Keyword Difficulty Report vs Rankings Report

[lilactree]

Hi,

Question: Is there a difference between the Keyword Difficulty Report and the Rankings Report? I am tracking a long tail phrase in the Rankings Report for a Campaign. The Google results are that it's not in the top 50. Yet, in the Keyword Difficulty report, there it is in the 5th spot.

I'm not sure I know which to believe.

Thanks!

[lilactree]

Ah, ok, thanks!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi lilactree,

Both tools use the same method of rank tracking, so they deliver the same results. But you might see different results based on how you have your campaign set up.

Here's where it gets tricky.

When you first setup your campaign, you have 3 options - domain, subdomain and directory. If you choose to set up your campaign on a subdomain with a "www", it will only track those rankings of your site that appear with a "www"

On the other hand, the Keyword Difficulty tool returns all results, whether or not they have a www in them or not.

For example, lets say you set up a campaign for www.example.com. If Google ranks example.com (no www) in the search results, this unfortunately wont show up in your campaign rankings because technically, that's a different subdomain. (frustrating, I know, but it's important to work this way because that's the way subdomains work)

Here's what I recommend you do: First, if you have available campaign slots, set up another campaign, just like the first, but make sure to select "root domain" as the campaign type. This will show you all your metrics for your entire root domain, and more accurate rankings.

Second, read up about www canonicalization errors. If your site is accessible using both www, and without www, you may have a problem.

http://seoappraisal.com/learn/www-vs-non-www-duplicate-content/

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.