Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Keyword Difficulty Score Assesment
-
What is a good keyword difficulty score to pursue when deciding which keywords to try and rank on?
I'm in a very competitive field and I am currently in the process of doing keyword research to look for the low hanging fruit.
-
Hi,
Moz says that keyword difficulty score is based in domain authority and page authority of the competing 20 search results for a keyword. I wonder if it only takes those 2 values because, in that case, that score would not be representative enough for the difficulty. Does not it take the onpage optimization -keyword in title, text, etc-?
How do you determine the keyword difficulty?
Your Keyword Difficulty Score is based on the Domain Authority and Page authority for the top 20 search results that keyword is pulling on Google. These sites are analyzed using our Mozscape index to pull Page Authority and Domain Authority. These two metrics (along with a host of others from the Mozscape index) help create the Keyword Difficulty score.
-
I'd reverse engineer a little and see what keyword difficulties you've managed to rank on so far and why. Of course, the numeric score is just a guideline and take it with a grain of salt. Start with with what you've managed to rank on so far and then look for similar or somewhat more difficult terms going forward.
-
Old question now, but interesting none the less and currently marked as unanswered. As tomcraig86 says there is much more to it than relying on the KD score, but I tend to go by the rough guide of :
- Sub 30 - pretty easy.
- 30 - 35 fairly easy with good on page and some quality anchored links.
- 35 - 40 - starting to take a bit more effort, air tight on-site SEO required as well as good link profile.
- 40 - 50 domain authority counts much more, without it will take longer to rank although I have done this with minimal off-site efforts before.
- 50+ All about resources. Onsite SEO needs to be totally nailed, including internal linking/ topic modelling etc. a strong & diverse link profile with good social signals and ... time.
This is just from my experience of ranking for keywords in conjunction with output from this awesome tool. Been doing SEO for some time, but only using the keyword difficulty tool for about 12 months.
-
You'll need to assess which keywords are actually a possibility for your site. Ranking isn't down to just the keyword you're going for. Domain age, authority, trust etc are all factors used in calculating your position in the SERPs. Don't get scared off by a 'Highly Competitive' keyword though!!
-
Well if you want a keyword you have to just go for it! If your site has loads of unique content, the likelyhood is that you'll start seeing benefits from long tail searches coming in with not too much work.
Check out the PRO campaigns on here, I'm assuming you're aware that SEOmoz utilizes some Google API's to serve up their own keyword difficulty score. Unfortunately the site I'm link building to is in a super competitive market!
Hope this helps.
Tom
-
That is the tool I am asking about, whats a good percentage score to go after when researching a keyword?
-
SEOMoz Have its own Keyword Difficulty tool and it have a very good and powerful analysis for the top 10 rankings.
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
-
Domain keyword ranking
I used to use Searchmetrics (years ago) which enabled me to add in the domain name into their website, and it would provide all the keywords that rank for it. Does Moz do that do you know? Thanks
Keyword Research | | patn_studio0 -
Relevant but not-relevant keywords impact to SEO
Hello, I would like to know if the selection of individual keywords(that are not primary, secondary or tertiary) are important for SEO regardless of the relevancy to the page topic. I am wondering how much of a contribution a non-P1/P2/P3 can make in terms of SEO? For example it is a product page and I have built my content with P1,P2&P3 based only on the product and its properties itself. Do you think that a content gap for the page could be the production process of that product? So even if it is a product and its properties page, I can add 2 sentences about the production, so that I can drive more traffic by including these 2 informative sentences.? EXAMPLE:
Keyword Research | | Siir
So lets' say my topic is "hair types" (P1) and my subtopics are "Straight," "wavy," and "curly"(P2s) which I used as subtitles. But throughout the page, I am planning to add some relevant but not-directly-relevant keywords here and there since they have high metrics and volumes. For example a potential sentence I can add: "innovative hair products these days can offer amazing results for the desired hair types". It is not specifically about "hair types" but I am using the keyword "innovative hair products" (good metrics keyword) which may help for the traffic... Another potential not-so-direct sentence can be: "For all hair types, the hair damages are common: heat damage, chemical damage and mechanical damage". Would adding this extra sentence where I am not specifically talking about "hair types" (my topic) but "hair damages" and damage examples (off-topic high metric keywords) help me to drive traffic to my website? And how much of an impact would it be?0 -
How do I do keyword research when search volume is unknown
Hi Mozzers! I do a lot of work in niche areas, and one issue I often confront in keyword research is unknown search volume. That is, I'll be doing keyword research in Keyword Explorer or Gooogle Search Console, and for the most relevant keywords, I find either very low search volumes, null search volumes, or "Data not available." How do I make good keyword planning decisions when I can't find good data for search volume? Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Andy
Keyword Research | | AndyKubrin0 -
Tool for wildcard keyword suggestions
Like others, I have also been oblivious to the options which were uncovered in this article, using stars or underscores to uncover more keywords suggestions. However, I am trying to find a way to avoid the manual labour. Did any of you find a successful tool that automatically adds all the possible combinations of these wildcards to give a comprehensive lists of suggestions? I am looking for a tool that also included my country (.nl).
Keyword Research | | Entertainment0 -
Accuracy of search volume for keyword planner v old keyword tool?
Hi there, I'm (logged into Google Adwords) and researching search volume for keywords but I'm seeing weird results. I know that the term "outage notification" had between 1000 and 5000 monthly global searches when I last looked (I know this because I add a search volume tag to the keywords I track ranking of via Moz). Yet, now when I check global search volume via keyword planner I'm seeing only 70 global searches per month (AND low competition which I know is not true). Is this perhaps because only the exact match is reported or is something else going on? Very frustrated as I have now lost faith in the keyword research process via Google keyword planner....not sure where to go from here!! Thanks very much
Keyword Research | | SnapComms1 -
Ignore keywords that have no data in the Google Keyword Tool?
Hello, There are some keywords that have no monthly search data in the Google Keyword Tool. In many cases, this is because there have been very few searches for the keyword. Would you recommend focusing on other keywords that do have search data in the Google Keyword Tool? Perhaps focusing too far out on the long tail of search results can be less productive than focusing on keywords that have proven that at least some people care about them. What do you think? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | nyc-seo0 -
Google Keyword Tool: What is considered a unique keyword?
I'm trying to research keywords using Google's Keyword Tool. After looking at results, I have the following questions: 1. Does singular/plurals of a word count as two different keywords to Google (ie: photobooth and photobooths)? Would I need to have a unique page targeting each word or will one page on my site be sufficient for targeting both? 2. I've noticed that different variations of keywords have the same global monthly search results. This leads me to believe that Google see's all of them as one keyword. ie: "photo booth props" and "props for a photo booth" and "props with photo booth", all have 22,200 search global monthly search resluts. On the other hand "moustache prop" and "prop moustache" have different global monthly search results (480 and 590). Can anyone explain this?
Keyword Research | | Alchemist230 -
Keyword Research (dash or no dash)
I have a client that has been optimizing for "print and apply" for the past 5 months. Yesterday they decided it was more grammatically correct to use "print-and-apply." There question to me was "is this going to effect our SEO?" So... I checked the difficulty using the keyword analysis tool, both keywords had the same broad/exact adwords traffic as well as difficulty percentage. When reviewing the top 25 listings for each keyword it looks like the same sites rank in the SERPs between 1-8 and then after that it is completely different. So, is there a better keyword to target? Are these two keywords different enough to truly have separate search results?
Keyword Research | | kchandler
The top 8 results didn't even target "print-and-apply" in there content or title tags... Thanks for the input/discussion - Kyle0