Brand new websites with huge ambitions often go after the big fish keyword when, in reality, they are sitting in a rusty, row boat with a wooden stick for a fishing pole.

Sure it’s possible to reach your goal with your elementary resources, nonexistent tools and skewed understanding of how to catch that big fish, but it isn’t likely. If you want to go after keywords that will provide a big return, do your research and invest in the right tools and resources. When you are contemplating pursuing that trophy keyword, you might want to take an in-depth look at your competitors to determine if you really measure up.

For this example, I used 3 simple tools: OpenSiteExplorer.org, SEO for Firefox and the essential Ctrl+F key. Then, I chose one of the most competitive online industries I could think of, online education. You see, when you search for “online education” or “online degrees,” there is a plethora of companies out there doing SEO for these keywords, which makes everything extremely difficult to rank. In this example, we’ll use the keyword “online degrees.”

Key Factors When Comparing Your Website to a Competitor

For the top 10 competitors that rank for this money-making term, I gathered their:

• PageRank
• Domain Age
• Page Authority
• Domain Authority
• Linking Root Domains
• Total Number of Links
• Number of Indexed Pages
• Best of the Web Listing
• Yahoo Directory Listing
• 10 Most Used Anchor Text
• Number of Root Domains and Individual Pages Linking with “Online Degrees”

I then analyzed their on-site content and looked to see if they included the keyword in the:

• Title Tag
• Meta Description
• Body of Text
• Navigation
• Domain Name

Finding Averages and Percentages from Gathered Data

To compete for the keyword “online degrees,” you need to have a similar website, backlink profile and other data to be included in those top 10 positions. To do this, I found the averages and percentages from all that data I collected above. Below is what I found:

• The average website PageRank is 6.
• The average domain age is from 2001.
• The average page authority is 73.
• The average domain authority is 68.
• The average amount of linking root domains is 1595.
• The average amount of total backlinks is 29642.
• The average amount of Best of the Web links is 2.
• The average amount of Yahoo Directory links is 14.
• 70% of the websites had a “natural looking” backlink profile. ***
• 60% of the websites had “Online Degrees” as one of the top 10 most used anchor texts.
• The average amount of root domains linking to a website with “Online Degrees” is 64.
• The average amount of pages linking to a website with “Online Degrees” is 290.
• 90% of the websites had the keyword within their title tag.
• 90% of the websites had the keyword within their meta description.
• The average number of occurrences of the keyword within the text was 7 times.
• 40% of the websites had the keyword as a link within their navigation.
• 30% of the websites had the keyword within their actual domain name.

***I determined a natural backlink profile by looking at their top 10 most used anchor texts, and taking the following into consideration: branding anchor texts, URL anchor texts and long tail anchor texts.

Exceptions and Keeping Everything Relative

When sorting through all this data, there were some websites that stood out. Some focused on particular methods of SEO while others completely ignored other areas. In fact, despite best SEO services, some didn’t even have the keyword on their homepage. One didn’t even have it within the most crucial area, the title tag. There are so many exceptions with SEO, but to get a good understanding of what you’re going up against, you need to find the averages of these important SEO areas and set your sights on having your website compete with those averages.

When creating goals for your SEO efforts, whether it be to have a certain number of domain links, a certain number of anchor text links, or to have an increased page authority within a certain amount of time, you need to make sure it’s relative to your industry.

Don’t Quite Compete? Take Baby Steps & Use the Right Tools

If you don’t have the time, money, knowledge or momentum to catch that trophy keyword, consider other keywords that are more realistic. Look at keywords in your niche where the ranked pages aren’t quite as imposing.

Like I said before, you can’t expect to catch a big fish keyword with a wooden fishing pole and without line and bait. You need the right resources to go after serious keywords. If it’s obvious that your competition has an SEO team, whether in-house or an outsourced SEO firm, you might want to do the same. If the keyword(s) you want to rank for is going to be a game changer for your business, consider investing some serious money.

Remember, You Still Need to Perform Keyword Research

If you have a handful of keywords that you’ve sorted through and deem the most valuable, keyword research is that final step to make sure your efforts aren’t going to waste. Once you’ve put yourself up against the websites that already rank, you can then determine whether you think you can get there, too.

Keep your eye on the big picture. Just because the ranked websites have a page rank of 6 or a massive amount of links, doesn’t mean you can’t outrank them. But, if the ranked sites all consistently trump you in just about every area that Google looks at to determine keyword position, you might not want to pursue that keyword quite yet.

If you find yourself in this leaky boat, here are some possible reasons your website is missing the mark with your target audience:

1. Your Website is a “Me Monster”

This is perhaps the most common error, and it’s probably not your designer’s fault (unless you’re the designer). The big mistake that leads to this is assuming that your audience is just like you. It’s not.

Look at the copy on your site – does it make you sound like a “Me-monster”? Your copy should be speaking to your audience, addressing their needs, engaging them in an organized conversation. Narcissistic copy is death to conversion.

2. You Won’t Shut Up.

Your product is the greatest thing since Easy Cheese. You’ve articulated every single reason, often in true “Me-monster” fashion. The problem is, your visitors won’t read long, verbose paragraphs. It takes too much mental exertion.

Get to the point. You can provide more info further down the page for the detail-obsessive, but most visitors want to be able to scan your page to easily figure out what’s in it for them and if it’s worth the cost. Be quick about it.

3. You Chose Form Over Substance

Did your designer talk you into a shiny designy navigation that follows a crazy curvy line around the middle of the page? Or using only symbols and pictures instead of text? Those are SO cool … but regular people can’t figure them out.

It’s OK to be innovative, but not at the cost of clarity and usability. Make sure your site adheres to commonly accepted conventions of website design. Put the navigation in a familiar place, make it look like navigation, make links look like links, etc.

4. You Jumped the Gun with Your Offer

Some Web marketing wannabe masquerading as an expert told you: “Every time you ask for a click, you lose 50% of your visitors.” Thus, you put your form at the top of your homepage, before visitors get to read anything about your offer. If your visitors don’t know what they’re signing up for, you don’t stand a chance of converting them.

Organize the sequence of information on your website. Make it convenient to buy/register/whatever, but don’t preempt your visitors’ ability to learn what they’re getting into. You’re not worth a leap of faith to them.

5. You Leave Visitors Hanging

Every page on your website should have a purpose, should be driving towards a next step. Your visitors expect this. They expect to be held by the hand, guided towards the ultimate outcome on the site. Not forced, not manipulated or restricted, but guided.

What they don’t expect is to be left at a dead end. They’ve read your copy and are ready to either learn more or engage you more intently, but your page has no call to action. Don’t do this to them.

There’s always a next step (even after they buy, but that’s another post), so make sure that every page on your site tells visitors what’s next and provides a way to move in that direction.

6. Your Product/Business Doesn’t Provide Value

It sounds like a throwaway list item, but it’s still happening – people are treating the Internet like a shortcut to making money. Never has that been less true than now.

If your product doesn’t fill a unique need in the marketplace, you won’t be able to persuade people to buy from you. The modern consumer can sniff out a pretender like a rotten egg.

7. You Aren’t Split Testing

Split testing elements or pages of your website is the only reliable way to improve your website’s ability to convert visitors to buyers. Guessing at improvements might work some of the time, but you’ll never be able to quantify the effect of your changes.

By employing valid split testing processes and embracing a long-term commitment to the effort, you will be able to compound incremental increases in your website conversion rate into something remarkable and meaningful for your business. Either you’ll do it, or your competitors will. Your choice.

This is one way to take your keyword research to the next level, and it’s well worth the effort. So rather than trying to guess whether your SEO or PPC ads are appearing in front of the right people, here are some tools you can use to make sure.

Google Trends

How It’s Useful: If all you’re looking for is a basic search volume trend line and a few regional ideas, this is your tool. Google Trends will show you the keyword search volume trends on Google since 2004. You can narrow it down to specific years and months or to specific countries if you’re planning to target your search marketing campaigns that way.

Use this tool >

Google Insights for Search

How It’s Useful: Google Insights for Search shows similar trend data to Google Trends, but takes it a step further and shows you even more detail on regional interest levels and additional search terms that are related to your keywords. This can help you to avoid using terms that are not as popular as others in your target area and really see where your target audience is geographically located.

Use this tool >

Bing xRank

How It’s Useful: Bing xRank has a long way to go to catch up with the amount of detail provided in Google Insights for Search, but at least it gives you an idea of the search volume trends on Bing. I would only use this tool to make sure that searcher trends match across the two search engines.

Use this tool >

Quantcast

How It’s Useful: Quantcast can be a very helpful tool to see the relative traffic and visitor demographics for your own site and your competitors’. It is especially useful if the sites you are looking at are Quantified. If the site is Quantified you will see more accurate traffic and demographic information. If not, you can still get some good sample data to better understand the visitor demographics.

Use this tool >

Compete

How It’s Useful: Compete is a good tool for analyzing the kind of traffic your competitors are getting. With a Pro account you can also get ideas about their visitor demographics. To use this tool effectively you only need to look at it for sites that are closely related to yours. They work off of sampled data, though, so take it for what it’s worth.

Use this tool >

Alexa

How It’s Useful: Similar to Compete, Alexa will give you an idea of the kind of traffic a competitor gets and an insight into their visitor demographics. You can also use Alexa to get some ideas about the keywords driving traffic to a site. Like Compete, this tool will only be useful if you know which sites are targeting the same market as you, but unlike Compete you get more information for free with Alexa.

Use this tool >

Detecting Online Commercial Intent

How It’s Useful: This is a very simple tool that analyzes the keywords searchers are using and which ones will likely lead to a transaction or conversion. Just type in a keyword and the tool tells you the degree of probability for commercial or non-commercial intent. This can help you focus on the keywords your potential visitors are using that will most likely lead to an improvement in your bottom line.

Use this tool >

Demographics Prediction

How It’s Useful: If you already have a good handle on your target audience’s demographics, you can use this tool to make sure that your keywords actually fit with those demographics. This way you won’t accidentally target keywords that really target women when you meant to target men. I would make sure to compare the data from this tool with other tools to make sure you’re getting a good sample.

Use this tool >

I know there are other tools out there that also offer a lot of demographic and keyword data, but these are some great ones to start with. This post doesn’t even look at the ones that have to do with social media. If you know of some other tools that you like to use, please add them in the comments and explain how you use them.

Think of your strongest competitors on the internet.  Why are they competitors?  Is it because their site has a lot of useful information?  Is the site multilingual?  Do they have links from big news sites like CNN, or from government or university sites?  Is their blog well thought out and and a leading trusted voice in the industry?  Are they taking advantage of new media and social media avenues?  What do they have that gives them an edge?  What do they do that makes them weak?

These are some of the major questions to ask when performing a competitive analysis.  They tell you what makes your competition special and give you information necessary for competitive search engine optimization.  These answers are followed next with the question that touches the heart of competitive analysis: How can I do what they are doing, but better?

Now, I know what you are thinking right now: Sure, there’s money to be made as a super villain, but what about self-respect?  Integrity?

The good news is that you can use your new-found powers garnered from competitive analysis for good.  Competitive analysis isn’t about copying.  Improve upon your competitors’ ideas, avoid their weaknesses, and build their strengths onto your own site’s ideas, structure and philosophy.  This is the best way to stand out as most relevant to your potential visitors.  The problem with the aforementioned villains (insert black-hat SEO) is that they’re frequently using their powers to deceive and control people in ways that shouldn’t be done.  This sort of villainy will always lose out to the quality and relevance of a site properly strengthened with competitive analysis.

Here at SEO.com, competitive analysis is one of the first things we do with a new client.  We look for strengths, weakness and give you suggestions on how to implement these in ways that will increase your level of search engine optimization.  Then we periodically keep an eye on the competition to see how (if) your competitors are innovating in their approach to generating traffic, appealing to search engines, or making conversions.  With greater power and strength than your competitors how can you not succeed?