Keyword research is a fundamental part of any SEO strategy. It’s often one of the first things SEO professionals are tasked with when starting their careers, and it can be time-consuming, to say the least. So, how can you make sure you’re spending time optimizing for and targeting the right keywords? How can you better identify which keywords give you the best chance of winning more clicks to your site? Let’s take a look at a quick workflow to help you nail down your Difficulty benchmark so you’re better able to answer those questions.

Difficulty within the Moz tools is a score from 1 to 100 that estimates how difficult it would be to rank in the top ten search results for a given keyword. The higher the score, the harder it is to rank. This helpful score is calculated by taking into account other metrics like Domain Authority, Page Authority, and the estimated click-through rate (CTR) for the pages already ranking for a keyword.

By benchmarking your site’s Difficulty score, you’ll gain a better understanding of how you can compete when it comes to your target keywords. You can then use this metric to identify additional target keywords for your business and ensure you’re not wasting valuable time and resources in the wrong places. Targeting keywords with a Difficulty score much higher than your benchmark may lead to inaccurate resource allocation. And if you’re working with a client, this metric can help to set expectations around where they can hope to improve their rankings.

The first step to finding our Difficulty benchmark is to know where we are already ranking. Now, you may have an idea of what keywords you’re ranking for and where. In fact, you may already be tracking those keywords in your Moz Pro Campaign or another rank-tracking tool. But what about the keywords you don’t know about? What if there are keywords you or your client are ranking for that aren’t currently on your radar? Have no fear! Keyword Explorer is here to help.

For the first part of our task, we’ll be using the Explore by Site section of Keyword Explorer.

Start by entering your site’s root domain into the search bar and click Analyze. The tool will return a list of all the keywords in the Moz corpus that your site is already ranking for. Click Top Ranking Keywords to see the complete list within the Ranking Keywords section of the tool.

Since we are aiming to get our Difficulty benchmark and understand where we may be able to overtake sites and pages in the top 10 results, let’s filter our ranking keywords by rank. Set the Ranking filter to #1-10 and click Apply to update the list of keywords.

Now that we have our list of ranking keywords narrowed down to those where we’re ranking in the top 10, it’s time to create a keyword list. There are two ways to complete this step. The first is to use the checkbox at the top of the screen to select all keywords currently shown. Next, click Add to… Keyword List.

You can then choose to Create New List. I recommend creating an all-new list for this workflow, as it will help streamline the next step of our process.

This method of creating a keyword list is a great option if you only have a few hundred keywords or less to add to your keyword list. You can add up to 100 at a time via this method in the Keyword Explorer interface.

Alternatively, if you have hundreds of keywords to add to a keyword list, export your filtered results to CSV via the button at the top right corner. You can then create a new keyword list via CSV upload directly in the Keyword List section of the tool. The number of keywords you can add to a list is dependent on your subscription level, with the medium level allowing up to 500 per list.

Sign up for a Moz Pro free trial

With our keyword list created, it’s time for the final step of our workflow – identifying your Difficulty benchmark. Once the data has finished populating, head to your newly created keyword list. At the top of the screen, you will see five graphs showing various metrics like Monthly Volume and Organic CTR, along with how your keywords are distributed within them.

We’ll be focusing on the Difficulty graph. The Difficulty range with the highest number of keywords from your list is your ideal Difficulty benchmark. In our example, the Difficulty benchmark for this site is a range of 21 to 40.

We can also see that the next highest number of keywords falls into the next range of 41 to 60. This is valuable information as keywords with this higher Difficulty score may be good options for a long-term strategy.

Now that we know our Difficulty benchmark, we can compare this score to the Difficulty of keywords and lists we want to rank for or for which we want to improve our rank. Prioritize keywords within your Difficulty benchmark range in the short term to maximize the possibility of results. Keep higher Difficulty keywords in your back pocket, and use them as part of your long-term strategy.

So you know your Difficulty benchmark, and you’ve compared it to your current list of target keywords to better fortify your strategy. But what if you want to find new keywords to target? Or spot keywords that you may have missed, haven’t thought of, or have been considering exploring? Well, I have a bonus step to add to your workflow to help you find those new opportunities.

The Keyword Suggestions section of Keyword Explorer offers the ability to find new keyword opportunities to track and target. Start by entering a keyword you’d like to research – it can be one you’re already ranking for or an all-new keyword related to your site or business. Once the list of keyword suggestions populates, click the Filters button at the top of the table. Using the drop-downs, select a Difficulty range that matches the range we identified in Step Three. In the example below, I’ve opted to extend my range to include the lower end of my “stretch” goal for Difficulty to identify some keywords for my long-term strategy, as well.

Once the list of keyword suggestions is filtered to only show terms with a certain Difficulty score, I can sort the table by Monthly Volume and identify keywords with the highest demand and opportunities for traffic gain.

I can then add these keywords to a Campaign to track and integrate them into my keyword-targeting strategy for future content creation.

With that, we’re now able to successfully identify the current Difficulty benchmark for a site and also keep an eye out for long-term targets. Benchmarking your Difficulty can help to focus your research and set expectations for stakeholders. This can streamline resource allocation and set you up for success when it comes to goal setting. Lastly, be sure to reassess your Difficulty benchmark over time as you roll out new content and work to gain rankings for keywords identified as part of your long-term strategy.