwebsite.com

Do that for the top 10/20 to get a good idea of how many websites are linking to them.

Here's the thing, I could get a 1000 links to your website within a week but it would make no difference, but I could also get 10-20 really good relevent links which would make you jump up in rankings. Look are their links, are they relevant, are they from other really good websites, have the top 10/20 websites been round for a long time (check their domains with tools like http://whois.domaintools.com/thetopwebsite.com, compare them to your own).

There is lots more that can help but this is the first steps. Also can you target longtail search terms which they aren't ranking for. Add keywords such as "cheap", "new" and "discount" before your regular search terms.

[stu-art]

Depends on the relevancy of the results. There's unlikely to be 10.5 million results targeting your niche (unless your'e searching for voucher codes!). Dig into the serps and see if the results are still on the money - you'll often see the relevancy dropping off after a few pages.

[aaclapham]

I would give it a go as I am confident in my abilities of creating a site that people would want to visit/rank highly in the serps.

What do you lose from trying - £6 for a domain name and a couple of months work

[tbp]

Don't worry about the number of results, look at the links in the top 10 (where you are aiming for!) as these are most important.

When you do a search, Google starts by showing the most relevant results, and then pads out the results with less and less relevant results.

So although you are getting 10.5 million results showing, for a niche area you may only have 50 results which are actually highly relevant, and so these would be your direct "competition". It's very very rare that you get a very low number of results.

So don't worry about the number of actual results, its largely irrelevant. Look at each of the sites in the top 10, at the quality of the page and the PR values. Before everyone jumps on me and says PR isn't relevant, I know that, but from my experience if all the sites have a decent PR (4 or over), then it's hard to break in. If you have a number of 0 -2 PR's in the top 10, then you should be able to outrank them.

Other factors i`ve gained from experience are:

If theres a BBC link at the top, you aren't going to be able to beat that, and it indicates the area may not be as much of a niche as you think, so can be harder to break in.

If there are Amazon or Ebay links in the top 10, then it should be pretty easy to break in to the top 10 and displace these.

When you are working at this niche level, it's vital to get a domain that matches the key phrase you are targetting, and the words must be in the same order. Optimise the SEO of the site to match this key phrase, get to a position you're happy with, and then you can start targetting other key phrases.

If I were you I would not worry about the number of results, and just go for it. Sometimes you are spot on and get to number 1, other times you will be lower down the rankings (although time plays a big factor for these, and you should move up after a couple of months).

After you get a number of sites online and see what rankings they get, you begin to get an instinctive feel as to whether you can get into the top 10 for an area. This plays a big part in deciding whether to launch a site or not. However, this isn't really something that can be taught, as so many areas are so different, it only comes through practice.

As the others have said, with domain names and hosting so cheap, even if you make a mistake you've lost very little - just move on and try something else.

[Affi Liate]

Originally Posted by babrees OK, so I have read Affi say don't worry about the competition when researching. But is there a figure that is too much? I have a thought of a niche but shrank back when doing a keyword search on google to find that there 10,500,000 results! Would YOU still go ahead?

Hi,

I get Wayne to make me a coffee and give me time to think how cool I am if I'm looking at nearing 1 billion results.

I still do it anyway.

I fell asleep reading some stuff about this but the bottom line is 99.99% of RESULTS can be topped by ANYBODY if you go about BASIC ON PAGE SEO correctly.

The last free article I sent out (which I wrote down the local after accidentally walking in during the quizz, so there was nothing better to do) I mentiond "car jack" as a nice little niche I'd have a pop at for SEO. There are over 2 million results for "car jack" but that's because it has the word "car" in it. Optimize the site for "car jack" and related keywords and the other 2 million plus results become mainly irelevant as there not about car jack's. (I won the quizz too btw)...

As ever TBP is right as well. I love his angle on ebay and Amazon. That is important!

Kicking Amazon's corporate a*s off postion 1 is not as tricky as you may think. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink... The British Brodcasting Cocunuts though, that's another story...

Do a little bit of off page SEO and you're already hovering around page 2 at worse.

Another thing here THAT EVERYONE FAILS TO MENTION is it depends on your keywords. More specifically I mean this:

Lets say your niche is Xbox Consoles (yawn).

You may be nowhere for "xbox consoles" searches even though you spent more time optimizing your site for THAT keyword/phrase than TBP spends making a post.

However. You may find that you are in the top 5 on page one for a search for "black Xbox consoles" or "Whats the best Xbox console price".

The point is decent on site SEO (which is mind numbingly easy) is good enough to get you "in the picture" for spin offs of almost ANY keyword.

Here's what I'd do.

Look at the site that's currently number 1 for your main keyword and always "around the first page" for combinations of it.

Then just do a better site (SEO wise).

Hey presto.


Aff.

I love TBP btw... Just for the record...

[tbp]

You may be nowhere for "xbox consoles" searches even though you spent more time optimizing your site for THAT keyword/phrase than TBP spends making a post.

lol, I think that I should stop posting and open an affiliate advice line on an 0898 number where I read out my posts instead. I could make a fortune!

[Affi Liate]

babrees,

just a further addition.

I never thought to look whilst I was posting above but i just Googled the keyword I'm working on for a site this evening, there are over 379,000,000 results.

I never even bothered to check until now.

I expect I'll be on page 1 in about 24 hours of being indexed (that's my guess)...

Aff.

(off to bed, or shall I watch Lost part 10.... hmmmm...)

[Affi Liate]

Originally Posted by aaclapham I would give it a go as I am confident in my abilities of creating a site that people would want to visit/rank highly in the serps. What do you lose from trying - £6 for a domain name and a couple of months work

Holy sh*t. I just read that... A couple of months work!

If I spent a couple of months work on something...

My google results position would be on top of my monitor above the page title that says:

My Keyword - Google Search - Microsoft Internet Explorer

Let alone position 1 or above the top sponsored add.

Yep my position in the results would actually be off the screen and sat on top of your monitor.

Affoogle

[Affi Liate]

Originally Posted by tbp lol, I think that I should stop posting and open an affiliate advice line on an 0898 number where I read out my posts instead. I could make a fortune!

Hey, now there's a thought my old bud...

I'm up for that TBP...

We could do it together -

It'd be like the Morcombe and Wise phone in

lol