Keyword Difficulty

[evolvingSEO]

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

[KyleJohnson40]

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!

[LeeMiller]

"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

[LeeMiller]

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

[EGOL]

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.

[LeeMiller]

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

[EGOL]

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.

[LeeMiller]

"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

[EGOL]

I know what you mean....  Getting even poor content out of some business owners is impossible.

[ShaMenz]

"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

[LeeMiller]

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 :))