What is the ideal keyword difficulty percentage?
-
I am trying to establish my best keywords using the keyword difficulty tool. So if I want to come up with the best keywords, should I use the ones that come in at 50%??
-
I am wondering why Moz doesn't include a calculation for this IN the tool? Something like the old school KEI (keyword effectiveness index). Would be nice if the tool would save a step by calculating this number and giving a score based on difficulty as a factor of search volume.
-
Yes. We load all of this data:
- keyword difficulty score
- traffic estimates
- cpc
in a spreadsheet, calculate a weighted score with min/max-caps and sort all keyphrases by this score. And voila ... we have a todo
-
Thank you so much Ben - this help a lot!
-
The keyword difficulty tool gives an indication of how hard it will be to rank for a certain term. So the lower the difficulty the easier it is to rank for.
A good rule of thumb is that you want to rank for terms with a low difficulty that drives a lot of users who are likely to achieve your goal. So for me he perfect term would -
- Have a low difficulty score
- Have a high volume of searchers
- Have a higher than average conversion rate when those searchers hit my site.
Hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Paid vs Organic Keyword Optimisation
Hi Im wondering whether I should optimise my site with Organic search terms that drive traffic to the site or the paid terms i use in Google search ads?
Keyword Research | | aplnzmarch180 -
Optimizing a Webpage without keywords
Hi all, I’m really running into a challenge internally lately in that we have a lot of teams redesigning or building new pages (specificially one team) that do NOT loop our teams in. When we finally get them to work with us, to drive traffic to the pages, they disagree that there must be other ways of optimizing the pages than focusing on keywords with search volume that are relevant to the page. We usually land that they will choose a keyword or two they think a user will search for, we do keyword research and pick something close (because they don’t want to utilize a term that doesn’t make much sense, as they have written the content without involving us from the beginning, but then our search volume is declining). They keep saying there are other ways than changing the paired down content on their page and adding in keywords to the H1 headers, content on page. they mentioned semantic search at one point. For example, https://www.entrust.com/products/entrust-getaccess/ currently ranks around #10 for "single sign on solution." This keyword was on the previous page quite a few times in headers and body copy. Now it appears on the page 3 times after the redesign and is not in the h1. The team does for example want to optimize for this term, but there’s lots of pushback as they want a page with minimal content and little design. Just wondering your thoughts on this. IS this a common challenge you deal with too and any idea on answers as I've tried many with the teams? Thanks, Laura
Keyword Research | | lauramrobinson321 -
Focus Keyword
Hi, I have 2 doubts regarding keywords SEO optimization. 1. I would like to optimize the keyword "liquidation channel". The thing is, in my copy/page title/URL/etc it doesn't make a lot of sense to use this exact keyword, but rather "liquidation channels", in plural. Will I rank higher for liquidation channel anyway? And if so, to which extent? (e.g. about 70%...?) 2. I would like to optimize the homepage for the word "liquidation", but found out that some combinations using this keyword (like "liquidation sales" or "liquidation auctions") would have higher traffic and might work better for some pages. I understand I would still be ranking higher for the keyword liquidation, but to which extent? If it's 100% because the keyword is always included, does it makes sense to use 1-word keywords or should we always focus on multiple word keywords? Would the same apply for 2-words keywords vs 3-words keywords, like "wholesale liquidation" SEO rankings being applied when optimizing "wholesale liquidation sales"? Thank you,
Keyword Research | | viatrading11 -
Keyword stuffing
Just wondered whether you think the footer text here on tis page constitues 'keyword stuffing'. I think it does but wondering why they haven't been penalised for it. http://www . lippyliciouscakes . co.uk/ Thoughts? Many thanks.
Keyword Research | | littlesthobo1 -
Ranking Reports for New Keywords
I added new keywords to my campaign. They do appear in my ranking report. But I am not getting any ranking data on the new keywords. It looks like they are yet to be crawled. For my initial set of keywords, i see the specific rankings in each search engine and for some it says "not in the top 50." For the new ones all I see are zeros. Will the ranking data eventually appear?
Keyword Research | | dseevers0 -
Newbie question about keyword difficulty tool
Hi guys, It's my first day here ate seomoz and I got intrigued about the results from the keyword difficulty tool. Even though I do understand the results, I noticed the ranking analysis table has some highlighted cells and some of them have a dark checkmark sign inside. What exactly do they mean? I couldn't find it anywhere. Cheers from Brazil. i0tzl.png
Keyword Research | | lenineto0 -
Keyword Difficulty
is probably a "how long is a piece of string" question but wondered how to use the keyword difficulty tool, particularly in relation to the % and the wording moderate, what are these actually saying? Perhaps some of you could give details of how you use this tool and apply the % and term to real world situations, Thanks in advance, Lee
Keyword Research | | LeeMiller0 -
Should I be optimizing for Keywords that we already rank for?
When selecting which Keywords to optimize for, should I choose all words that I want us to move up for? Like that my company appears ranked for 5, 10, 42, 44, etc.? Or should I select a mix of some that rank well (top 1-2 pgs in Google) /rank near pg 5/ and some that aren't showing up in the top 50 yet? I don't want to waste my time optimizing for words I don't need to. Thanks!
Keyword Research | | aircyclemegan0