Keyword difficulty always high
-
HI there,
I'm new here and am just getting used to the keyword difficulty tool.
I've noticed that just about every keyword phrase I type in, including ridiculous ones such as "perspex underpants" or "guy debord's shoes" all have a difficulty well over 50% and many over 60%. It makes little difference what my phrase is.
Am I doing something wrong perhaps?
How am I to interpret this result? It would seem to suggest that It is always very hard to rank, even for a rare and ridiculous phrase.
-
That suggests that 63% difficulty is, in reality, rather easy.
I'd say that in reality the domain strength of SEOmoz is kicking the ass in that SERP.
Nevertheless, my suggestion is unchanged. ATTACK.
-
Hi
Thanks for the response but I think you misunderstand my question. The keywords I mentioned were made-up to test the system so we could assess it's accuracy & value. They should be easy to rank for because they don't appear anywhere else.
We ran reports on ridiculous, made-up words that should be easy to rank for due to their low competition, against famous brands & historical characters that are highly contended. SEOmoz results claimed all our keywords (silly and genuine) rated between 54% to 65% "difficulty". Hardly more than 10% variation.
Compare that to the data on search volume and competition that I get from Google (for example) on the same keywords. The keywords of historical characters rated massively more competitive than the silly made-up keywords - as you would expect.
A perfect proof of this disparity is the phrase Perspex Underpants. SEOmoz claims the phrase has a 63% difficulty rating but if you google for _Perspex Underpants _you'll notice this very question ranks on the first page of organic results. That suggests that 63% difficulty is, in reality, rather easy.
My question, therefore, is are SEOmoz's difficulty ratings wildly inaccurate or am I using the tools wrong or mis-interpreting what they say?
-
Am I doing something wrong perhaps?
Maybe the thing that you are doing wrong is fearing competition.
I don't fear competition because where there is a lot of competition there is usually a lot of money changing hands.... and where there is a lot of competition there is usually a lot of long tail traffic to grab.
So, if you can generate really good content that is very high quality, substantive, and keyword diverse then take your best shot at a keyword where you have expertise. You might get some long tail traffic.
(The above is the approach that I usually take... however, I would not take that approach for keywords where there is a lot of extremely aggressive and hardcore competition - such as "payday loans" for example. Those guys can have that turf.
For the keywords that you mention... I would difinitely attack them with informative articles - if you can make best on the web content without infringing upon their brands then you can probably attract traffic.)
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
-
Keyword stuffing on a shop Brand Collection Pages - would schema.org Microdata helps?
I'm setting up a Shop for a customer and have few questions about Brand Collection Pages in General. I create collection pages for the main Vendors & Designers and since I add their Brand Names on their products I have more than 40 times the Brand name on one Collection Page. When I run Moz On-Page Optimization I get a „B“ classification since Keyword stuffing for the Brand name. I put the Product Informations (brand-name, product-name, product-price) into Schema.org - Microdata and I‘m just curious what is the best practice. Don‘t using the Brand name when using Brand collection pages, using Microdata only on the product page since there starts the conversion, using Micordata whenever it is possible, doesn't matter since the overall sense of a Collection Pages is to have a lot duplicated Brand names per Page. I honestly have no idea but I just believe that Google or other search engines would appreciate if I categorize it as a Product including Brand-name and price. The other Point is, on the Collection Page I just show the Product Details when the User hover over the Image. As far as I understand, Microdata should be visible. Just showing something when hovering over an Image is that visible or not ? Or in other words, does it makes sense to use Microdata in this case? I just guess Yes since it is not totally hidden. This particular Band Name in my case is „L‘Agent“. For whatever reason Moz don‘t understand the apostrophe in L‘Agent and I get the recommendation to use the exact Keyword in the Title, what I already doing. Is there any trick or work-around on apostrophes? Here is the collection Page http://petit-paris.me/collections/l-agent-by-agent-provocateur Thanks Siggi
Moz Pro | | Siggi130 -
Search Volume for a Keyword
I assume this questions has probably been covered many times, if so I am sorry for asking it again, for whatever reason, I am not finding the answer I require, so I would appreciate some help. I would like to know the search volume for a keyword. I remember I used to get this information on Google Adwords account, it no longer displays it the same. I want to know if Moz or even Google for that matter provide this tool in a simple way. So if I entered a keyword, I would get the volume of searches Globally as well as locally either on a per month or a per day basis and it would be broken down as exact match or broad etc. This was a great feature before. I would love to access the same thing again. Thanks you.
Moz Pro | | RyanShahed0 -
Campaign Keyword Overview?
This may be more of a developmental comment, however... Is there any way to pull an overview of keyword ranking over the week (or any period of time) for one of your campaigns? It looks like you can pull graphs on individual keyword performance, however not for the full set of keywords for a campaign. Anyone have suggestions on how to do this within Pro Moz... or is it best to compile the keyword data every week and track it in Numbers or Excel? Thanks everyone!
Moz Pro | | Treefrog_SEO0 -
Does linking to relevant high authority websites effect your MozTrust or Rank?
Basically what the title says. I am having a hard time understanding why a compeitor with less linking domains and none of any real quality, they're all membership sites or partnerships, nothing to relevant to the industry. While we have links and articles on us from multiple magazines in our industry. As well as to relevant directories with high domain ranks. The only thing I noticed is they're linking to their clients website, which are all high authority websites. So do external links count towards your MozTrust or Rank?
Moz Pro | | SeanConroy1 -
List ranking analysis for all keywords?
I would love to see the option of having the ranking analysis listed for all my keywords! As it it now I have to click and get the numbers one by one and manually create a spreadsheet in order to have an overview of which keywords to pursue. I want to see my google ranking for each keyword next to information on how many people search for that term (in my country of choice - google.xxx) and the keyword competition in % Please tell me there's a way to do this and save me a truckload of time!
Moz Pro | | JaneVO0 -
How many times to repeat the exact keyword?
I'm curious what the suggested number of times is for including an EXACT keyword in a document, OTHER than in the page title, h1 and alt text? What does SEOMoz advocate for this? Bonus credit: What is the consensus on "stop words"? I've read the the search engines ignore these, yet searching for the same query with or without them produces vastly different results... So should they not always be included in one's keyword optimization, above?
Moz Pro | | staingurus0 -
Colors in keyword Difficulty Report
Hi Everyone Two quick questions today 1. How can I find out hat the different colors within the keyword Difficulty Report represent and how can I see examples of how this information can help us with our data analysis? 2. The second question I have is regarding the Term Extractor. Seems when I ran a domain it provided the wrong data. For example, it stated that a certain keyword exists certain number of times within the description and title of the page but when I looked at the source this was not the case so it made studying the competition harder.
Moz Pro | | DRTBA
Any suggestions or has anyone else noticed this? Thanks in advance for all your help.0 -
On Page missing keywords
I setup my keywords on SEOMoz properly but the On Page result just shows me 2 keywords instead of the 7 that I set for my campaign. I was expecting the application to score the other keywords on wednesday but it did not add the missing keywords. Is this a bug?
Moz Pro | | netbuilder0