Key words-competitors

[jamiecbmetals]

Hi guys- I am new to Moz.

I am looking for a tool which can let me know which keywords my competitors are ranking for.  I want to know both for knowing which keywords I should be doing a better job with and which keywords I am missing overall.

My site is www.canadianbullionservices.com and am interested only in Canadian competitors.

Thanks Jamie

[Justian]

Hi jamiecbmetals

Open Site Explorer is an awesome tool, To use this tool to find keyword ideas, enter the competitor’s URL and you go to the "Anchor Text" Distribution tab

You can also use Google KeywordPlanner - Click on "Search for new keyword and ad group ideas" Type in the competitor’s URL an you'll get ideas for terms. The best part is you can see suggestions and also search volume.

These tools should give you a pretty good idea how to get started.

[Matt-Williamson]

Justian makes some good suggestions - I would also suggest that you consider SEMRush - http://www.semrush.com/ - I personally find this tool invaluable for competitor research. It is very powerful and can really enlighten you in terms of competitor research in both organic and paid keywords.

Not a tool but you could also get a rough idea by having a quick glance on your competitors sites and see if they are using meta keywords 

Also run your competition through Screaming Frog and pay particular attention to Page Titles - I tend to find you can see what keywords are being targeted like this - they usually standout like a sore thumb

http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

Hope this helps!

BTW welcome to Moz - enjoy

[jamiecbmetals]

HI Justian,

Thank you for this, I just checked the google keyword planner and it is great!

As there are so many keywords to attempt to rank for organically, do you suggest trying to go after the lowest hanging fruit (low search volume/low competition) or after the high search volume and high competition keywords?

My e-commerce website has been around for 1.5 years and we have about 25,000 visitors/month.

Thanks

[jamiecbmetals]

Hey Matt-I am about to check this out, how are you checking for meta keywords of competition? are you using semrush?

screamingfrog looks amazing-I am on it for the first time!

[Justian]

Depends on how much its worth for a conversion from those terms. It's all about ROI (Return of investment)

Just so you know, the "high competition" is a measurement of the interest from advertisers in adwords, not the difficulty of the organic search result. So I recommend you use the "Keyword Difficulty and SERP Analysis"-tool (Moz tool) to determent what keywords to go for.

The "Keyword Analysis" tool will also give you some insight on what your competitors have done to rank, which will give you some great knowledge on how to beat them.

[Matt-Williamson]

I would look at meta keywords using ScreamingFrog - you could do it the manual way by right clicking and viewing source however not worth wasting your time now you have this awesome tool which will help you optimise your site and have a cheeky glance at your competitors