Is the keyword difficulty tool the most helpful in all situations?
-
I understand that the scores it generates are essentially based on the difficulty of appearing on the first SERP for the keyword in question. That said, I am having a lot of difficulty finding keywords in my niche which return a score that would make this easily achievable for a site of my size....
The reason I'm pointing this out is because theoretically, a keyword could have a HIGHLY competitive first SERP, with a significant drop-off on the second SERP, which would make achieving a top ranking on that page substantially easier. So my question really is, is the importance of appearing on the first SERP so unequivocally important that it is a pointless activity to attempt deliberately to rank for keywords on the second SERP, which is ignored by the keyword difficulty tool?
I know the breakdown of clicks goes something like 40% for top spot, 12% for second and downwards from there, but if a certain query has over a million searches per month, for example, it would still be possible to get considerable amounts of traffic by trying to rank highly on the second SERP, which the keyword difficulty tool cannot help with. So is this really a useless activity?
-
Bah, I haven't read the white paper yet, but now I'm even more confused! Both previous answerers veered towards "use the keyword difficulty too, go for keywords you think you have a good chance of hitting the first SERP for," whereas this study would suggest doing otherwise might not be a bad strategy. Hmm.
-
-
I agree with all of your theoretical arguments.
From practical experience I have found second page rankings to be worth very little even if you are selling a retail product at the lowest price on the web.
....but if a certain query has over a million searches per month, for example, it would still be possible to get considerable amounts of traffic by trying to rank highly on the second SERP...
That is a possibility, but the probability is very low. As a general rule that type of traffic is going to attract significant competition. The websites that rank on the second page are either... still moving up.... lost their determination... ran out of resources.... have been beaten down. You might be able to get some significant traffic from long tail searches if you write substantive content that fills diversity niches that very few others are covering.
I am having a lot of difficulty finding keywords in my niche which return a score that would make this easily achievable for a site of my size....
I know what you are saying. I think that you have two obvious choices. 1) Find a different niche..... or.... 2) Gather the resources needed to mount a big attack.
For retail sites I think that the keyword tool is a valuable "glimpse" of what the competition might be like. However, I think that once you have experience in a niche you can simply go to the first page of the search results and see WHO is ranking there and decide how easy or difficult the fight is going to be.
For information sites I don't use the keyword tool to make decisions on where to attack. Instead I go to the first page of the SERPs and look at the top sites and ask myself if I can beat their content. If the answer is yes then I attach. If not then I pick a different SERP.
The two questions that I use in place of keyword difficulty numbers are.... WHO is competing?.... and.... WHAT has been published?
-
As you are seeing well from the percentages you mention, the second page still gets traffic, but you can get the greatest results in the first 3 places of the first page. I think if you are optimizing than always go for the first and you will see the difference in number of visitors obtained from the first and the secong page in youranalytics.
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
-
Unsolved Why did I stop ranking on a keyword and how will I rank on it again?
I often see in my campaigns, that keywords which ranked on a page between spot 1 to 5 on the SERP stop being ranked on that respective page, causing the website to be in the 5th page or worse on Google. I also see that the keyword is not linked to a page anymore. What causes this to happen and how can I solve this from happening in the future? Capture.PNG
Moz Pro | | Ginovdw0 -
Keywords with a city suffix
Hi Pros, Here is our question / dilemma... Context/Background _Our company has 41 offices around the US and Europe; _ _We (our SEO) teams results are based on someone in a specific postcode/zipcode opening Chrome/IE/FF and searching using Google/Bing/Yahoo _ _(keyword) + (city) _ i.e. Ice cream Manhattan or Computer services Manhattan Our methodology is - (a) Choose an office (zipcode), identify the territory city names required for that Office's SEO goals. (b) begin to develop the strategy and execute (c) wait 1-2 months and test Question Using SEOmoz we are not sure HOW we could even begin to track the keywords?
Moz Pro | | neuralcorp0 -
On Page Ranking Tool Giving Weird Reports
My on page ranking tool is giving two entirely different reports for my website - I get one report for my domain name and a different report for the index.html even though essentially both of those pages are...well...the same. Not sure what's going on, hoping it's not an indication of a more serious issue? I appreciate any help!
Moz Pro | | Virage0 -
404 errors in SEOMoz crawl tool
I currently have several 404 errors in the latest crawls from SEOMoz. Here is an example of the error. http://dealerplatform.com/blog/2011/10/23/videos-for-auto-dealers/www.dealerplatform.com/ In all cases the error is a result of www.dealerplatform.com being added to the real url. Anyone seen this before? The site is a wordpress mutlisite. I don't see where this incorrect link is showing up anywhere on the website. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks
Moz Pro | | Chris_Gregory0 -
My tools have stopped working.
I just started my 30 day trial a week ago. Yesterday, the toolbar stopped showing PA or DA, and none of the tools will load for a page. I've tried logging back in several times and it hasn't helped.
Moz Pro | | HealingCrystal0 -
Keyword tool: SEOMOZ spacific month ? vs adword tool 12 month average but same data ???
Running a keyword analysis in SEOMOZ it shows my the folowing information "Local Search Volume (Dec)". I compared the data for the specific country , language and keyword with the adwords keyword tool and it exactly showed me the same numbers. The adwords keyword tool shows: "Local Monthly Searches: This column shows the approximate 12-month average number of search terms matching each keyword" http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=25148 So if the numbers are the same in google keword tool and SEOMOZ why is SEOMOZ saying that for a specif month? If the data is the same one of both can not be right or probaly I didn't get the point. See screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/GyaaW7EkwV Thanks for help
Moz Pro | | n-media0 -
Capitalisation of campaign keywords - why does this affect traffic but not rankings?
Having accidentaly entered keywords into my campaign with both upper-case initial letters ("Product Design") and lower-case initial letters ("product design") I find that the rankings are, as expected, identical. However, the traffic generated by the keywords is markedly different. Does this mean that the two versions of the keyword should be treated like totally seperate keywords in future? Indeed, should I be entering all variants of capitalisation into future keyword campaigns (such as "product Design" and "Product design") if I wish to get the full picture in future? Any answers would be welcome. David in Scotland
Moz Pro | | ContactOnline0 -
I need a tool/tools to extract keywords from say 50 sites in one niche and then check the rank tor those sites
This is for telemarketing of seo services I want to have some insight into an industry before I call them could this be done with the adwords keyword tool api and then exported to excel. It would also be nice to have data on backlinks say from seo moz opensite explorer.. Its just that the research you do before you even call a potential client is so time consuming and you can never really check to see how they are ranking for there main keywords manually. We are trying to automate as much of this initial research as possible... Any Idea's Thanks
Moz Pro | | duncan2740