Other tools to check keyword competition/difficulty
-
I really like the Keyword Analysis tool/process at MOZ, particularly the composite score of keyword difficulty. However, on my budget/account level I can only check 400 kw's per day and sometimes that's not enough. So my question is...
What other tools do you rely on or recommend to provide a preliminary measure of competition for a keyword? Not Adwords competition, but the kind of analysis Moz does by looking at specific ranking factors like phrase the page authority, domain authority, kw in title tag, URL, anchor text, number of external links to the page, etc. Are there any other tools you'd recommend for checking those kind of competition/difficulty factors for a keyword? I know SpyFu.com, Open Site Explorer, Majestic, etc will provide backlink metrics, but hoping for something more comprehensive.
Thanks!!
Mike -
Absolutely Michael! That is what this community is all about
Yes if you read carefully in the Keyword Difficulty and SERP Analysis tool page, it states...
"Enter keywords to see keyword difficulty and Bing search volume." Even though you have the "Google" selected in the drop down. This had me very confused for a while until I emailed Moz and they helped me understand better how they are gathering the data. It is limited due to the amount of information Google's API allows Moz to access. Unfortunately we can only blame Google for that! haa haa!
Good luck and always keep learning!!
-
Bryan,
Thanks for your response. I've known of SEMRush for a long time but don't think I've ever used them so that's a good suggestion. I agree with your point that we're just talking about this just being a start. That's kind of the point of my question, i.e. how to I get from a list of 1,000 or more keyword ideas down to a manageable number that I can evaluate more closely. That's where I like the composite score, it makes it easy to eliminate the really tough ones without having to spend time on them unless/until I want to..
I wasn't familiar with the "Bing data mixed with Google data" topic, sounds like I should read more about how Moz aggregates their data, where different metrics are sourced, etc. Good point!
I appreciate your response and suggestions, definitely have a lot to learn yet. Thanks!!
Mike
-
Hey Michael!!
Have you given SEMrush a shot? I find it to be quite useful although I don't believe it will analyze the way Moz does. Even with Moz, the whole Bing data mixed with Google data could really throw you for a loop. To properly perform keyword research, you truly have to do much more than just use a tool such as Moz or SEM Rush, etc. Although this is a great starting point, you should them manually perform more in-depth research based on the sites that are actually ranking for "said" kw terms.
Not sure if this helps in any way but check out http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research
Hope this helps!!
-
Thanks Monica! I like the category/grouping idea, I'll definitely start using that in Moz.
-
Thanks for the suggestion. I love the Moz bar and that may be my best option. I like it for checking small numbers of keywords but I'm just hoping to find a better solution for culling through and weeding out larger numbers of keywords. Appreciate the suggestion though! Maybe I just have to suck it up and upgrade my subscription.
-
I ran into a similar problem with the keyword limit. I started breaking up my research into groups. I would do 400 a day in Moz, then I would double check them in other tools like keywordtool.io, AdWords keyword planner and just plain old fashion google searches. The Zen Agency has a good suggestion with adding the Moz Bar. It will give you DA, PA and link information right in the SERPs.
-
I would recommend installing the Moz Bar, Google search your key terms and check the DA and PA of the pages that are ranking. The higher they are generally the tougher it will be to rank for that term
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
-
Text analysis Tool: WDF*IDF - Within Document Freqeuncy x Inverse Document Frequency / tools?
Checking Keyword-density is just to primitive... what is your recommendation for the subject WDFPIDF?
Moz Pro | | inlinear
The SEO-Tool onpage.org (german) offers an interesting tool to analyse your text. But there are differences between languages and factors like proximities, synonyms etc. What are your experiences? tools? does mOz develop a tool for this? This would be a nice Feature for the On-Page Grader! best regards,
Holger1 -
Branded keywords
I'm trying to understand this concept a little further. Say if I create a branded keyword, "dc widgets" I then start to add keywords such as "maker" "toy" and apply the branded keyword to it. Does this mean that they then become "maker dc widgets" and "toy dc widgets" ? What purpose does branded keywords offer?
Moz Pro | | priceseo0 -
Can I rely on Keyword Difficulty tool?
I just ran into a problem that I hadn't expected. Testing the Keyword Difficulty I saw the results contained a result for a page that has Domain Authority=1 and Page Authority=1. As a result, Keyword Difficulty was reduced (compared to last month), which may actually be reversed if the site is crawled. Sadly, I didn't run the report on the figures as it was a small project. Questions: Can I rely on results shown by Keyword Difficulty? Are results where Domain Authority =1 are used to calculate Keyword Difficulty? If so, why is that? Is there any difference between a page that has received no links and a page that OSE/Mozscape has no link data for? The problem Using the Keyword Difficulty tool, I found swings of up to 14% in Keyword Difficulty (between Oct -Nov). Dr Pete may suggest that this is because of changes in Google's index ( http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-week-in-the-life-of-3-keywords ). However, It would be helpful to have a figure for Keyword Difficulty that isn't affected by the gaps in the Mozscape data. The (bad) solution You can mirror something close to Keyword Difficulty using: =(Sum of Page Authorities + Sum of Domain Authorities )/20 Right now, I have resorted to manually calculating keyword difficulty. I use the SEOMoz Page Authority & Domain Authority figures and a quick splash of Excel SUMIF and COUNTIF. I find the results don't look as 'easy' when I can ignore results where the data is unknown (PageAuthority=1 & DomainAuthority = 1). Background Info One result I still have a report on is for the phrase [fixing your business puzzle] using US Results on Google. For the specific result, I found the additional information about the site: DNS lookup shows the domain was registered in 2010
Moz Pro | | Darroch
Archive.org shows no records
OSE shows no data for the site
Site uses https
Google showing No links
Robots.txt file seems fine
No Sitemap.xml0 -
Tools that crawl 2 million page sites
Our site is about 2million pages deep, 50% of which is stale content. Yes, I know - OMG #unhygienic. Even if we get approval to get rid of half of it. SEOMoz Pro Elite only crawls 20k deep - what can i do to crawl and diagnose the whole site. Are there any tools anyone can suggest. SEOMoz??
Moz Pro | | ilhaam0 -
URLs getting re-directed to double http:// URLs
The "Notices" section under "Crawl Diagnostics" shows that there are 435 issues on my website. I checked out a few URLs to verify this issue and found that most of these pages are working perfectly. For instance, the above mentioned report shows that http://policycomplaints.com/about redirects to http://http://policycomplaints.com/about/ . Then, http://policycomplaints.com/aegon-religare/mis-selling-of-policy-by-aegon-religare/ redirects to http://http://policycomplaints.com/aegon-religare/mis-selling-of-policy-by-aegon-religare/ . However, when I open these pages, they seem to be working perfectly. I didn't find them getting re-directed to somewhere else. So, as per the report, it seems that all of these 435 http://URLs are getting re-directed to http://http://URL versions which in reality is not true because all the http://URLs are working perfectly. So, is this a problem with SEOmoz software? If not, what is the reason for these issues and how can I adddress them. Do notify if any further information is required for the same. Thanks. bNiEm.png
Moz Pro | | unknownID10 -
Campaign Manager Keyword Rankings all messed up???
My campaign in SEO Moz Campaign Manager has just ran it's weekly crawl, and all my keyword rankings are messed up. 18 keywords have apparently dropped by massive amounts, but when I do a physical search, they haven't moved. Also Keyword Tracker agrees with the physical search, so why is the Campaign Manager showing the wrong rankings all of a sudden??
Moz Pro | | gdavies090319770 -
Ruling out subfolders in pro tool crawl
Is there a way to "rule out" a subfolder in the pro dashboard site crawl? We're working on a site that has 500,000+ pages in the forums, but its the CMS pages we're optimizing and don't want to spend the 10k limit on forum pages.
Moz Pro | | DeepRipples0 -
Competitive Link Analysis
How can I make the a new report for the Competitive Link Analysis? My report has a date from two weeks ago and I would like to see an update.
Moz Pro | | CalgaryRealtor390