Understanding Moz Opportunity and Potential

[udacity-singhvishu]

Hello Friends - I am just learning Moz tool via Udacity

I was doing some analysis using Moz for the following keyword

"digital marketing courses"

This is the result what I get. Moz tells me the opportunity is 83. This is a high number and does not reflect what I see when I search in google. The page is full of ads. A organic click is going to be very difficult. 
Moz potential also says 79 - again a high number which does not seem to be the reality. It is going to be very difficult for a new service to rank higher.

I have fundamental doubt on whether SEO will work on keywords which are in high demand by paid ads. more that 30% of the real estate on screen gets taken by paid ads. Even if one searches for long tail key word the story remains same. Does SEO really have a chance to compete with paid ads for business driving keywords?

pub

[BlueCorona]

Hi there!

I agree with what you're saying—the more and more paid ads on a page, the harder is it to generate clickthroughs from the organic results. While a lot of people click the ads (usually without even realizing it's an ad), there are still some people who were told growing up to never click the ads, and thus always scroll down to the organic results.

While these opportunity/potential scores do seem really high in comparison with what you're seeing on the actual SERP, I would still considering optimizing a page for your desired keyword because yes, it's not ideal to be lower than all those ads, but 2) you NEED to show up in the organic under those ads if you want to generate any sort of clickthroughs.

Good luck!