Does Keyword Tracker rank eBay links as weaker competition than they actually are?

[conor1005]

This might be a confusing question but hopefully I can explain it well enough and someone is able to understand where I am coming from.

I have used the Keyword Analysis Tool to search the keyword "alice in wonderland fancy dress", the results come back saying that the competition for this keyword is 24%, which I consider to be pretty low. When I look at the Page Authority, Page Linking, Domain Authority and Domain Linking of each site which rank in the top 10 for this keyword I see that places 4 - 7 are taken by eBay links. I then look at the bottom three places (8 - 10) and although their Page Authority and Page Linking is not very high, their Domain Authority and Domain Linking is reasonable. Based on the results I have seen for other keyword, who's overall competition % was higher than 24%, I thought to myself that these bottom three links were actually quite strong, which made me ask the question "why has this keyword got a competition % as low as 24%?". I then wonder whether it was because the Keyword Analysis Tool ranks the eBay links as weaker competition than they actually are?

My question to you guys:

Does Keyword Tracker rank eBay links as weaker competition than they actually are? Or can anyone explain why the competition % for this keyword is so low but the bottom three links are actually relatively strong? And how do the eBay links rank higher than these bottom three links? Yes the eBay links are relative to the keyword but these eBay links are ranking higher solely on the fact that the Domain Authority is so high and have very little SEO in relation to the keyword, does Google not recognise that the bottom three websites would be more beneficial to customers than the eBay links? And if the eBay links are ranking so high solely on the fact that the Domain Authority is so high then shouldn't they be in the top 10 for almost every product related keyword?

Thanks in advance.

[Chris.Menke]

Conner,

From Moz's documentation on the Keyword analysis tool, it analyzes the distribution of page authority and domain authority of the top 20 results in Google for your query so it's not just looking at the first page results but basing it's score on the results on the first two pages. The keyword difficulty score is by no means perfect and int this particular search it may be starkly obvious which factors are more dominant in composing it.  I would see that as an opportunity to better understand what is required by your site to rank more highly for your query.

What scores are possible?
We break up keyword difficulty levels into a number of ranges:

• 76%-100% - Extremely Competitive: These are among the most challenging keywords to rank for. On-page optimization, massive link strength, and high domain authority are necessary to achieve top ranking positions.
• 51%-75% - Highly Competitive: Powerful sites with strong pages tend to dominate these results. Links in quantity and quality (at both the domain and page level) are required to earn top rankings.
• 26-50% - Moderately Competitive: Search results in this category require high authority domains with well-targeted pages OR lower authority sites with powerful individual pages to achieve top results.
• 0-25% - Non-Competitive: Keywords in this range tend to have less powerful sites/pages in the top results. Rankings are achievable by pages on low authority domains with good on-page optimization and light link metrics