Interpreting Keyword Difficulty Tool results

[devonkrusich]

I have been running various reports using the Keyword Difficulty tool.  The columns are color coded - are there one set of signals that are more important than others?  I am trying to analylze why we are ranking where we are and where our competitors are weak enough to overcome in a short term.  I cannot seem to find a formula for the top indicatators for moving up in ranking.

One of my sites in ranking number 5 but is neck and neck with the number one site for results.  The other site is number 6 for the same term but has virtually no strength in the data like links, mozrank, trust, Social, etc...The sites 7-10 are much stronger on data.  Maybe since they are from the same C block that helps?

Any advice or experience would be helpful.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Devon,

For the sake of others reading this question, I want to first say that it is important to run a full report. Sounds like you are doing this already. (the Keyword Analysis has 2 levels of reports - the "default" and "full" - the RUN FULL REPORT button is about 1/2 down the page)

The point of the Keyword Analysis Tools is it allows you some insight as to why certain sites are ranking above others. In the vast majority of cases, the sites in the top position almost always lead in at least a few areas, whether it be link metrics, on-page optimization or social shares.

(more often than not, it's link metrics and number of linking root domains, or linking c-blocks. See the ranking factors to understand why these metrics are often correlated with higher rankings)

That said, as Ben pointed out, the tool can't examine all factors. Sometimes, it's a single perfect link from a high-authority domain that causes a site to rank where it does. In many of these cases, OSE is another excellent research tool that can give you a more detailed analysis into link metrics.

As for magic bullets, there are a few metrics that correlate with higher rankings more than others. Two of the most consistent are "Page Authority" and "Number of Linking Root Domains" - but even these can't guarantee success.

Regardless, hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

[devonkrusich]

Thanks Ben.  That is kind of what I thought but was hoping for a magic bullet :).

[BenFox]

This is a tough one.

The keyword difficulty tool can give an indication of where you need to improve in order to move up the rankings but at the same time there are other things that you might need to consider like one page optimization.

You also have to remember that SEOMoz's data does not necessarily reflect how Google views the same data. For example SEOMoz might be saying that you have 30 unique linking root domains however Google might discount 29 of them as having been previously identified as being in a link network. So you see, you have no way of knowing whether the data you see is the data that counts.