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
-
Thank you Sha
"I'm sure you know already that you dodged a bullet by losing that client Lee :)"
Agreed, I had a bad feeling about them at the initial meeting, the second meeting merely convinced me they were a bad lot. Thought they were very controlling, inflexible and negative towards new concepts or embracing social.
So yeah in hindsight I'm glad I lost the contract, but I did learn from the experience which is a plus :))
-
"There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see!"
I'm sure you know already that you dodged a bullet by losing that client Lee
What you currently see in the keyword difficulty tool is just a representation of how competitive the term is. The tool previously also showed local and global broad and exact match search volume for your term, but Google's recent decision to withdraw developer access for the Adwords API means they are no longer visible.
As mentioned by others here, the report generated below the competition result, which shows results on specific metrics for the Top 10 Domains ranking for the term (and the advanced Report you can generate if you want to) is by far the most valuable output from this tool.
There is a detailed blog post from Rand Best Kept Secret in the SEOmoz Toolset, which explains in detail how to use the information to see what you can improve to have a shot at matching it with those sites.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
I know what you mean.... Getting even poor content out of some business owners is impossible.
-
"content on a retail site it gains an enormous advantage over competitors (who do not have that type of asset) in its ability to climb the SERPs."
Perhaps I should hire you to convince my clients! Just lost a potential contract for suggesting this (insurance company). All of their content was very poor, one news post had 27 words and included 3 keyword strings - Couldn't believe what I was seeing. They told me I was being too negative lol I thought I was giving constructive feedback.
Good points though, appreciate your thoughts,
Lee
-
Wouldn't the numbers be indicative of quality?
Yes... but not always...
The numbers could be skewed by paid links or other links that were not given on the basis of merit.
Also, the numbers can be skewed by time. Older content has had a long time to accumulate links but new content - that is superior - is just getting started.
New content that is superior can rank very low but climb the SERPs over time as its quality is recognized.
The perspective above is for two content sites competing against one another.
For retail sites a comparison of "numbers" can be more important.... however, once you start putting desirable, informative, tweetable, likeable, linkable content on a retail site it gains an enormous advantage over competitors (who do not have that type of asset) in its ability to climb the SERPs.
-
Thanks for your advice Egol always appreciative of your insight
Am new here so my question was more from the perspective of getting a feel for the tools and how to use them.
Before using SEOmoz all of my data was taken from SERPS (i.e. experience, knowledge and hunches) and am hoping that the tools would compliment this.
Elaborating somewhat on your second paragraph:
Wouldn't the numbers be indicative of quality?
I'd also prefer to take a balanced view, I'm sure you do this too, by taking both into consideration, the numbers and the quality of the content, which of course I can only do with sufficient knowledge of the tools.
Thanks, Lee
-
Rather than looking at these numbers, consider going to the SERPs and look at the pages and sites that you would like to defeat. Then ask.... can I build better content? .... can I build a better website?
If you can do these things you will have greater success than chasing numbers... and if you have success by chasing numbers but are defeated by higher quality content or higher quality websites then the numbers that you must chase will escalate over time as your competitors gain natural strength.
-
Thanks Kyle,
like what you said about "void of any helpful context in and of itself. The more meaningful data is the underlying metrics of the pages competing"
Shame .......... was hoping for a faster starting point, but I guess it always boils to drilling down and defining the data.
Thanks
-
"In other words if it says "70%" but the site I'm trying to rank is already IN spots 1-10 somewhere this is much different than trying to pick keywords for a brand new site and getting it to rank from scratch."
Thanks Dan, this is what I'm trying to determine, most of my business comes from new sites, so while they have a little age, from the sense of rankings I'm trying to identify new phrases on sites with no previous seo.
Would have been a little more helpful if that percentage gave me a better idea of the impact on a new site, but I guess we can't have it all.
Thanks for the tip though will certainly broaden my search, perhaps look for moderate to low, but as you advise, look for weak off-page competitors.
Cheers, Lee
-
The only way that those overall percentage makes sense is if you have experience ranking terms at different difficulties. At least that's what I've found. It's generally accurate but void of any helpful context in and of itself. The more meaningful data is the underlying metrics of the pages competing, specifically:
- Domain & page strength
- Number of in-bound links with matching anchor text
- How many times the pages have been liked, shared, +1'd and tweeted
- Unique C-Block IP's linking to the page
- On-page keyword targeting.
Those factors are what the overall percentage is trying to convey, but it's generally just good to use as a starting point -- SEO is meaningless without context!
-
Hi Lee
By percentage do you mean when it says for example "57% highly competitive"? And not sure what you mean by "wording moderate" could you elaborate?
I generally look at the percentage to get a basic feel for how hard it might be to rank well for that keyword. I use this is a general guide as you have to dig into the metrics to get a real sense of how hard it is to rank. And it depends on your situation.
In other words if it says "70%" but the site I'm trying to rank is already IN spots 1-10 somewhere this is much different than trying to pick keywords for a brand new site and getting it to rank from scratch.
Or if all the top sites are ranking more because of on-page factors than off page (links and social) I know there's a good chance you can beat them, because on-site is easier to fix.
Hope that helps
-Dan
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
-
How granular should I get with Keyword research?
I'm doing KW research for a new business. My understanding from KW research guides: Use tools to create a list of thousands of keywords Analyze difficulty and search volume Reduce your list and do on page optimization for your select KWs My dilemma with this approach is that it seems "keyword based" rather than "intent" or "category" based. e.g. Let's say I have a grocery store. Ignoring SEO, I know that these are my main categories: Produce Meat Dairy Canned Goods Baked Goods In other words, the above categories are the general "intents" and "categories" that I'd really want to rank for. Keyword tool shows that they have high volume and high difficulty. Let's say that after doing keyword research, I discover "Low Fat Chicken Breasts" and "Turkey Sausage" and "Cheap Meat Wholesale" have decent search volume and low competition. I don't quite understand how I'm supposed to utilize these fringe keywords in my on page SEO plan because it doesn't make sense as a human to categorize my site that way. Not sure if this is clear. Basically I'm trying to figure out if I should really be getting this granular on keywords to help guide my store categories or if I should just be picking broader terms.
Keyword Research | | clarasboutiqueusa0 -
National keyword results v local keyword results
If the keyword contains the location term like "SEO company London" is it better to use the wider results over local? Additionally, some best practice examples of national v local result tracking would be great 🙂 Darren
Keyword Research | | SEODarren0 -
Keyword Over-usage?
I have a photography page, where there are a number of galleries. In the galleries and thumbnails of each photo I'm selling. These also include the title. It's built dynamically. However, I've noticed when I do an on-page grade check, that one of the places I'm failing is over-using the keyword on the page. This is mainly due to the titles of each photo containing that keyword. For example, there might be a photo gallery for images of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and 30 of the 40 images on the page have a title with "Golden Gate Bridge" in them. So naturally, the title is displaying this on the page and showing up 30+ times (after the term is used in the page text as well). Is this a really big problem, or is the benefit on each individual photo page outweighing any hit on the gallery page? Any thoughts? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | shannmg10 -
Weekly Keyword Ranking Report Question
Howdy folks! Okay so apologies for the n00b question, and additional apologies for going over ground that's potentially already been ploughed. I'm compiling a tally of the Weekly Keyword Ranking Report for a client. For the past three reports, the particular keyword I'm logging has remained in the same position. However the Change column shows it as having decreased in rank, by the same amount every week. If there has been no change in the ranking, I would have thought it would display as "Unchanged". As it stands, it shows up in the Declined category, and that seems odd to me. Anyone have an idea as to why this would be happening? Thanks for any input you can provide! Kevin
Keyword Research | | Treefrog_SEO0 -
Keywords + Country?
Hey guys, Let's say that I'm doing on-site SEO for a website that sells football shirts. This website targets 5 different countries. We only have a .com domain and no other country specific domains will be added at this point. When I choose the keywords, do I opt for product name + country or only product name? football shirts france or football shirts? Some info: Countries have been added in the title of the pages. Countries appear in the footer. Thank You.
Keyword Research | | BruLee0 -
Local Keyword Geolocation
I am really confused about how geolocation and search works. For example, I can search "Air Conditioning Repair" in Google and will get local search results depending on my geolocation. How do I set up keywords in SEOmoz "Air Conditioning Repair" and get the ranking depending on the users geolocation? Do I have to have the keyword "Sacramento Air Conditioning Repair" to get the same results if I search within the vicinity of Sacramento with the term "Air Conditioning Repair." Thanks in advance for everyones help on this question.
Keyword Research | | TalkingSheep0 -
Is it bad to optimize for tier one keywords only?
Hello, My site is about personalized cards, and I have optimized (rank A) each sample page to the main topic of the card (eg: sapo pepe). So when people search for that keyword (sapo pepe), my page ranks high. Now, if instead of checking the optimization for "sapo pepe" I check for "cards sapo pepe" I get an F, because the keyword is not there. Thing is that people search for different tier 2 keywords, like "cards, models, examples, etc" and I cannot put that many keywords in the page... My question is: does Search Engines rank you high if you optimize your page for a subset of the keywords people search for? I understand that if someone optimizes for "cards sapo pepe" they would get higher than my site. Hope I was clear, any comment is appreciated! Thanks, MAriano
Keyword Research | | regalatufoto0 -
Prioritizing Keywords
Hi Everyone, I've been using many of the articles to find out the best way to create a list of long tail keywords I wish to target. Anyway, I used Google AdWords Tool in order to find out how many Global/Local Searches per month, and the Keyword Difficulty Tool on this site in order to find the difficulty score. With these two metrics, I've compiled a good list, but I wanted to know how people prioritize keywords. I was thinking of creating a formula in excel in order to compare both the difficulty score and the amount of searches, but I wanted to know other people's advice and how they decided to prioritize the long tail keywords they compiled. I am still a bit of a newbie at this, so any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Keyword Research | | Seiyav0