Analyzing Competition - What Is Most Important?

[Staccs]

Up until recently, I believed competition in the SERPs is 95% determined by page (back)links only, not taking domain links, domain age, PR, among other factors.

When looking at the SERP for your keyword, how do you determine the difficulty of breaking into the top 3?

I realize it's not possible to definitively say "xxxx is more important to Google than yyyy", but I'm only asking for educated guesses based on your experience.

If I were to guess, I would put the major variables I listed in the following order.

1 - Page Links
2 - Domain Links
3 - Age

Obviously there are many more, but these are the "impact" variables I can think of based on what SEO Quake shows me.

A factor altering the variables listed would be having an exact match domain or a domain with the keyword in it giving the site a boost.

I guess the thing I'm having trouble grasping is the lack of information available regarding Google's ranking algorithm. I mean, how can you determine if you can outrank UglySite.com which has 500K domain links, but only 250 page links, PR4, ~5 years old with your own PrettySite.com which has 600 domain links, but 500 of them are page links, PR1? You can't determine that, can you? You just have to keep in mind quality of quantity and keep building links.

Am I missing any known, obvious variables? Any tips regarding sizing up competition?

 

[PHPGator]

I heard someone mention "VAVA" as an acronym the other day, and I agree with it. Backlinks are absolutely one of the biggest factors behind getting ranked. Without backlinks, your site never reaches the top. Obviously there are too many other factors to discuss all of them in a single thread, but here's a good starting point. Look at your backlinks from this angle in comparison to your top competitors.

Volume - Do you have more backlinks than your competitor?

Authority - What are the top 10 links based on page rank (easy way, sometimes not the most accurate) that your competitor has. How does your top 10 backlinks compare?

Velocity - Velocity can sometimes be beneficial. It is also known as the "honeymoon" period by some. Sometimes new websites that get lots of links can jump to the top. However, it is usually not sustained for a long period so I don't typically care about this part much.

Anchor Text - What are your competitors trying to rank for? If you are trying to rank for "purple ceramic frogs" but most of your competitors backlinks are just "ceramic frogs" then you can probably compete fairly easy by just having proper anchor text in your backlinks. Sometimes you can beat out someone else for longtail keywords if their backlink anchor text is all scattered out and rarely ever hits the keyword you are really targeting with far less volume of backlinks and mediocre authority backlinks.

Hopefully this will give you some direction on how to analyze your competition. Some might disagree with Page Rank being played into analyzing. However, in a lot of cases page rank is directly related to the backlinks they have and how Google values them. Higher page rank on the sites you are competing against will MOST OFTEN mean tougher competition in terms of SEO.

Looking at the above four factors mentioned, if you are lacking in one of the areas, try to start link building around those specific areas. If you lack in volume, you might start looking into xrumer blasts and directory submission services. They are great at upping your volume, but do very little in terms of authority. If your website has poor authority backlinks in comparison to your top competitors, it might be time to purchase a few links from individual related sites that have good authority.

 

[Staccs]

Thanks for the response.

That's pretty much what I had thought, though it's frustrating not knowing exactly what I need to climb the ranks, I guess it's what keeps things interesting.

 

[PHPGator]

Well, I think if you separate it like above, then it becomes a little bit easier to determine where you need to go. If you beat the competition in one area, but lack in another, then you know you need to buy services or do things to increase that category. There are lots of people that have a bigger volume, but lack in the authority department. Most of the time this is where I see people lack.

 

[handrewrites]

I'd like to add that authority can really make up for volume big-time. A single good link is often all you need - but as with all things good in life it's not going to be easy to get.

Think real-life relationship building.