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
-
Focus Keyword
Hi everyone! I am pretty new to SEO so all the help would be great. Does every webpage on our website need a focus keyword for example like the about us page. We have webpages for every location in the UK - Would it be helpful if the location webpages had a focus keyword also? Just to note that I am using Yoast on Wordpress. Many thanks,
Keyword Research | | SMCCoachHire
Aqib0 -
Singular and Plural Noun Keywords
Hi everyone Extremely love this community, learning a lot day by day! I am currently in the process of writing a blog post and say for example I am targetting the keyword 'apple' and 'apples'. My current word count of the article is 850 words and I have used 'Apple' 15 times and 'Apples' 26 times. 1 .Is my Keyword density too high and will Google look at this as keyword stuffing? 2. Do I have to target each Singular and Plural keyword individually? Or will targetting 'Apple' will also automatically target 'Apples' for me and vice versa? Thanks in advance!
Keyword Research | | u_rauf922 -
How accurate is Googles Keyword Planner?
I did some keyword research for our company. Some of the terms we got 100,000 search volume for in 2011 now have only 90 monthly searches. I am doing exact match for both US and Global and neither are any where near those high of numbers. Now I can't say how the old report on this was done but we are all a little skeptical of these numbers. Is there any other tool out there for search volume on Google? The Moz tool while it lists Google as an option only does Bing. Thank you!
Keyword Research | | Sika220 -
Error Being Displayed While analyzing keyword Rankings
While searching for Rankings for a couple of NEW keywords I got this message : (Whoa! We're dusting off the cobwebs from your keyword history. Don't worry, your data is fine. Check back soon to see your updates.). I don't know what this means, can somebody please provide some info on this error message as to what it means
Keyword Research | | Arfath0 -
How to improve keyword rank
Hello, I have made some changes to my site within the last 1 1/2 months and have not seen my keyword ranking improve whatsoever; however, my page rank has gone up. I have made all the changes that my campaign suggested, and yet there is still no change to my keyword rank. Please advise me on what I'm doing incorrectly or what I should change. Thank you
Keyword Research | | thelearningman0 -
Trying to avoid Keyword Cannibalization
I have a navigation menu at the top of my page with drop down menus that lead to different pages of my web site. Very typical navigation. If I have a page that is optimized for a particular keyword, lets say "Awesome Blue Widgets", do I want to remove that link from the navigation menu on the page awesome-blue-widgets.htm since the link uses the keyword phrase "Awesome Blue Widgets'?
Keyword Research | | TRICORSystems0 -
Stop List and Keywords
I've came across a suggested list of words that google will ignore in your content, if this is correct and one of our main keywords is one of those words, will it lose effectiveness? We are trying to get #1 SERP for "Self Tan" and it seems "Self" is one of the words ignored - so should we just be focusing on Tan? Any tips / advice would be great!
Keyword Research | | ChrisMciIlroy0 -
Keyword Dulication in Tags
As I mostly work with Belgian/Dutch customers, my keywords are often in Dutch. We have a lot of composite words such as "hooikoortsklachten" or "hooikoortverwachting". If i were to create a Page Title with content: Hooikoortsklachten | hooikoortsverwachting Is this parly duplicated (because of the word hooikoorts x2)? or does Google only consider the entire word? Insights would be much appreciated! Thanks
Keyword Research | | Jacobe0