Broad match and exact match

[Newbie_Marketer]

I know that an exact count of 20,000 or under competing websites it good cause it is fairly easy to rank on top, but what would you guys say would be an ideal broad match count. For instance lets say a a keyword has 1,000,000 match competing sites but only 25,000 exact match would it be difficult to rank on the 1st page of google if I optimise my site with a good title.

Any suggesions ???

[Mike Taylor]

If you are using Market Samurai, the competition figures are based on Phrase Match counts (since this is what you are really competing against), not the over-all, broad or exact competition. This is based on the idea that phrase-match trumps a broad match.

Exact match - how many people do exact match searches? Looking at data on one of my niche phrases shows <5% to 40% of the searches are exact match, and these higher exact match phrases occur in phrases that approach 100% PBR.

The PBR (Phrase to Broad match Ratio) indicates the closeness of the entered phrase to the search phrase in question. Lower PBRs indicate the words appear, but not in the order of the phrase. At 100% PBR, the broad and phrase matches are the same number, and the exact match is also much higher. Lower PBRs indicate that there are words added or missing, or in a slightly different order.

If you find a phrase with massive traffic but a low PBR, try the 'permutations' option to scramble the phrase into every possible combination, then re-run the analysis and look for those that have the highest PBRs. Analyze those key phrases and you may find an exact phrase that is getting the traffic...

Note: I am a MS affiliate, and that is an affiliate link. I am also a long time MS user, and I use it almost every day. If you are doing your research by hand, you are wasting serious amounts of time...

[cab322003]

Yeah I was wondering about this too

[Tim Buchalka]

There is not really an optional broad count in my experience, it all comes down to the level of competition. I've seen niches with 5,000 competing pages that are really tough and 1,000,000 competing pages that where relatively easy. You need to assess your niche/keyword phrase on a case by case basis. If you focus on exact and phrase first, you should find you start ranking well for them and then you will end up ranking well most likely for the broad equivalent in time.

Cheers


Tim

I know that an exact count of 20,000 or under competing websites it good cause it is fairly easy to rank on top, but what would you guys say would be an ideal broad match count. For instance lets say a a keyword has 1,000,000 match competing sites but only 25,000 exact match would it be difficult to rank on the 1st page of google if I optimise my site with a good title.

Any suggesions ???

[c14h20o4]

To be honest, I don't think it really matters how many pages there are. Look at the competition in the first few top slots. Are they strong sites? If they've got a ton of pr and lots of links, it's not really going to matter how few pages there are. Take the keyword, "hand cranked ice cream maker," it's got a exact match # of competing pages of 19,200. The top sites are pr 3 with lots of authority and links. It's not impossible to knock em out of there but rather is it worth the effort? The google adwords keyword tool shows only 390 searches for that word per month.

[Tim Buchalka]

To be honest, I don't think it really matters how many pages there are. Look at the competition in the first few top slots. Are they strong sites? If they've got a ton of pr and lots of links, it's not really going to matter how few pages there are. Take the keyword, "hand cranked ice cream maker," it's got a exact match # of competing pages of 19,200. The top sites are pr 3 with lots of authority and links. It's not impossible to knock em out of there but rather is it worth the effort? The google adwords keyword tool shows only 390 searches for that word per month.

Good advice. As I mentioned previously in this thread focus on the competition. You can see how to do this specifically using these free Market Samurai tutorial videos, but you can also do it manually if you prefer.

And of course make sure the number of searches people are making makes the investment of your time to crack the keyword phrase worth it.

Cheers


Tim

[Newbie_Marketer]

[QUOTE=Tim Buchalka;1488]Good advice. As I mentioned previously in this thread focus on the competition. You can see how to do this specifically using these free Market Samurai tutorial videos, but you can also do it manually if you prefer.

And of course make sure the number of searches people are making makes the investment of your time to crack the keyword phrase worth it.


Tim,

So what do you think is the ideal number of searches per month for it to be a good keyword to go after, especially if you site was going to be built around it, I've heard 3,000 - 5,000

[Tim Buchalka]

So what do you think is the ideal number of searches per month for it to be a good keyword to go after, especially if you site was going to be built around it, I've heard 3,000 - 5,000

This number would be based on your monetization strategy (as a guide).

How much do you want to make per month? What is your plan for the site?

For example say you want to make $1,000 per month.

If you selling a product with a $500 commission, then you could get by with a lot less targeted traffic, as you only need 2 sales to achieve your goal.

Assuming a 1% conversion (1 in 100 visitors to your site buy) then you would only need 200 visitors a month to achieve your $1000.

If you are using adsense and your average clicked netted you 50c then you would need 2,000 clicks.

Assuming that 1% of visitors click an add, then you would need 200,000 visitors per month to achieve your goal.

Of course in the real world the adsense clicks would be higher, and you would have more pages of content, and some clicks would be worth more, etc.

The point is, you should have some clear plan about what you are trying to achieve and go from there.

Cheers

Tim

[c14h20o4]

Tim is dead on balls accurate to say that you have to consider how you will monetize your traffic when considering how much traffic it takes to make it worth while. I do 100% adsense so it takes a lot of traffic.

There is something I want to make clear though, and that's the idea of exact match, phrase match, broad match versus doing searches, with and without quotes. Broad, Phrase, and Exact all refer to the search volume and Exact match is the most important one to sort by and here's why: When you select broad match for a keyword, and for this example, let's use ice cream, as the example, you're not going to get an accurate picture of the real search volume because other keywords, that have either ice or cream as part of the keyword, will have their search volumes added into the broad match search volume for ice cream. So a broad match for example could return results something like this:

Ice Cream total search: 15
Ice machine: 5
Fresh Cream: 5

If you did an exact match filter, you might find out that the exact keyword ice cream really only had 5 searches and so the broad match was just a total of all three of those keywords.

Phrase is a little different because it will return all the search volume for keywords that have "ice cream" in the phrase so, "how to make ice cream: 5 searches", "best toppings for ice cream: 5 searches," "ice cream: 5 searches" means that the phrase match for ice cream will show a search volume of 15 searches per month. Obviously there are going to be a different number of phrases containing a keyword versus permutations of a keyword, I'm just trying to keep the math simple.

The reason why this is important is because google treats every keyword like it's different, ergo, race car, race cars, and racing cars are three totally different keywords. If you're trying to figure your monetization based on search volume and you're choosing either phrase or broad, you're not getting an accurate look at the true search volume because other the search volume of other keywords have been added into those match types.

As far as comparing searching with and without quotes, I think it's a waste of time. To prove it, I'm going to mention some stats and thoughts on a few keywords. Take the keyword: Heart Attack for example. Without quotes it's got over 33 million competing pages and with quotes over 13 million pages. The top site is wikipedia: pr6, next is NIH.gov: pr6, after that, NIH.gov (double indexed) pr7, after that, video results and after that webmd: pr 5. Do you think if the results were the same but the number of competing pages was less than 20,000, it would be any easier to get ranked on the first page. In other words, if there were only 1000 competing pages but the top 4 results were all pr9, would you think this is a super easy niche? The page rank is an indication of the amount of link building (natural links or otherwise) that has already been done for those sites. Because of the strength of those links, Google trusts those sites and it's going to be really hard for you to convince google to trust you more no matter how many competition pages. It's not impossible but it's going to take quality, age, links and authority to do it.

Now contrast that with the keyword, "orthopedic mattress." Without quotes 106,000 competing pages, with quotes, 45,000. The #1 page is a pr 0, with 12 links into the site. #2 is a pr 3 with 391 links, #3 shopping results and #4 pr 2 with 138 links. Which would you rather go up against, pr6's or pr 0's? Now what if this keyword had 50 million competing pages? Would you not go after it then?

[omthoke]

Looks like the original discussion turned into something else... But, I'm just bringing up the basic point again, without worrying how you're doing your keyword research (whether thru' MS or not!).

Basically, if you want high conversions, you must target lot of longtail keywords with low competition - once you have say 1st page rankings for 100 longtail keywords, then it would make sense to target the highly competitive keywords.

You can use WordTracker or SEOToolbook to find out how competitive the search term is!