Finding the Least Competitive Keywords

Knowing how to get the right keywords involves more than just picking keywords that get a reasonble amount of traffic. The most important keyword tool in the hunt for the right keywords of a web page is Google itself. Not for choosing keywords but for checking out the competition.

Its almost certain that there will be someone trying to make money from any keyword you choose. This is not a problem as the secret of SEO is being better at making money than your competitors. However some keywords are very heavily contested, for example "Britney Spears", "Sex" and "SEO", and unless you are prepared to put in a lot of work over a long time, they are not worth the effort. The secret to finding the right keywords is in checking out the competition before you invest any time building the web site and picking the least competive keywords for the largest amount of traffic.

Once you have found some good keywords, Google for them and look at the top ten results and ask yourself these questions about each site:

Do they look like professional web sites?	The better a site looks the more likely that it will be heavily tuned for SEO but this isn't always the case.
Have they done the obvious SEO tricks such as having the keywords in the URL and the page title?	Read on to find out how to do this but if they haven't done one or both of these, the site is probably not well optimized.
Is the site tightly focused on your keyword?	Big sites will have lots of content and by accident hit on many keywords.
Does the site have the sort of content you plan to have?	Two sites can be focused on a keyword but have very different types of content. E.g. One may be a shopping site, the other a blog on the site. If there are sites already focused on your keyword but have a totally different approach and style of content then there is still room for you.

In the top ten results for most keywords there will be one or two commercial sites focused on those keywords. Plus some pages from big sites like Wikipedia or news sites such BBC or CNN. Then there will be incidental results like an article on a blog that is about your keyword but the blog isn’t focused on the subject. Finally there will be the flotsam and jetsam of the search results. Pages that are about the keywords but are amateur in nature and unlikely to be of interest to anyone searching on the keyword.

When you look at the top ten results for your search page, if you see it packed with professional looking, well optimized sites with the same type of content as you have planned, then drop the keyword and move on. On the other-hand, if you’ve found a keyword with only one or two professional sites in the top ten and they have been poorly optimization, then you’ve found the least competetive keyword.

As an exercise, try comparing the results for “Britney Spears” to “Beeston” (the town where I live). Miss Spears attracts over 56,000 searches a day compared to the 5 a day for Beeston. It is not surprising that those sites in the top ten of “Britney Spears” are big, professional sites where as those for my home town are an eclectic mix of sites. The rewards for reaching the top ten of highly competetive keywords are great, but to the small buisness or independent web site, the least competitive keywords are the best.