seo rank

Take the first most profitable potential Strategic Search Term in your PROFITABILITY column  from the previous chapter and Google it.  Make sure that "Web History" is turned off.  That option on Google's search index is in the upper right hand corner.  If you don't turn it off your resuts will be scewed by your own personal web surfing.  


We will be analyzing each website from the first page of Google with special attention to the top three spots (which will receive the lion's share of traffic) to measure the strength of completion for each search term you have narrowed in the previous chapter.

Here, we can discover the low hanging fruit:  those search terms that attract profitable high volume traffic with the lowest competition ~ the easiest to seo rank.  You may decide to invest your resources to out rank more competitive Strategic Search Terms, but you will do so intelligently, having all the competition data, and knowing what is required to out rank them.

A free tool necessary to analyze your competition is offered by the smart folks at SEOmoz.  They offer a plug-in toolbar that will allow you to click on any competitor's website and, at a glance, see how many backlinks they have, what their website Page Rank is, how many pages they have indexed, how old their site is, and much more. After you finish reading this Guide, download, install and use this tool to analyze your competition's ranking criteria.

Next, in the spreadsheet you created in the previous chapter add a new worksheet named after the first strategic search term from your list.  Add the following column heads to columns A through H:

We will proceed to check, record, and analyze each one of these ranking criteria for each website ranking on the first page (or at least the top 5).  Create a separate worksheet for each search term you are analyzing.

Column A:  WEBSITE

In column A copy and paste the exact url (webpage address) of each of the top results for the search term under analysis.

Column B:  MATCHING URL

If the search term is in the root of the url, i.e,. www.SearchTermHere.com, put "root".  If a word or two, (other than simple conjunctions like "a" "the" "for", etc., of course), is in the root url, but not the exact phrase enter "partial root".  Treat the singular and plurals as if they matched for analysis purposes.

If the search term is in the competing website's subdomain, i.e., SearchTermHere.example.com, or if the search term is in a file, i.e., www.example.com/SearchTermHere.html, then note this with "sub" or "file" in the cell.

Column C:  PAGE RANK

Record the competition's page rank.

Column D:  HTML TITLE CODING

Do the top ranking sites have the search term in the most important HTML tags: Title and  Description?  A Title Tag is a website code that tells Google what you want to show up in the blue, underlined, clickable text in Google's search returns.  

The Description Tag is coding suggesting to Google how the website should be described, and is seen in two lines underneath the Title in Google search returns.  Other HTML coding helps, and we will discuss that in Step 3 for creating superior relevance.  But for purposes of gaging competition strength, the Title and Description HTML tags are sufficient.

Is the search phrase under review in each of the competing website's Title tag?  Just look at the Google search results for the search term under review and record Y in the cell corresponding to this criteria (C2, for the #1 ranking website).  And N if the search phrase is not in the competing website's Title tag.  If the Title tag contains one or more of the words in the search term, but not the exact search phrase under review, consistently note that with some other character, e.g., "~".

Column E:  HTML DESCRIPTION CODING

Do the same for the Description tag, noting with "Y", "N", or "~" in the appropriate cell if the search phrase is in the description, not in the description, or partially in the description, respectively.

Column F:  WEBSITE AGE

In Column E record the date each website was first registered.  That option is available in the SEOMOZ toolbar plug-in as well.

Column G:  BACKLINKS

In Column G list the number of Yahoo backlinks reported in the SEOMOZ toolbar plugin.  Do not use the backlinks reported by Google, they are notoriously underreported and unreliable.

Column H:  BACKLINK SCORE

Download SEO SpyGlass, an awsome free tool.  Run your competition's websites through this tool.  Record each the page rank for each active, do-follow backlink to the specific webpage that is competing for your strategic search term.


Add up each PR group of backlinks for each competing website and multiply as follows:

sum of all PR "n/a" and PR 0 X .1 = _____.
sum of all PR 1s X 1                    = _____.
sum of all PR 2s X 10                  = _____.
sum of all PR 3x X 100                = _____.
sum of all PR 4x X 1,000             = _____.
sum of all PR 5x X 10,000           = _____.
sum of all PR 6x X 100,000         = _____.
sum of all PR 7x X 1,000,000       = _____.
sum of all PR 8x X 10,000,000     = _____.
sum of all PR 9x X 1,000,000,000 = _____.

Add the multiplied values together from all the competing website's backlinks to get the competing website's backlink score.

For example, if you had competitor website with 50 backlinks, 45 of which where PR "n/a", four were PR 1 and one was a PR 3 you would get a backlink score of 108.5:

45 x .1  = 4.5
4   x  1  =   4
1 x 100 =100  
              108.5

NOTE:  This is the method I use to judge my and my client's sites which has been sufficiently accurate.  I focus on the top five competing website results since they get the lion's share of traffic.  Even more accuracy and resolution may be had about the backlink score, by dividing each competitor's backlinks' Page Rank by the number of links on that webpage, since Google diminishes the flow of Page Rank by the number of outgoing links on a webpage.

Low Hanging Fruit:  Just Pick and Eat! 
Just pick and start eating where the first page of Google is filled with:

Medium Competition:  It's Going To Take Some Work
Medium competition first page results looks like a combination of:

Stiffer Competition - Balancing Resources vs. Return On Investment
Higher competition first page results look like a combination of;

As you will learn next in this GUIDE, you can have perfect control over the on-page relevancy of your site, and well as your site's own backlink score (see backlink sections).  Stiffer competition will just require more time and resources to build a superior ranking website, and the research about the volume and profitability must make the investment worthwhile.

TIP:  Google commonly highly ranks slightly relevant websites with high Page Rank for low competition search terms.  Don't be put off by high ranking websites with high Page Rank, where they have scant reference to the search term under analysis.  They will be replaced by lower PR webpages with on-page optimization tailored to the exact Strategic Search Term.
CAVEAT:  With low competition search terms with less than 100,000 competing websites and with fewer than 50,000 websites with a search term in their Title (as shown in Market Samurai), Google has a habit of giving greater weight to exact match root urls, (e.g., www.SearchPhraseHere.com).  More powerful ranking criteria than usual is required to out rank such a website.  Note, too, that new URLs are penalized since Google's "caffeine" rolled out in January, 2010.  They limit Backlink Page Rank flow to new sites which become impossible to rank with medium competition search terms, until they age a couple of years.

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seo rank

seo rank