The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • My Q&A
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. SEO and Digital Marketing Q&A Forum
    2. Categories
    3. Getting Started
    4. A difficult keyword displays a difficulty of 3, why?

    A difficult keyword displays a difficulty of 3, why?

    Getting Started
    2 2 161
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • awgsm
      awgsm last edited by

      I´m new to Moz and I was using the keyword analysis tool.

      When I put a generic term for my country (cheap phones, buy samsung galaxy, etc.) which is obviously one of the most wanted and competitive keywords, MOZ displays a difficulty level of 3 and an opportunity of 100, indicating it´s easy to rank for it, when the main competitors are big transnational companies.

      Why is this? What do you suggest?

      Thank you!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • OlegKorneitchouk
        OlegKorneitchouk last edited by

        i'm seeing difficulty of 30-40 for cheap phones (depending on country): https://moz.com/explorer/overview?q=cheap+phones (watch the video that pop's up from Moz's chat helper)

        Check out https://moz.com/help/guides/keyword-explorer for more in depth info on how the scores are calculated.

        How is the Difficulty score calculated?

        Keyword Difficulty takes into account the Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) scores of the results ranking on the first page of Google for the given query, as well as modifying intelligently for projected click-through-rate of a given page (putting more weight on higher-ranking, more visible pages and less on lower-ranking, less visible pages). The formula also accounts for newer pages on powerful domains that may have DA scores but have not yet been assigned PA values.

        What is Opportunity score?

        Opportunity Score is designed to calculate the relative Click-through-Rate (CTR) of the organic web results in any given Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Google SERPs that have very few non-traditional ranking features and are more similar to the classic “ten blue links” only model will have very high Opportunity Scores. SERPs that have many features - like images, ads, news results, answer boxes, knowledge graph panels, etc. - will have much lower Opportunity scores. We use an averaged CTR model derived from our anonymized clickstream data to build this useful metric and apply it based on the features we see in Google’s results.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • 1 / 1
        • First post
          Last post
        • Keyword difficulty with Moz Pro
          BartonInteractive
          BartonInteractive
          0
          3
          21

        • Keyword Tracking Limit
          samantha.chapman
          samantha.chapman
          0
          2
          86

        • What is the best use for Moz tools specially keyword difficulty for startup ?
          jameskais
          jameskais
          1
          4
          536

        • Keyword rankings and tracked keywords - add manually?
          GPainter
          GPainter
          0
          2
          107

        • Need keywords
          Cyrus-Shepard
          Cyrus-Shepard
          0
          2
          109

        • Number of on-page keywords outnumbers total number of keywords
          NicoleCriona
          NicoleCriona
          0
          3
          132

        • Good day....when downloading the keyword ranking report in CSV, how do I get my keywords that are labeled to show in the Labels column?
          DavidLee
          DavidLee
          0
          2
          109

        • How does MOZ assign a keyword to a page in the On Page Grades by Keyword Ranking
          KeriMorgret
          KeriMorgret
          0
          5
          726

        Get started with Moz Pro!

        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

        Start my free trial
        Products
        • Moz Pro
        • Moz Local
        • Moz API
        • Moz Data
        • STAT
        • Product Updates
        Moz Solutions
        • SMB Solutions
        • Agency Solutions
        • Enterprise Solutions
        • Digital Marketers
        Free SEO Tools
        • Domain Authority Checker
        • Link Explorer
        • Keyword Explorer
        • Competitive Research
        • Brand Authority Checker
        • Local Citation Checker
        • MozBar Extension
        • MozCast
        Resources
        • Blog
        • SEO Learning Center
        • Help Hub
        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
        • How-to Guides
        • Moz Academy
        • API Docs
        About Moz
        • About
        • Team
        • Careers
        • Contact
        Why Moz
        • Case Studies
        • Testimonials
        Get Involved
        • Become an Affiliate
        • MozCon
        • Webinars
        • Practical Marketer Series
        • MozPod
        Connect with us

        Contact the Help team

        Join our newsletter
        Moz logo
        © 2021 - 2026 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy