Question About Keyword Difficulty Report
-
If I am trying to assess the difficulty of ranking for a longtail keyword phrase that is 3 or more words long, should I put that phrase in quotes when I enter into the Keyword Analysis Tool or not? For example, let's say I want to see how hard it would be to rank for the phrase "best educational resources for teachers". Should I enter into the keywords analysis tool as "best educational resources for teachers" or just as best educational resources for teachers? Which one would give me the most accurate difficulty assessment for that phrase?
-
Good luck - hope I didn't steer you wrong
I can't say I always follow the logic in these tools...however that's a totally different story!
-
Hah! That's really funny. Now I have to go try it.
-
Thanks Andrea and danatanseo. I was thinking the same thing. I was wondering because so far every keyword phrase that I have entered into the tool (no matter how ridiculous) has come back as moderately or extremely difficult to rank for. For example, the phrase "watermelon wrapped in barbwire" even comes back as highly competitive (53%) unless I enter it in in quotes. Most of the sites that rank for this silly phrase have low DA and PA.
-
Dana makes an interesting point of Boolean searches. Unless you're using a tool that specifically uses that method (like MyBuzz Metrics), most tools are set up to already assume it's one phrase and thus don't need quotes.
-
Hi Andy. I would enter it into the tool without quotes. I believe searching a term with quotes is a type of Boolean search that most real people don't take the time to use. Someone might correct me on the Boolean part, lol, but unless you're visitors are librarians I doubt they use quote, brackets etc when typing terms into the search bar. Hope that helps!
Dana
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
-
Competitive Keywords on Adwords
We are in a very competitive industry for adwords and would like to know what is the best way to find low searched keywords with a low cpc - it is the low cpc we are really after. Thanks
Competitive Research | | webguru20140 -
Having Trouble Ranking .us for branded Keyword
Hi Mozers, First time poster here. I run the website http://OrangeOctop.us/, it provides winning tips for FIFA, NBA 2K, NHL. The domain authority is 22 but I am unable to rank for the term OrangeOctopus. I know there are dozens of factors that should be assessed when looking at competition in Google (such as backlinks, domain age/relevance, social). However, I feel like you guys might have some suggestions for being able to rank for OrangeOctopus. Thank you! Joey
Competitive Research | | orangeoctop.us1 -
Should I set up multiple websites with keywords in the domain?
I work for an e-commerce brand that manufactures sells 2-3 uniform products for medical professionals. Of course, we set out originally using our brand name as our domain name, and we will continue down that path. However, our best products are the premium lab coats we sell, and we're currently facing an uphill battle for the keyword combo, "lab coats" which is 44% competitive. In our ranking analysis, we can see that we're up against 2 major competitive forces: extremely high domain authority (i.e. Amazon & Ebay), and stores that have the phrase "lab coats" or the word "lab" in their domain name. We recently dropped the hosting package we had with the domain www.scrubsandlabcoats.net (which was redirecting to our primary domain) and our ranking dropped almost immediately afterwards. We put that site back up and now 301 redirect it to our main site but it doesn't look like we restored whatever it was that was in place on that site (before my time) because our rankings haven't improved back to where they were a few months ago. Question is: Would it make sense to purchase a domain with the combination of our brand name and the words "lab coats" and then put up a few pages with links to our top productus OR would that be no more effective than what we already have in place (www.ourdomain.com/lab-coats.html)? Also, any guesses on what kind of crazy set up we used to have on that other domain (scrubsandlabcoats.net) that was helping us in the past? Really appreciate the help!
Competitive Research | | dstepchew0 -
Why is different the difficulty of a keyword in Google Spain and Google mexico?
In your opinion, Which are the main reasons of this difference?
Competitive Research | | BorjaUrreta910 -
My site is ranked in the top 5 for my keywords, but howcome I'm low in an organic search results for my key words?
Are the other factors such as page rank, Alexa rating and mozRank used to determine where I will show up in search results, over Goggle's key word rank for my key words?
Competitive Research | | allstatetransmission0 -
Keyword based link problem on site
So I think I might have identified an issue with a site that I'm trying to get ranked for a specific keyword but, wanted to get some opinions before I started making some big changes on the site. On my homepage I have the keyword that I would like to be ranked for in the title lets say "Blue Widgets - Company Name', also on the home page I have some descriptions of our services including the keywords. I also have a couple of the keyword based links within in the content, navigation and footer. But these keyword based links all point to another page on the site: blue-widgets.htm. If I really want my home page to rank for the keyword "Blue Widgets' should all of these links point to the home page instead of the sub page? I know there are a great number of other factors that contribute to rankings but looking at my competition, this is something that they seem to be doing. The keyword based links within the content, navigation or footer all point to the homepage. I also have a higher Domain Authority than some of the sites that rank higher than me so I'm not sure if building more links is the answer. Of course I always want to build natural links but these sites don't seem to be doing that either. Any comments, suggestions or input would be greatly appreciated.
Competitive Research | | TRICORSystems0 -
What does 70% Keyword Difficulty mean in reality?
I did a quick search in SEOmoz keyword difficuilty tool and found out most of the keyword I pick with some nice traffic are all 70%. Keyword list: http://screencast.com/t/Y4pPK42ZXrST How "difficult" is 70%? If someone ask you to optimize and rank a (very) new website for a keyword with 70% difficulty: Will you take the challedge or you think mission impossible? Why? How do you relate this reletively abstract "number" to the real world? Thank you!
Competitive Research | | johnzhel0 -
How much does exact match or almost exact match affect the difficulty score?
If a keyword get 50% difficulty on the keyword tool what would it be if it was an exact match domain. Would it go down to 30% What if it was just one character off an exact match or one word? Thank you in advance!
Competitive Research | | OxzenMedia0