This transcript is the second part of Mark's keyword research series. Where Part 1 covered finding keywords with sufficient search volume, this episode tackles the harder question: can you actually rank for those keywords? Mark breaks down what matters and what does not when evaluating keyword competition.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
- Why the number of competing pages is a misleading metric
- Why advertiser competition is not a reliable predictor of keyword difficulty
- The 80/20 rule for evaluating keyword competition
- How backlinks determine rankings and why they are the primary factor to analyze
- Tools for checking backlink profiles and making competition decisions
Episode Summary
What Not to Look At
Number of competing pages is irrelevant. Mark uses a Boston Marathon analogy: your ability to win a race has nothing to do with how many people are running. It depends entirely on whether you can beat the people in front of you. Whether Google returns 10,000 or 10 million results for a keyword tells you nothing about whether you can crack the top five.
Advertiser competition is misleading. The Google Adwords competition metric reflects how many advertisers are bidding on a keyword, not how hard it is to rank organically. Mark ran regression analyses and found no meaningful correlation between advertiser competition and organic ranking difficulty. Low advertiser competition can indicate a keyword is not commercially valuable, which may correlate with less SEO competition, but it is an indirect signal at best.
In-title and in-URL counts are a variation of the same flawed logic. Just because a keyword appears in 2,000 page titles does not mean those pages are well optimized. And just because few pages have the keyword in their title does not mean the ones that do are beatable. If the top five results are CNN, WebMD, and Wikipedia, the count does not matter.
What Actually Matters: The 80/20 Rule for SEO
Google's algorithm is built on a simple foundation from Larry Page's original Stanford papers: links to your site are votes for your site. More votes from more authoritative sources means higher rankings. This is Page Rank, named after Larry Page, not web pages.
From an 80/20 perspective, two things matter for SEO:
On-page: Use your keyword in the title, in the content, and write excellent material. That is the entire on-page checklist for 80% of the value.
Off-page: Build backlinks. The number of quality backlinks to your page versus your competitors' pages is the primary determinant of who ranks where. The anchor text of those links also helps Google understand what your page is about.
How to Evaluate Competition
The practical approach: look at the top five results for your target keyword. Check how many backlinks each page has. Ask yourself whether you can realistically build that many quality links given your time and budget. If the top results have hundreds of links from authoritative domains, it will take significant effort. If they have a handful of mediocre links, you have an opportunity.
Three factors to consider beyond raw link count:
- Link quality — 100 links from authority sites outweigh 1,000 from spam blogs
- Root domain authority — Pages on Wikipedia or YouTube get a ranking boost from their domain's overall trust
- YouTube advantage — Mark estimates YouTube videos rank as if they have roughly three times the backlinks of a regular page
Mark uses his CornSheller.net site as a concrete example. At the time, it ranked number one for “corn shellers for sale” with 350 to 400 backlinks, considerably more than any competitor. The links were not extraordinary quality, but they were enough to maintain a clear margin.
Recommended Tools
Mark mentions Majestic SEO and Ahrefs as tools for analyzing backlink profiles. Both show link counts, link quality, and domain authority metrics. He also mentions using Keyword Canine for quick screening because it integrates backlink data directly into keyword research results.
Other Updates
The episode also covers Mark's vision for Late Night Internet Marketing as the go-to resource for ethical content-based affiliate marketing, the closure of Google Reader and his switch to Feedly, and a tool tip about the iThoughts HD mind mapping app for iPad.
Key Takeaways
- Ignore competing page counts, advertiser competition, and in-title URL counts when evaluating keywords
- Focus on backlink profiles of the top five results for your target keyword
- Consider link count, link quality, and root domain authority
- You can rank for any keyword with enough time and budget, but choose battles wisely
- YouTube content gets a significant ranking advantage over regular web pages
- Given enough time and excellent content, any keyword is winnable
What's Changed Since This Episode
Mark recorded this in September 2013. SEO fundamentals have proven remarkably durable.
Backlinks still matter enormously. Despite years of Google claiming to reduce their importance, studies from Ahrefs, SEMrush, and others consistently show backlinks remain a top ranking factor in 2026. The emphasis has shifted from quantity to quality, and Google is better at ignoring low-quality links, but the core principle Mark described holds.
The tools have improved dramatically. Majestic SEO and Ahrefs are still industry standards, but they are now joined by SEMrush, Moz, and others with far more sophisticated analysis. Keyword Canine and Market Samurai are no longer active products. Modern tools provide keyword difficulty scores that automate much of the manual analysis Mark described.
Google's algorithm has added significant complexity. E-E-A-T signals, Core Web Vitals, AI-generated content detection, and user engagement metrics all factor into rankings now. But backlinks remain the backbone. Mark's 80/20 advice to focus on links first and worry about the rest later is still sound strategy for beginners.
Google Reader is long gone. Feedly survived and remains a viable RSS reader. Many marketers now track niche content through social media alerts, Google Alerts, and AI-powered monitoring tools rather than RSS feeds.
Resources Mentioned
- Ahrefs — backlink analysis and keyword research
- Majestic SEO — backlink analysis
- Feedly — RSS feed reader
- LNIM057 — Keyword Research Part 1
- LNIM Podcast
Listen and Subscribe
Listen to Late Night Internet Marketing on Apple Podcasts or subscribe at latenightim.com/internet-marketing-podcast/. Have a question for Mark? Call the digital recorder at 214-444-8655 or drop a comment below.
