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Hi

Thanks for the response but I think you misunderstand my question. The keywords I mentioned were made-up to test the system so we could assess it's accuracy & value. They should be easy to rank for because they don't appear anywhere else.

We ran reports on ridiculous, made-up words that should be easy to rank for due to their low competition, against famous brands & historical characters that are highly contended. SEOmoz results claimed all our keywords (silly and genuine) rated between 54% to 65% "difficulty". Hardly more than 10% variation.

Compare that to the data on search volume and competition that I get from Google (for example) on the same keywords. The keywords of historical characters rated massively more competitive than the silly made-up keywords - as you would expect.

A perfect proof of this disparity is the phrase Perspex Underpants. SEOmoz claims the phrase has a 63% difficulty rating but if you google for _Perspex Underpants _you'll notice this very question ranks on the first page of organic results. That suggests that 63% difficulty is, in reality, rather easy.

My question, therefore, is are SEOmoz's difficulty ratings wildly inaccurate or am I  using the tools wrong or mis-interpreting what they say?

HI there,

I'm new here and am just getting used to the keyword difficulty tool.

I've noticed that just about every keyword phrase I type in, including ridiculous ones such as "perspex underpants" or "guy debord's shoes" all have a difficulty well over 50% and many over 60%. It makes little difference what my phrase is.

Am I doing something wrong perhaps?

How am I to interpret this result? It would seem to suggest that It is always very hard to rank, even for a rare and ridiculous phrase.