According to the IEDR (IE Domain Registry), there are some 122,666 .ie domain names in operation as of 2nd April 2009.

With websites ranging from one page portals right up to dynamic sites creating new pages by the hour, there really is a lot of information out there.

When I start out optimising my website for a specific term I always research who my competitors are, where they rank in Google, and whether they have done any basic SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to their site.

Let’s take the example that I am the owner of a company that provides wifi services to vehicles such as coaches, buses and trains.

My site is up and I want to create several webpages that will let people know about the products and services my business provides.

I decide I want to create a webpage about wifi services on buses. I therefore want to optimise my website for phrases based on “wifi on buses” but before I go to the trouble of creating said pages I need to do some research and just see how much competition is out there.

using Google I search for the phrase wifi on buses (new window will open).

notice that the search returns some 420,000 pages. From here you might be thinking there’s too much competition. But don’t be put off.

1. Click on the pages from Ireland radio button, then search again.

We are now down to 8,560 pages.

But take a look at the titles of these websites. Oh, the title is the bit in blue at the top of the results.

wifi on buses search picture

Take a look at the very top of this web browser. You will probably notice the blue bar going horizontal across the width of the browser. Note inside the blue bar is the title of this post.

Inside the image above you will note blue writing that is underlined. This is the text that will appear in the title of the webpage.

That’s all well and good you say, but what on Earth has that got to do with optimisation?

Well it’s my theory (and everyone elses who practise SEO, I’m sure), is that if you were to optimise a webpage properly for a particular keyword or phrase, then you would almost certainly make sure you put in a decent title for that page seeing as it is an important factor when determining where your page will appear in the SERPS, (Search Engine Results PageS).

Getting back to our Google results I noted there’s some 8,560 results – surely that’s too much competition for little ol’ me?

Incorrect.

look at the arrangement of the keyword phrase (wifi on buses) in comparison to where they appear in the title, if at all.

The first result only returns “Wifi onboard buses…” and the words in our search are returned in blue, so we can see straight away that not all our words have appeared in the titles.

2. Go back to Google and simply type in allintitle: before our keyword phrase , select pages from Ireland and click search. The results for wifi on buses

How many results am I seeing now? not 8,560 that’s for sure. Just one.

Number of results for allintitle

So this tells me straight away that if I go ahead and create a webpage based around the keyword phrase wifi on buses or wifi on coaches that I have a very good chance of coming up top in the Google search results seeing as there is so little competition out there that have optimised for that phrase.

I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if I were to come up near the top, even first, for the search term wifi on buses with this post

Please note, just because you may come up first for a particular keyword phrase, it isn’t worth Pollocks if there’s no one searching for it. Finding keyword phrases that people are searching for is covered in this blog.