Keyword Research tool time-effort equivalent
-
SEOMoz's keyword research tool is awesome, but what does the competitiveness actually mean in terms of time/effort?
I've read the help file which is great but to get an idea, to rank for highly competitive keywords, is that 12 months of constant effort, link-building and keyword buying or more like 3 months? (how massive is massive?)
I know its a hard question to answer, but an idea would be awesome. Thanks to anyone that can answer in advance...
-
Thanks, hey, how do I get outta this friggin' cooler??? It's cold as well a freezer!!
-
Thank you Robert. I didn't post the question but loved your answer
-
Perfect - totally understand your response and this helps me alot; I wrote this question thinking highly competitive meant (typically) 10 years. Thanks again.
-
Hugh,
Just so I am not impaled by public opinion, I want to say again that this is a rough way of doing this. Looking at what you have, for me or me as my agency, I would say that I could pull off the above(what you have) 80% of the time or more.
There will always be factors that must be found and mitigated - the finding is where I see more failure than in mitigation. The reason IMO is that as SEO's we are prone to sight-blocking hubris. OK, sorry, I am prone to sight-blocking hubris and must be ever vigilant.
So, that said, I wish you the best and leave you with this: as to red and blue oceans remember the premise of the book; the effort is less and the payoff is higher in blue than in red oceans.
Best
-
Thanks for the answer Robert, this expands my thinking - I like the blue ocean/red ocean idea, and I understand the verticals concept (although I'm a newb when it comes to SEO).
So based on your thinking, would you say ballpark estimates for reaching top-3 in local searches (with consistent and expert SEO) would be:
-
around 3 months for highly competitive keywords,
-
1 month for a 'competitiveness' score of around 35?
... and multiply this by, say, 4 for global-dominant rankings...
For me so much in business planning comes down to gauging demand before developing products, and in this case I'm using keyword research to gauge market demand / competitiveness tradeoffs before I start...
-
-
Hello Hugh,
This is a very understandable question. I hope to provide you a small guide on this.
If you have a range of terms for more than one site and you have most entered into kw tool you will see that in some verticals you have a high difficulty and not a lot of searches. In others you can see high difficulty and many, many searches. That to me is one component.
The next is whether or not the search would be for a product or service that is perceived or marketed on a local basis. (A muffler shop comes to mind).
The next, which is very important is: Where are you starting from? So, for us as an agency if the client has a site and is already ranking in some areas, etc. it will provide a boost if we are helping them spread out. (making it easier even for a difficult term). But, if the client is going into unchartered waters or is essentially new to the space, it will mean having to build authority for site and pages while competing.
So, if I am looking at a global US search and have a new client with little they have done right on the Internet and we are going into what has been described as a "red ocean" in Blue Ocean Strategy, and, if the terms I am after are highly searched and difficult, page one could be 6 months or longer away.
Assuming the difficulty stays the same, but the search is now changed to be local and all else is the same, I think, I can begin to rank them for some of the terms within 3months plus or minus.
Then, if we go back to global but change them to having some Internet sophistication already, there is a significant increase in the speed with which we can help them rank. Change this to also include local and it gets faster. If, the search is a small number of searches monthly in local for any of the above, I find that it is easier to rank as less and less competitors focus on the longer tail or less familiar terms. NOTE: This is a major reason I do something I do not thoroughly enjoy: KW research.
So, I hope I have lessened your frustration to a degree,
All the best,
Robert
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Tool for wildcard keyword suggestions
Like others, I have also been oblivious to the options which were uncovered in this article, using stars or underscores to uncover more keywords suggestions. However, I am trying to find a way to avoid the manual labour. Did any of you find a successful tool that automatically adds all the possible combinations of these wildcards to give a comprehensive lists of suggestions? I am looking for a tool that also included my country (.nl).
Keyword Research | | Entertainment0 -
Why does this keyword have much greater volume in Bing Keyword Research Tool than Google AdWords Keyword Planner?
I'm using the Google AdWords keyword planner and Bing Webmaster Keyword Research tool. For both, I'm trying to get accurate search volume for the exact term "advertising sales". Over the last thirty days, Bing reports a volume of 5,988. Google's average monthly search volume is 880. Given the market share Google has, I would expect a much higher volume, especially when compared to Bing. Can you offer some ideas of why this might be happening?
Keyword Research | | Kevin_P0 -
Where to start with keyword research for a telecom company?
Hey, I'm a brand's person with no SEO experience, yet I'm in a position where I have to carry out an SEO audit of our telecom company's website. Though our website is up and running for some years now, nobody bothered to undertake keyword research. From the little I've read over months on SEOmoz, I've just done the following: took out keywords bringing organic traffic on to our website and checked our rankings for those keywords on major search engines. My observation is that most of these words are long-tail keywords. Since we only have product/service information related to our offerings, most of the head terms we've used for packages/offers/services pages are branded keywords. My understanding is that we need to rank top for our branded keywords (a must) and try to rank as high as possible for long tail. In addition, we can use those keywords in our copy so that the right page ranks top for the respective keyword. Am I missing anything here? What else do I need to do?
Keyword Research | | HasanPK0 -
Google keyword rankings
I show a MON icon (it looks like a calendar page) for all my google rankings. The icon is not clickable. Can anybody tell me what this is? Also, I use to be highly ranked in 100's of keywords in google now barely anything. The domain is several years old and has performed in well in the past. Can't figure out what is going on.
Keyword Research | | ecoscott0 -
Changes at Raven Tools!
I received notification today that Raven tools will lose it's Adwords API, see below: "Raven received notice from Google late last week that we would lose access to its AdWords API. Without API access, Raven can't provide Google AdWords research, management and reporting to our customers" This is a massive blow as we use Raven to track progress for clients and also to run keyword research etc. Does anybody that knows Raven have a suitable alternative? Thanks...
Keyword Research | | JonathanSmith0 -
Best tool to check keyword ranks in bulk
What is the most accurate tool to check the current ranking of keywords in bulk and download the report via CSV/Excel? Any input would be appreciated.
Keyword Research | | inhouseseo0 -
I was wondering if SEOmoz has any tools for finding longtail keywords
Hi all! I'm new to the community and to SEOmoz, so there is definitely a chance I am misusing the already available tools. And I was sure to do a search for "longtail tools" before posting this question. But, does SEOmoz have any available tools for researching and suggesting longtail to target? ...similar to what HubSpots tool does
Keyword Research | | cflifestore0 -
How to interpret the keyword tool?
I've played with the keyword tool a bit. Some keywords have 43% difficulty and some have 55%. What do these difficulty levels mean? I don't really know how to go about it.
Keyword Research | | sleepmaster0