Keyword research is tough isn’t it ?

[jp_cp]

I am only just realising that the Google Keyword Tool I use is aimed at Adwords customers and where competition is stated as low, they mean competition for adverts.

When I have a ridiculously low amount of links and  an equally low Domain Authority finding keywords is not easy.     I presume there is some correlation between the SEOMOZ Keyword Difficulty score and the amount of Adwords traffic,  but even very low Adwords Traffic Search Terms still seem to be moderately competitive.

I guess its a case of plugging away with the Keyword Difficulty tool.

[StalkerB]

KW research is indeed tough and the Google Keyword Tool is designed to get lots of people bidding on the same keyword

The difficulty score and adwords traffic aren't related (as far as I know) but instead the difficulty score analyses the strength of the top X site in the results for that term.

They are working on improving the tool to take into account more factors but for the time being just use it as one of several ways to determine how hard ranking for a term would be.

Here's a link from Richard Baxter on understanding the toll more - http://seogadget.co.uk/understanding-search-rankings-competitiveness/

[Nemek]

Don't look at the competitiveness score in the Google Adwords Keyword tool. Use it to check the traffic volumes and once you have the best keywords, check which are least competitive by measuring the strenght of websites competing for them - you can use Open Site Explorer for this.

[jp_cp]

The Keyword Difficulty Tool used against a search term I do well from suggests that Page Authority is responsible for traffic as my Domain Authority is low.

So getting links to pages could be more useful than links to domains.

[StalkerB]

Page authority is determined by the number of links coming into that page (good on page SEO helps too), whereas domain authority is number of links into the whole domain (to simplify it).

If you have an outstanding page on an otherwise low authority site you can still rank, but bolstering your domain with a number of outside will help.

[jp_cp]

Its becoming obvious that I need to start getting some decent links to the site.  I have spent a fair bit of time getting the SEO to a reasonable state, but with just 4 external domains linking I'm not going to increase traffic.

[StalkerB]

Alas, links remain a big ranking factor and is often the hardest part of the job for a SEO.

Part 7 of the beginners guide gives some good advice on how to get started - http://guides.seomoz.org/chapter-7-growing-popularity-and-links

[jp_cp]

Barry,  thanks for your help, my link building prgramme has begun.