Creating a Domain Specific Keyword Difficulty Score

[eyeflow]

Moz's Keyword Difficulty tool is great. Minus one thing... it does't take the domain itself into it's equation.

Of course it doesn't take a lot of other things into consideration too like relevancy of domain but lets at least start with adding domain authority to the equation.

I've come up with simple math that allows you to take the domain authority of the target URL into consideration.

The Equation KD = Moz Keyword Difficulty
DA = Domain Authority
DS = Domain Specific Keyword Difficulty

(KD/DA)*KD = DS

Equation Applied

URL: atari.com
Keyword: classic video games
KD: 69
DA: 77
DS: 62

(69/77)*69=62

You will end up with numbers larger than 100, but it makes sense. If your domain authority is 10 and you're trying to compete with a difficulty of 90 then you should be scared to compete for that term and the number should reflect that.

Thoughts? Other ideas?

[EricaMcGillivray]

Are you talking about your domain? And how hard it would actually be for you to rank? It definitely factors in the DA from the ranking domains.

"Your Keyword Difficulty Score is based on the Domain Authority and Page authority for the top 20 search results that keyword is pulling on Google. These sites are analyzed using our Mozscape index to pull Page Authority and Domain Authority. These two metrics (along with a host of others from the Mozscape index) help create the Keyword Difficulty score." from the FAQ about KWD.

[eyeflow]

How Keyword Difficulty works now, lets say you get a keyword difficulty of 50. It's 50 no matter what domain you're optimizing for. It's 50 if you're optimizing for wikipedia.com and it's 50 if you're optimizing a brand new website. This equation changes the keyword difficulty score based on the domain authority of the site you're optimizing

[EricaMcGillivray]

Okay, that's what I thought you were trying to do. Are you doing this for reporting? For better, realistic goal making?

[eyeflow]

It can be used for reporting as well helping set expectations for SEO clients. If Client A has a very low domain authority and wants to compete for very competitive keywords a score like this can help set expectations as to what keywords are realistic for them vs. keywords that are out of their grasp. Thus helping you develop a campaign that helps them target keywords that are within their grasp.