Keyword ranking tool

[digitalops]

Hello,

What is best practice for knowing if a keyword is too difficult to try to rank for. i understand the keyword difficulty tool in seoMOZ, but am unsure of how it actually relates to if I should attempt to rank for the keyword. Is there a differential people use such as if a site has a Page Authority of 60 we will not try to rank for a keyword that has a keyword difficulty ranking of 40?

[KaneJamison]

I'm pretty sure Keyword Difficulty and PA are not correlated like that, they just both happen to be on a scale of 100.

Take a look at the DA & PA of the top 10 sites for that keyword. If you're in the middle of the pack, you've certainly got a chance. If you're below everyone, you better start link building and getting your site trust and authority up in order to have a competitive chance with that keyword.

Then use the On-Page Analysis / Grader in your SEOMoz campaign for the page you want to rank. Score an A and you're on your way.

Depending on the niche, I would follow that with more link building to the specific page. Keep an eye on rankings, it could take a day or it could take a few months, depends on difficulty. You should be seeing progress after doing the tasks above.

Do that stuff, and if it doesn't work come back here and let me know, we'll take it to the next level...

[Cyrus-Shepard]

The Keyword Difficulty gives you a best guess of how hard it would be to rank for a particular keyword, although it's not foolproof. For each keyword, the tool gives you an analysis on which you can base your best judgement based on

• the quality of your content,
• backlink profile and
• ranking potential (your DA/PA)

When using the Keyword Difficulty Tool, it's helpful to look not only at the raw number, but the metrics also contained in the Keyword Analysis report beneath it. Be sure to run a full report for important keywords. This will give you insight into exactly why each URL ranks the way it does.

For example, the keyword analysis will show you the number of inbound links for each page, on-page factors, and all relevant metrics. When you compare your own site against these factors (you can add your own URL to the report) you can judge how likely you are to rank.

Often times you can earn a top ranking on a keyword with a high keyword difficulty score if you have advantages that the others don't. This is particularly the case when the competition is poorly optimized on-page for the given keyword.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO.