Bye Bye Keyword Difficulty Tool :(
-
So the Keyword Difficulty Tool will be retired from the end of this month. Is anyone else worried about this? - because I just don't trust the numbers coming back from Keyword Explorer. Never have. I've even raised this with Moz staff previously, when there was a huge difference between the score given by the keyword difficulty tool vs keyword explorer.
From what I see in Domain and Page authority and in the SERPs then the score from keyword difficulty tool, was always more accurate, and thankfully have been able to use both tools, but from next month I feel somewhat uneasy about solely relying on the score from Keyword Explorer.
Thoughts? and feel free to run your own tests on keywords and I'm sure you'll see what I mean.
-
Yes! We've had this ability since day one Just click "create or upload a new list" and you can create a list of hundreds or even thousands of keywords for analysis and comparison all at once.
-
This Biggest disappointment is the ability to analyze multiple keywords at once. The SERP analysis was accurate and that's what we used it for. Will the keyword explorer tool be able to analyze multiple keywords at once?
Our agency uses another tool for semantic search optimization, so, unfortunately, the new tool doesn't have the functionality we need to look at the landscape of the SERP for multiple keywords. The keyword difficulty tool looked at 20 keywords at a time.
-
Thanks Greg - I hear you on the comparison graphic side. I'll see what we can do about upgrading the UI/UX of that longer term.
-
Hi Rand, thanks for taking the time to reply, and give your examples. I appreciate the old tool is most likely outdated pullling on old stats, and of course there is a need for forward development.
I’ve run some more keyword tests and am seeing for the most part a lot closer difficulty score between the two tools now, so am feeling slightly less nervy about solely relying on the new kw tool.
I’ll give you the example of mine which I gave to the Moz help team some months ago when I was consistently seeing bigger differences in the two tools numbers. 'constitutional homeopathic remedies' - the new keyword Explorer gave a Difficulty of 6, whereas the old Keyword tool shows difficulty at 22%. 6 with DA’s of 40’s and 50’s in the SERPs just didn’t seem to add up. and I was seeing lower scores for many many keywords, all of which looked way more difficult to rank for. (even this example checked again now is a ‘slightly better’ “gap” at 15 new kw explorer tool vs 23% old)
other keywords checked now for reference:
- late menopause benefits - old tool 45%, KW explorer 40
- decorating a holiday home - old tool 25%, KW explorer 25
- tree pruning - old tool 58%, KW explorer 64
So it seems like there’s more similarity than difference now (maybe the tool has been worked on some more) and possibly I just need to get used to the wider spread of numbers in some cases. I’m certainly a lot more confident seeing what I’m seeing now.
As an aside, feedback while I’m here!… the old SERP view graphic was a LOT easier to read at a glance with the DA / PA scores for each of the top10, vs the new tool list view
-
Hi Greg - totally hear you, but strongly, strongly disagree
I worked personally on the scores for both and I can promise that the old KW Difficulty tool's numbers just aren't right. The old tool frequently over or understates the difficulty of ranking, and it relies on metrics that are outdated (age of domain? yech). I would strongly advise you to switch to using the metrics from KW Explorer. They're more accurate, the spread is better (the old KW Difficulty tool scrunches up scores so almost everything is between 30-70, when it really should be a wider spread), the other metrics are way more useful (CTR % and volume), and the accuracy of the metrics fetches is solid too (sometimes, old KW Difficulty doesn't even grab data correctly).
A few examples:
- "Harry Potter" - old tool says 80, KW Explorer says 89 (not a huge difference, but you can see what I mean about the scrunching effect -- clearly this KW should be one of the highest difficulties possible)
- "calendar app" - old tool says 62, KW Explorer says 76 (on a hand review, I think we'd all agree 76 is far more accurate; this is a very tough keyword)
- "northwest moss garden examples" - old tool says 47, KW Explorer says 33 (this is one of the easier keywords out there, with lots of low DA sites in the results; I think 33 is far more indicative of reality)
I know it's tough to make a switch or trust something new, but having studied these both closely and worked on the design of the metrics and data for both, I can assure you KW Explorer's Difficulty metrics are head and shoulders above the old tool.
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
-
Keyword Research for Low Volume Keywords
Hey friends, I'm looking for a little keyword research direction here, specifically for keywords and phrases with low search volume. I'm just going to give a recent example: I just finished a piece of content on customer experience. I began the process with some keyword research. Based on Moz's keyword explorer, "customer experience" has a monthly volume of 2.9k-4.3k. Sweet. So I move onto related queries and longer tail phrases to narrow my content approach. But just about any relevant phrase shows either a volume of 0-10 or 11-50 and very similar difficulty metrics, making it tough to choose a direction. So "what is customer experience" shows a monthly volume of 0-10. SEM Rush reports ~350 searches a month. I understand SEM Rush uses broader match, but I guess what I'm asking is: how do I perform keyword research with such minuscule volumes and such little data to differentiate? I've looked at Russ Jones' answer to a similar question here on how Keyword Explorer works: https://moz.com/community/q/what-is-a-good-keyword-volume-score ... but I still don't have a ton of clarity. Any advice would be awesome!
Keyword Research | | brooksmanley0 -
Optimizing for close keyword variants
I am planning my seo project using Moz tools. I am finding keywords that are close to each other. What is the best way to optimize? If I made a page for each of the close words, it would pretty much be duplicate content. Is it best to go ahead and make a page for each and try to make content a bit different? How different does it have to be? Or, would i try to use the different versions of the keyword on one good page. Thank you!
Keyword Research | | bhsiao0 -
How Can I Rank My One Keyword ?
I read many places about never use the same keywords/anchor text this will consider as spam by google, so i want to know if suppose my main keyword is Indian bridal sarees than how can i give rank to that keyword, should i use the same exact keyword but in different format like bridal indian sarees or indian bridal sarees shopping something like that. Should i use LSI keywords in that keywords. Please help Second, I also read some people saying they use 70% primary keywords and 30% LSI or generic words, so that mean if i have 10 articles so in 7 articles i have to give primary keyword and the rest of the 3 will be generic. Kindly please advice this also.
Keyword Research | | chandubaba0 -
What do broad match keywords represent?
Exact match is perfectly easy for me to get my head around - broad match, not so much! Take the phrase, "removing blueberry stains." Is the broad match data for this that I'm seeing in the Google keyword tool for searches that involve any of these particular words, in any phrase, in any order - just so long as they're all there? Any help with this concept would be much appreciated.
Keyword Research | | ZakGottlieb710 -
Keyword Difficulty Tool --------- Do I Need Any Other Kw Research Tool
NOTE: Lost on how to use this keyword difficulty tool, what is the objective of this tool - I am using micro niche finder which tells me how difficult a kw will be to rank for based on backlinks to that kw phrase ( ANY TRAINING VIDEOS ON SEOMOZ FOR THIS TOOL ) Need what is the quick takeaway of the use and benefit of this tool Is this kw research tool on seomoz Similar or Differeent to market samari or google free kw research adwords tool ? If it is similar to wordtracker or google free adwords research tool then how is it similar and then how does it differ ? I guess what I am trying to gather where does it get its data from wordtrakcer have their own unique data it pulls from different data centers from the various different search engines if I remember correctly ... Just ran the report offered at keyword difficulty and was asked compare these 10 top to a website address so I put mine the box there hope I did the right thing if not then what i did wrong !!!!!
Keyword Research | | helpwanted0 -
Keyword Rank are working Wrong???
hi i am in Argentina, search customize to Argentina in google,yahoo and bing. all my keyword in seomoz go down 10 places. when i click in a keyword , i see that is searching in .com (all the world) . when i do a local search i see correct rankings? thanks for reply Gabo
Keyword Research | | monotero0 -
What is the maximum lenght in url for keyword ?
Howdy, I was looking at the maximum lenght of url for ntfs and they told me it was 255 character for url and/or folder ect. Does that mean that i could use the full lenght of 255 filled whit keyword for the url on my site ? Thx.
Keyword Research | | Promoteam0 -
Google Keyword Tool
I have been analysing some specific seasonal keywords in terms of search volume within the Google keyword tool. When I download the google keyword volume for each term, this is displayed as a monthly average. I am wanting to get search volume over previous months which I am sure the Google keyword tool used to offer Does anyone have a solution to this? Thanks Simon
Keyword Research | | simonsw0