What kind of keyword difficulty should I be aiming for when launching an new site?

[ZakGottlieb71]

I know that words in their 20's or 30's would be ideal, but it's proving hard for me to find relevant keywords with such scores (just a couple with scores in the 30's). Is going for words between 40-50 a waste of time?

Thanks.

[DonnieCooper]

I love this question. Ultimately, it really depends on the budget (both time and money)...

In my experience, it's best to start out with either local or long tail type phrases when launching a new website on a shoe string budget (I'm assuming that's the case here?).

Think of it as a mind-map, or informational hieerarchy... write/ build really great content around a small niche-of-a-topic, and grow towards broader (and higher difficulty) phrases as you get links, PR, attention, etc.

I think Google builds some trust up with websites that are ranking for local/ long tail type phrases (and thus the ranking) and sometimes t's easier (cheaper) to build on that trust and expand rather than starting out too ambitious.

I'm not suggesting that you lose sight and give up on the higher demand/ difficulty phrases, I'm merely recommending that you create a content plan that will allow you to grow into them in a methodical way

Does this help?

[ZakGottlieb71]

It helps with the theory, but some more specificity would help Are you saying 40-50 would be considered high demand/difficulty phrases? The problem is that I'm not finding much in the niches I'm targeting at around keyword difficulty 30...

[MarcMenninger]

I agree with Donnie regarding targeting local or long tail phrases when looking for keywords to optimize for.

For example, if your client is a plumber, you'll have a hard time optimizing his site for the keyword plumber which has a difficulty of 63% according to the SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool.

Since your client is a plumber, though, you could include a local word like the city or town where your client is located and get better results. So seattle plumber has a difficulty score of 41%.

You can often add qualifiers to get commonly searched for long tail phrases for even better results. So best seattle plumber service has a difficulty score of 37% which you could probably get ranked for if you include it in your SEOmoz campaign and focus on it.

While it's not a complete waste of time to go for words that have higher scores than 20s or 30s, you'll probably get better results faster if you go for words with lower scores.

I hope that helps!

[DonnieCooper]

I'd say 40-50 is moderate. 30 shouldn't be too much of a problem most of the time if you nail onpage optimization and can get some links. Of course, depending upon budget, time, experience and resources... 40-50 can sometimes be difficult to achieve.

Rather than looking too much at the difficulty score, I'd be looking at the metrics for the top ranking sites and gauging whether or not it's reasonable that I can beat those metrics. Keep in mind, you may not want to pay as much attention to the metrics of an exact match domain or international brand name because you can't duplicate either of them

Pull an advanced keyword report for your top phrases, download them into excel and then add some metrics to them. Once you're done, the big question will be "is it realistic that I can beat these metrics with the allocated (time and money) budget?".

If you can, then I'd pull a "Top Pages Report" with OSE for each ranking website and see what kinds of content and tactics they've employed to get those metrics that are helping them to rank.

Armed with this information, you should have a very clear picture of what needs to be done to win, where to start and if it's realistic or not.

Does this help Zachary?

[DonnieCooper]

I absolutely agree Marc. This is a HUGE Pro Tip that took me a while to fully appreciate.

By targeting the long tail version in the short run, you can build up some traffic, trust and other metrics. But you're also simultaneously targeting the head term so as time goes along you'll likely end up ranking for both (if you've followed a well devised strategy of course)

Thanks Marc, Cheers