Keyword difficulty always high

[WeGoBang]

HI there,

I'm new here and am just getting used to the keyword difficulty tool.

I've noticed that just about every keyword phrase I type in, including ridiculous ones such as "perspex underpants" or "guy debord's shoes" all have a difficulty well over 50% and many over 60%. It makes little difference what my phrase is.

Am I doing something wrong perhaps?

How am I to interpret this result? It would seem to suggest that It is always very hard to rank, even for a rare and ridiculous phrase.

[EGOL]

That suggests that 63% difficulty is, in reality, rather easy.

I'd say that in reality the domain strength of SEOmoz is kicking the ass in that SERP.

Nevertheless, my suggestion is unchanged.  ATTACK.    

[WeGoBang]

Hi

Thanks for the response but I think you misunderstand my question. The keywords I mentioned were made-up to test the system so we could assess it's accuracy & value. They should be easy to rank for because they don't appear anywhere else.

We ran reports on ridiculous, made-up words that should be easy to rank for due to their low competition, against famous brands & historical characters that are highly contended. SEOmoz results claimed all our keywords (silly and genuine) rated between 54% to 65% "difficulty". Hardly more than 10% variation.

Compare that to the data on search volume and competition that I get from Google (for example) on the same keywords. The keywords of historical characters rated massively more competitive than the silly made-up keywords - as you would expect.

A perfect proof of this disparity is the phrase Perspex Underpants. SEOmoz claims the phrase has a 63% difficulty rating but if you google for _Perspex Underpants _you'll notice this very question ranks on the first page of organic results. That suggests that 63% difficulty is, in reality, rather easy.

My question, therefore, is are SEOmoz's difficulty ratings wildly inaccurate or am I  using the tools wrong or mis-interpreting what they say?

[EGOL]

Am I doing something wrong perhaps?

Maybe the thing that you are doing wrong is fearing competition.

I don't fear competition because where there is a lot of competition there is usually a lot of money changing hands.... and where there is a lot of competition there is usually a lot of long tail traffic to grab.

So, if you can generate really good content that is very high quality, substantive, and keyword diverse then take your best shot at a keyword where you have expertise.  You might get some long tail traffic.

(The above is the approach that I usually take... however, I would not take that approach for keywords where there is a lot of extremely aggressive and hardcore competition - such as "payday loans" for example.  Those guys can have that turf.

For the keywords that you mention... I would difinitely attack them with informative articles - if you can make best on the web content without infringing upon their brands then you can probably attract traffic.)