Impossible SEO - The Wall Of Google Authority and Age Metrics

Below is a good example of Keyword and SEO Competition analysis in Market Samurai that should make affiliate marketers think twice about going after certain niches.

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There's a few standout things about the above example to give you pause. Overall, just look at how Black and Dark Gray the majority of fields are. In fact, EVERY ROW has black entries. In many ways they form a dense visual blockade that at-a-glance tells you how tough getting onto Page One of organic search results would be. Even the 'weakest' site shown here (the Neat document scanner company) in position #8 has a backlink profile it might take a year or years to catch up with. When evaluating possible niches to go after in MarketSamurai - look for far more 'open', lighter-colored rows that might be slots you could go after - and displace the currently weak site holding those positions.

The average DOMAIN AGE of these is 13-15 years! And sadly that's the one SEO metric that you CANNOT change, compensate for, manipulate or alter. Even if you bought an exceptionally high aged domain in this niche - there's no guarantee that it's backlink profile would be worth anything - ANTHING at all to ranking your new content!

ALL sites listed are BIG retailers or the product manufacturers own websites. No Forums, no Niche Affiliate sites, no Answer sites, no Blog posts, no EMD - Exact Match Domains hoping for this precise target phrase squeezing into the Top 10 either.

Also note nearly every site listed has a DMOZ and Yahoo Directory entry (most of these obtained YEARS ago when actually getting listed was EASY and not the cruel, nearly hopeless joke that it is today.) These directories matter less than you think. Just ONE or TWO links in thousands that give a site strength and some degree of authority. They 'help' slightly, but are NOT a magic bullet.

Interestingly, for all the hoopla about PageRank - note that many of these pages simply have PR0 - and yet still make the Top-10 of SERPS because they have huge backlink and domain authority. This is a HUGE hint to STOP caring about Page Rank Google shows us and focus on RDD (Referring # of total links) and BDD (Backlinks to domain) in any way you can. For all the bull that Goog would like you to believe, without (minimallly) hundreds of VERY high quality backlinks or TONS of low-quality ones, you don't stand a chance.

Note also how trivial EDU/GOV (BLEG) backlinks are in the big-picture view. Forget the SEO hype that these are somehow 'Miracle Backlinks' that will skyrocket your site to the top of SERPS. What's nice about, say, EDU links for example -- is that you MIGHT get thousands of Faculty and perhaps tens of thousands of students possibly seeing a link to your domain somewhere. Ditto for .GOV domains.

Lastly, even if you resorted to literally NUCLEAR WAR tactics with Black and Gray Hat software like SENukeX or Xrumer and others in an all-out KRAP-LINK ASSAULT, you'd be hard pressed to even get to Page 1 - let alone stay there for any meaningful length of time. You could write a zillion ARTICLES and distribute them widely - and NONE of them would ever get past Page 2 even under the best of circumstances.

All in all, the real value of Market Samurai is how it can QUICKLY help you discern things like this hopeless niche in only a few minutes - and help you target other far, far less competitive niches where you DO stand a chance of ranking well, getting traffic, and make money online.