Can I calculate "Keyword Difficulty" metric using Mozscape API data?
-
We already have a web application that pulls certain metrics about websites using the Mozscape API, but we are wanting to extend the usefulness of this application to enable users of the app to pull "Keyword Difficulty" metrics in bulk, instead of one at a time (or 5 at a time).
I wouldn't mind the 5 at a time limitation if we could just automate the API calls and let the tool pull data for 50 or so keywords without user-interaction.
I know that it's a "formula", but I don't know what SEOMoz uses for it's formula.
Has anyone figured out a way to calculate this, based on the Mozscape API data? Has anyone ever tried to reverse engineer this metric?
-
Absolutely! Wow. I'd pay for that. Good luck on the project!
-
Unfortunately, the web app is still in development and not available for public use yet. The database is shared, so anyone on the app would be seeing everyone else's data... You can probably see the problem with this.
In the end, we will make it capable of handling multiple users, but it's not there yet. As far as the keyword difficulty, there is no API call to pull this metric so we are wanting to reverse engineer it.
Jesse, we are like you... We can (most of the time) estimate keyword difficulty, based on various metrics, domain age, title tags, on-page keyword density, etc. But, we were wondering if anyone has effectively automated this in such a way that keywords could be "graded" in bulk. Once we can do that... Wow.
-
What is your web application? I'd love to try it out. It sounds fantastic.
I've used the mozscap API a bit for research projects but I don't believe 'keyword difficulty' is an available datapoint. I haven't had any success trying to scale the usage of the keyword difficulty metric to large lists of keywords.
So I did try to create my own metric using the API. I basically would importXML the serp results for the keyword then run the resulting URL's against the API to return things like DA, title tag, etc. From these I built a simple algorithm to judge the difficulty of the keyword.
I'm no developer so the result was a rather cumbersome excel file. But I could get a sense of keyword difficulty en masse this way. In the end I decided that is better to simply narrow my keyword list down and then run it manually through the keyword difficulty tool (5 at time, ugh!).
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
-
Exact Keyword is Used in Page Title & Exact Keyword Used in Document Text at Least Once
Hi Folks, I have a page https://purplegriffon.com/courses/itil-training/itil-foundation-training/itil-foundation that grades with the 'On-Page Grader' as a B grade for the keyword 'itil foundation' but reports that there is no 'Exact Keyword is Used in Page Title' and 'Exact Keyword Used in Document Text at Least Once'. The thing is, it actually is but because of IP (intellectual property) rights we have to include a '®' (®) symbol when we mention the course title 'ITIL® Foundation'. Now I believe Google is smart enough to recognise that this symbol should not be included but it seems that for the specific criteria mentioned above, the MOZ bot isn't smart enough to recognise this, even though it recognises the keyword usage elsewhere. So my question is this. Would this constitute an issue in terms of ranking? Another question I have, is how significant are the gains with shorter URL's? For example, the URL to the page in question is: https://purplegriffon.com/courses/itil-training/itil-foundation-training/itil-foundation Would a URL such as below have a significant effect on SEO?: https://purplegriffon.com/courses/itil-foundation Thanks for your feedback.
Moz Pro | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Can someone kindly explain what 'Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags' means? Is this a critical error and how can it be rectified?
Can someone kindly explain what 'Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags' means? Is this a critical error and how can it be rectified?
Moz Pro | | JoshMcLean0 -
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 -
After I make corrections of my crawl diagnostics report, how can I tell is those corrections "took". Is there a way to immediatly refresh that report. Will it eventually refresh?'
I have made corrections to the crawl diagnostics report. Can I refresh this report? I would like to see if my corrections were correct. Thanks for your anticipated answer!
Moz Pro | | Bob550 -
Is it normal to see the "Loading a sweet graph" message for more than 10 minutesd?
Hi! I'm on the Rankings History page, and for more than ten minutes I have seen this message where I should see data on organic visits: Organic Google traffic for visitors from United States Loading your graph data. Thank you for your patience… Loading a sweet graph... Is this normal? Could there be something wrong with my Google Analytics connection? Thanks! P.S. I looked up "loading a sweet graph" in this forum before posting, but didn't find anything.
Moz Pro | | ScottShrum0 -
404 Page/Content Duplicates & its "Warning"
My website has MANY duplicate pages and content which are both derived from the MANY 404 pages on my website. While these are flagged in SEOmoz as "Warnings," should this be of concern to SEO effectiveness?
Moz Pro | | dhk50180 -
Keyword ranking tool
Hello, What is best practice for knowing if a keyword is too difficult to try to rank for. i understand the keyword difficulty tool in seoMOZ, but am unsure of how it actually relates to if I should attempt to rank for the keyword. Is there a differential people use such as if a site has a Page Authority of 60 we will not try to rank for a keyword that has a keyword difficulty ranking of 40?
Moz Pro | | digitalops0 -
Traffic Data Lag
Today is 8/29/11. Why does my traffic data still show data from 8/8/11? It says last data update 8/15/11 but there is no 8/15 data showing. I should be able to view 8/22 by now. This is way behind. I'm a newbie so hook me up. What am I missing? It was updating every Monday but not anymore.
Moz Pro | | ranger001