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.
MoZ vs SEMRush - Keyword Difficulty and Keyword With Low Competition.
-
Hi,
My question is very focussed regarding these 2 tools.
Is it correct to understand that MoZ tells keyword difficulty and not which keyword is easy to compete. And SEMRush tells which keyword is easy to compete but does not tell which keywords are difficult to compete?
I mean one (Moz) misses the one part and the other (SEMRush) misses the other part.
Hope some will enlighten me to the point.
Best
-
Hey there!
Without knowing the example keywords you're looking at, it's hard to check on these, but I can certainly speak to how Moz calculates the Difficulty score! We look at the Difficulty scores of the top 10 rankings sites in the Google SERP. If you're looking at Keyword Explorer, you can head to the SERP analysis section of a keyword report to see exactly which sites those are. If you're seeing something odd with the scores, feel free to reach out to us at help@moz.com with a few keyword examples and we can take a closer look!
For more details on how we calculate our metrics, check out this article in our Help Hub.
-
Hi,
When searching the same keywords on semrush and Moz, semrush gives a difficulty score of 80, and moz 20. Meaning semrush says that ranking for that particular word is difficult, yet moz says it's very easy.
I'm confused about which to trust to be accurate?
Thanks
-
Hi Tanveer! Just to make sure I'm understanding your question, are you asking whether our Keyword Difficulty Tool actually suggests low-competition (easy) keywords? It does not, but the difficulty score it returns for the keywords you analyze will also identify easy keywords. They'll just have a lower number.
-
Hi Tanveer,
My name is David Black and I'm the Director of Customer Success here at SEMrush. I can't necessarily speak for Moz but I can tell you that SEMrush offers two variations of Keyword Competition/Difficulty and both are scaled.
In our keyword reports, you'll find a column labeled "Com." (it means competitive density). This is level of competition in AdWords. But, don't be confused because the metric also appears in our Organic Keyword reports. The scale is from 0 to 1. The closer the number is to 1, the higher the difficulty.
Now, if you need some way to measure Organic difficulty, you'll want to use our Keyword Difficulty tool. This is a scale from 0 to 100% with 100% being the most difficult. It's a proprietary formula but it's based on the overall visibility of the domains which rank for that keyword in the top 20 spots.
If you need any further information feel free to write or call into our support team at mail@semrush.com.
Have a great weekend!
-
They really are quite similar the two tools.
In my opinion, keyword difficulty bases its results or give more importance to the rank and page rank domain of the page. DIFFICULTY how much has the keyword to climb positions. It lets us know the competition in a keyword internet with just one click.
SEMRush results give more importance to the organic results by keyword or average result within a given time resulting traffic keyword. not showing us so directly against whom we compete.
Both are needed and complement each other to me, but I like to read more reviews.
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
-
Unsolved Does Moz Pro include Moz Local
My client has bought about six Moz Local accounts and are pleased with results. We have not yet used your Moz Pro program. The client might be interested in switching to the Moz Pro if those Moz Local accounts can be included into it. Please let me know as soon as possible. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | gallowaywebteam0 -
Url-delimiter vs. SEO
Hi all, Our customer is building a new homepage. Therefore, they use pages, which are generated out of a special module. Like a blog-page out of the blog-module (not only for blogs, also for lightboxes). For that, the programmer is using an url-delimiter for his url-parsing. The url-delimiter is for example a /b/ or /s/. The url would look like this: www.test.ch/de/blog/b/an-article www.test.ch/de/s/management-coaching Does the url-delimiter (/b/ or /s/ in the url) have a negative influence on SEO? Should we remove the /b/ or /s/ for a better seo-performance Thank you in advance for your feedback. Greetings. Samuel
Moz Pro | | brunoe10 -
Comparing New vs. Old Keyword Difficulty Scores
We've had a few questions regarding the new Keyword Difficulty score used in Keyword Explorer, and how it compares to the old score in our stand-alone Keyword Difficulty tool. Specifically, people want to know why some scores are much lower using the new tool. There a general discussion of the math behind the tool in this post: Keyword Research in 2016: Going Beyond Guesswork One of the problems we had with the original Keyword Difficulty score is that, because it's based on our Page Authority (PA) score and PA tends toward the middle of the 0-100 range, Difficulty got a bit bunched up. A Difficulty score in the low-to-mid 20s (via the old tool) is actually very low. So, we set out to re-scale the new tool to broaden that score and use more of the 0-100 range. We hoped this would allow more granularity and better comparisons. While the logic is sound, we're concerned that we may have been too aggressive in this re-scaling, given recent feedback. So, we're going to be analyzing a large set of keywords (anonymously, of course) that people have run through the tool to see if too many Difficulty scores seem too low. If they do, we'll make some adjustments to the math. In the meantime, please be aware that low scores may appear lower in the new tool and very high scores may appear higher. We wanted to address some of the limitations in V1 and feedback over the years, and so the old and new scores really can't be compared directly in a meaningful way. We're sorry for any confusion that has caused, and we will re-evaluate if necessary.
Moz Pro | | Dr-Pete3 -
A question on keywords that rank 51+
Good afternoon everyone. I wanted to pose a question to the group about keywords and the "on-page optimization - grade a page tool." I have a list of keywords that I am trying to rank for. Some of them are not ranked in the top 50, so on the keyword ranking tool it gives you the 51+ message in the rank column. For the items that are ranked I can try to improve them by looking at grade a page and typing in the URL and keyword. It will then give me a score and suggestions on how to improve it. With that being said, is there an easy way to find out which pages I should be optimizing those keywords which rank at 51+ for, besides typing the keywords in Google and seeing what URL it associates with the specific keyword? I hope the question above is clear.
Moz Pro | | trumpfinc0 -
Keyword Research and Planning Flow
Hello, First post here. I am a IT infrastructure engineer that does application and deployment work mostly, but new to SEO. That being said, I am a firm believer in demming wheel and defined process/flow charts. I have a website up, built as best practice, its a Magento CE open source Ecommerce store. After some initial research, it seems I really need to define my keywords before I start branding my landing pages and such. So i am going to have to go back and implement the keywords and evaluate. But as I am reading it seems most SEO people try their keywords in google ad words first? Then implement? I am hoping to find some flow or process sheets on how successful Keyword research is done via step by step process and evaluation. And explanations of each. How many keywords to start with per landing page, how many to try and get in the H1 headers, paragraphs, URL. How long to leave keywords in to test? Also, I am a start up company that is competing with the big boys in my market space. I know I cant compete for the big keywords in my market? What is my best strategy for getting any kind of ranking as a small business in a global market? SEO is a mysterious, intriguing thing to me! Very much reminding me of one of my favorite whimsical quotes I will leave you will now, and thanks for reading. -Alex "Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple." - Willy Wonka
Moz Pro | | iamgreenminded0 -
Why are my keyword rankings dramatically changing week to week?
I have a site (actual several) that has been up for many years now. Content is changed monthly - regularly. It would always rank in the top 5 positions for 5 or 6 keywords. Now all of a sudden (without any dramatic changes to the website) my ranking results from my weekly Moz reports are dramatically different from week to week - every week. One Keyword will be #1, then the next week it will drop 49 positions, the 3rd week it might be #5, then Not in the Top 50, then #1 again, and so and so on. This happens to all my keywords on my site. I was waiting for Google to finish it's changes to it's algorithms but it's now been long enough and I can't get a handle on what's happening, why it's happening, and what to do about it, and what direction to take with my SEO. My Traffic has actually improved over last year by approx. 25%, but I have also started a PPC campaign for this client. Any suggestions would be great.
Moz Pro | | SummitCom0 -
Moz WordPress Plugin?
WordPress is currently 18% of the Internet. Given its huge footprint, wouldn't it make sense for Moz to develop a WP plugin that can not only report site metrics, but help fix and optimize site structure directly from within the site? Just curious - I can't be the only one who wonders if I'm implementing Moz findings/recommendations correctly given the myriad of WP SEO plugins, authors, implementations.
Moz Pro | | twelvetwo.net4 -
Moz is officially demigod-approved!
So, I was reading Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth tonight, and found a description of a graffiti tag in the Labyrinth that says "MOZ RULZ". What do you think? Is one of the Mozzers a demigod who has explored and survived the Labyrinth? 🙂 (See attachment for book quote.) F1WmT5r
Moz Pro | | AdamThompson4