Keyword Difficulty Score Meter: how to interpret levels
-
I'm hoping to find what percentages change the levels for the difficulty score meter in the keyword difficulty tool. For example, when does a blue -- non-competitive -- move into the green level, and so forth. Also, I can't find the description (names?) of all the levels (highly competitive, non-competitive, etc).
Thanks for your help.
-
Hi Charles,
Although, we have let our product team know that some users prefer a firm delineation for the moment we are sticking with the breakdown provided above. If you have any questions on this or have some feedback you would like sent up to the powers who rule the keyword difficulty section let me know!
Anyway hope this helps and I wish you an awesome day.
-
Just curious if you you have any updates to this? this is great! I needed this.
-
Thanks for pointing me to a useful explanation. It will be very helpful in my quest to appear as if I know what I'm talking about.
-
Hi There,
This is an excellent question! This awesome summary is based on a post back in 2012 by SCL SEO and comes from this link http://moz.com/community/q/keyword-difficulty-score-assesment. So generally it breaks down like this:
- Sub 30 - (Blue) Low hanging fruit you can take advantage of.
- 30 - 35 (Green) Fairly easy with good on page and some quality anchored links.
- 35 - 40 - (Yellow) Will take a bit more work but still in reach may require, good on-site SEO and a solid link profile.
- 40 - 50 (Orange) Domain authority plays a much more pivotal role so it may take longer to rank for.
- 50+ (Red) All about resources. Onsite SEO needs to be totally nailed, including internal linking/ topic modelling etc. a strong & diverse link profile with good social signals and ... time.
Hope this helps and if you have any other questions or concerns please feel free to let us know.
Have a spectacular day and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
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
-
Explain me how you use keyword explorer for SEO
Hello, Can you explain me how you use keyword explorer for SEO because I watched many video and after watching them everything is a little confusing... From my understanding, you have you main keyword let's say "Normandy bike tours". Based on that keyword you decide to cover TOPICS. Let's say I decide to cover D-Day landings, Omaha beach and and Caen on my page about" Normandy bike tours" ( I could cover more or others I imagine but now let's say those TOPICS are the ones I have decided to cover. From that point on what I understand is that I need to cover each of those TOPICS and the way to cover each of them is to type each of those words separately in the keyword explorer and look for words that the keyword explorer gives mes that it considers to be "semantically related" to each of those TOPICS. Then, if I choose the corrects one google will understand the different TOPIC and that should boost my ranking. Is it the whole idea ? PS : How many do you look at to find semantically related words ? 10, 20 or more ? Thank you,
Moz Bar | | seoanalytics1 -
What is a Good Keyword Priority Score?
Howdy gang, This is my last discussion post in the series on keyword metrics in KW Explorer & Moz Pro (previously on Keyword Difficulty, Opportunity, & Volume). In this one, let's chat about the "Priority Score," a feature you'll find in Keyword Explorer on any lists you build. Priority was conceived to help aggregate all the other metrics - Difficulty, Opportunity, Volume, and (if you choose to use it) Importance. We wanted to create an easy way to sort keywords so the cream would rise to the top -- cream in this case being keywords with low difficulty, high opportunity, strong volume, and high importance (again, if you choose to use it). Thus, when it comes to Priority Score, there's no particular number you should necessarily seek out, but higher is better. When you get into the ranges of 80+ (which is quite rare, Single Malt Scotch is one of the few examples I could find, and only because it's volume is so high and there's only a couple SERP features), you're generally talking about keywords with high demand (lots of monthly searches), the difficulty isn't too crazy (a website in the 55-80 DA range might have a shot), and the CTR Opportunity is decently strong (usually not too many SERP features that take clicks and attention away from the organic web results). Below that score range, you're usually finding keywords where one or more of those isn't true -- there's either lower volume, heavier competition, or lots of SERP features with the accompanying lower estimated CTR. When you're building KW lists, my view is that there's no "good" or "bad" Priority scores, only relative scores. Priority should be used to help you determine which terms and phrases to target first -- it's like a cheat code to unlock the low hanging fruit. If you build large lists of 50-100 or more keywords, Priority is a powerful and easy way to sort. It becomes even more useful if you use the Importance score to help add an estimation of value to you/your business/your client in to the mix. In that case, Importance can cut Priority by up to 2/3rds (if you set it at 1) or raise it by a little more than 3X (if you set it at 10). This is hyper-useful to nudge keywords with middling scores up if they're super-important to your marketing efforts. Look forward to your feedback, and thanks for checking these out!
Moz Bar | | randfish8 -
Keyword Explorer is Now Live; Ask Me Anything About It!
Howdy gang - as you probably saw, we launched our biggest new tool in Pro in many years today: https://moz.com/explorer If you're a Moz Pro subscriber, you've already got access. We went ahead and gave folks who were at $99/month before today 300 queries/month. If you're signing up new, $99/month doesn't have KW Explorer access, but the other levels - at $149/month and above, do (5,000+ queries/month). You can read the blog post here for lots of details, but if you have questions or product suggestions, please don't hesitate to ask!
Moz Bar | | randfish14 -
Moz Tool Bar Annoyance - How do I make the green keyword difficulty box go away?
A highly annoying light green keyword difficulty box just started showing up to the right of the search box. How do I make this go away? ulBzP9W
Moz Bar | | JenKeller0 -
Use of Keyword Analysis Tool (espcially regarding search volume)
Hello! I am fairly new to Moz and just starting to explore the available Research Tools. At first glance, I was very excited about the Keyword Analysis tool, but I quickly realized that (a) I wasn't receiving the information I needed and (b) I didn't know what to do with the information it gave me. So... Two specific questions: Is there any way to see the Google Search Volume instead of the Bing Search Volume? The overwhelming majority of our organic site traffic comes from Google, so it seems silly to look at the Bing search volume. How do you deal with the fact that this tool only returns search volume based on an exact match? As we know, there are some many ways the same general query could be entered, but it seems ridiculous for me to sit there and run the tool against every iteration I can think of just to get a general sense of the search volume. Two general questions: What do you find helpful about the Keyword Analysis tool and how does it inform your SEO work? What other tools do you recommend to help determine Google search volume for keywords? Thanks in advance for your help and advice!
Moz Bar | | Marketing_Dept0 -
Moz Rank Tracker - showing deleted subdomains results for entered keywords
We have recently deleted subdomains because they were causing duplicate page errors but now the Moz rank tracker is showing the subdomain key word results even instead of the exact url we entered. So for example wine cellar is showing up for a deleted subdomain (winecellar.vigilantinc.com) instead of the entered exact url of (vigilantinc.com/winecellars/) Please advise. Thanks!
Moz Bar | | KristyFord0 -
Keyword Difficulty and SERP Analysis Full report not working?
It's been a few days now that I am having difficulties getting a Full Report on certain keywords in the "Keyword Difficulty" tool. It's been stuck on "pending..." for over 12 hours. I also noticed that some keywords are returning zero exact volume when I know 100% that it's returning 5K+ in GKP. Anyone else having the same issues?
Moz Bar | | mediadispaysolutions0 -
Rankings Tool Shows 'Wed' for Most Keywords
Hi Folks, I have 300 keywords in the moz rankings tool but I would say over 90% of them simply show a 'WED' icon instead of the icon. It has been like this for nearly 3 weeks now. Any ideas why this is? Cheers Gaz
Moz Bar | | PurpleGriffon0
