One of the biggest knocks on competitive SEO analysis is that it’s time-consuming. You can spend dozens of hours studying your competitors, and in the end, you still might not be able to outrank them.
Instead, properly evaluate the return on investment of the core keywords you plan to target. It’s easy to determine if they’re worth your time, and you likely have everything you need:
- Average monthly search volume of the keyword
- AOL leaked ranking click-through data
- Your conversion rate
- A results-analysis plugin like SEO For Firefox by SEO Book
- Goal value
Here’s how the analysis works
- Decide on which keywords you’re interested in targeting.
- Use your favorite keyword research tool to gather the monthly search volume estimate.
- Head over to Google and search for the keyword.
- Quickly analyze the strength of each competitor in the top 10. Look for the keyword in their title tag. You also need to look at the inbound link count of both the domain and the page on that domain that is ranking for the keyword that you’re analyzing. Don’t forget to check the age of the domain.
- Compare this data to your site and estimate where you’ll be able to get the site to rank within three month.
- Using the AOL leaked data, look at the click-through rate you can expect in that position.
- Multiply that percentage with the estimated monthly search volume of the keyword.
- Multiply the number you just calculated by your site’s conversion rate.
You now have an estimate of how many conversions you can expect should you obtain your estimated ranking position. If you have a value associated with that goal, you can multiply it by the total conversions you are expecting. Are you researching highly technical keywords? There’s a guide for that, too.
Is that number worth your time? Could you expect more conversions/revenue from targeting a less competitive keyword? Tell me all about it in the comments.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Competitive SEO Analysis By the Numbers
