Why are all my keywords rated "highly competitive"?

[JamesG075]

I am using the Keyword Analysis tool and it is telling me that almost all the keywords I put in are "highly competitive" even though there is very little competition on Google.

Example: I enter the keyword "christian web designers" on Google, United Kingdom

It then reports that this keyword is 53% Highly Competitive. However I Google this term in quotes and there is less then 4,000 results. I also enter this keyword into Traffic Travis which tells me the the difficulty is Relatively Easy.

Am I doing something wrong here?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi James,

Couple of points:

1. The term "highly competitive" might be a bit misleading. I'd pay more attention to the score of 53%, which I would consider only moderately competitive. If you look at the actual search results, the #1 ranking only has a Domain Authority of 19, so I would think this is a keyword you could shoot for.

2. The score takes into account how hard it would be to obtain a top ranking, but not neccessarily #1. There are some high authority domains in the top 10 for that query, including www.swedishdigitatalmarketingagency.com, which makes the overall vertical more competitive.

3. The Keyword Difficulty tool is a best guess based on comparative metrics, but it isn't always right.

4. When in doubt, I always run a full analysis report to see why URLs are ranking the way they do.

Overall, I trust the 53 score. It seems a little high, but it's within a range I would consider within reason. The good news is the Keyword Analysis tool is going through some changes soon as SEOmoz acquires new data sources and continues to improve it's scoring algorythm. In the meantime, you can always use the MozBar - with the SERP overlay turned on - to eyeball any results you'd like to examine.

Best of luck with your SEO!

[JamesG075]

Thanks for the replies, so even if it says it is "highly competitive" it may not be competitive in the serps but for ppc? Will I be able to rank for keywords that are rated "highly competitive"?

[EGOL]

The "highly competitive" is google's assessment of the PPC competition.

Organic SERPs could be very different.

Keep in mind that PPC allows broadmatch... but that will not get you ranked in organic.

[yeagerd]

I am working on some assumptions here as I have never seen the algorithm this tool uses, but it is pretty safe to say it will work some thing like this:

Which I learned as-

KEI, Keyword Efficiency Index,

Search Volume / Sites Optimized for that keyword = KEI

You could have 500 websites trying for a word and if it has a million searches, then you still have a decent shot at finding a way to get in front of some of the searchers as there are 2000 searches for every provider.

On the other hand, if there are 3 websites going after a keyword and it has only 1000 searches then your competition for that word is 333 to 1 or about 6 times tougher than the first example.

Also keep in mind that sometimes when serving a highly specialized niche you have to ignore everything and go for it, assuming you have put in your due diligence and you are sure there is a viable market.

[Michael-Goode]

The keyword tool isn't about competition per se (even though it does talk about competition), it's more about how difficult it would be to rank for certain keywords.

In your case the keyword "christian web designers" might only return few search results, but the top 10 could be domains with a strong backlink profile, which would make it difficult to rank for the top 10.