I have been reading a lot of posts in WA lately about their competition and how they can't compete because the keyword phrase has X amount of direct competitors or X amount of broad phrase competitors.  This post is to help some of you see around those numbers.

Let's face it, many of us love numbers... we need to if we are going to succeed in IM.  Also, many of us are always looking for a magic number that will help make our job faster and hopefully produce more money!  However, sometimes we get too caught up in the numbers... and I think people are missing a lot of opportunities because of it.

 So who really are your competitors when you are targeting a keyword phrase?  Is it the person who is on the 40th page of google?  Is it the person who has targeted the keyword phrase but is on page 10?  Heck NO!!!

The people we want to beat are on the first page of google.  Yes, some ppl search a bit further than the first page of google, but I can tell you by analyzing my personal stats that very few people do... in fact, very few even make it down to the 10th site on the first page google. 

Ok... but you've been told to find a niche where there are fewer than 5000 direct competitors.  I get that.  Yes, it does make it easier to see if you can compete, but it does not give you a true impression of how much work you need to do to rank.

But get this... it's pretty darn easy.  All you need to do is log out of google (gmail, etc) and then search in google the keyword phrase you are targeting.  Do not use the quotations... because people online rarely search like that (again something I have seen from my own research and statistics).  Now, who is number one?  Who is number two?  Look at the top ten places, because you want your site there and you need to be able to thump these guys.  

If you are unsure how to check out your competition this way and what it requires to beat the people in the top ten places, leave a comment and I'll make my next blog post include some of that information.

Cheers!
Jodie