Is the keyword difficulty tool the most helpful in all situations?

[ZakGottlieb71]

I understand that the scores it generates are essentially based on the difficulty of appearing on the first SERP for the keyword in question. That said, I am having a lot of difficulty finding keywords in my niche which return a score that would make this easily achievable for a site of my size....

The reason I'm pointing this out is because theoretically, a keyword could have a HIGHLY competitive first SERP, with a significant drop-off on the second SERP, which would make achieving a top ranking on that page substantially easier. So my question really is, is the importance of appearing on the first SERP so unequivocally important that it is a pointless activity to attempt deliberately to rank for keywords on the second SERP, which is ignored by the keyword difficulty tool?

I know the breakdown of clicks goes something like 40% for top spot, 12% for second and downwards from there, but if a certain query has over a million searches per month, for example, it would still be possible to get considerable amounts of traffic by trying to rank highly on the second SERP, which the keyword difficulty tool cannot help with. So is this really a useless activity?

[sesertin]

As you are seeing well from the percentages you mention, the second page still gets traffic, but you can get the greatest results in the first 3 places of the first page. I think if you are optimizing than always go for the first and you will see the difference in number of visitors obtained from the first and the secong page in youranalytics.

[EGOL]

I agree with all of your theoretical arguments.

From practical experience I have found second page rankings to be worth very little even if you are selling a retail product at the lowest price on the web.

....but if a certain query has over a million searches per month, for example, it would still be possible to get considerable amounts of traffic by trying to rank highly on the second SERP...

That is a possibility, but the probability is very low.  As a general rule that type of traffic is going to attract significant competition.  The websites that rank on the second page are either... still moving up.... lost their determination... ran out of resources.... have been beaten down.   You might be able to get some significant traffic from long tail searches if you write substantive content that fills diversity niches that very few others are covering.

I am having a lot of difficulty finding keywords in my niche which return a score that would make this easily achievable for a site of my size....

I know what you are saying.  I think that you have two obvious choices.  1) Find a different niche..... or.... 2) Gather the resources needed to mount a big attack.

For retail sites I think that the keyword tool is a valuable "glimpse" of what the competition might be like.  However, I think that once you have experience in a niche you can simply go to the first page of the search results and see WHO is ranking there and decide how easy or difficult the fight is going to be.

For information sites I don't use the keyword tool to make decisions on where to attack.  Instead I go to the first page of the SERPs and look at the top sites and ask myself if I can beat their content. If the answer is yes then I attach.  If not then I pick a different SERP.

The two questions that I use in place of keyword difficulty numbers are.... WHO is competing?.... and.... WHAT has been published?

[SEOPA]

This may help: http://searchengineland.com/organic-click-thru-rates-tumbling-study-97338

CTR-Curve-Google-vs-Bing-SlingshotSEO.png

[ZakGottlieb71]

Bah, I haven't read the white paper yet, but now I'm even more confused! Both previous answerers veered towards "use the keyword difficulty too, go for keywords you think you have a good chance of hitting the first SERP for," whereas this study would suggest doing otherwise might not be a bad strategy. Hmm.