What does 70% Keyword Difficulty mean in reality?
-
I did a quick search in SEOmoz keyword difficuilty tool and found out most of the keyword I pick with some nice traffic are all 70%. Keyword list: http://screencast.com/t/Y4pPK42ZXrST
How "difficult" is 70%?
If someone ask you to optimize and rank a (very) new website for a keyword with 70% difficulty:
Will you take the challedge or you think mission impossible? Why? How do you relate this reletively abstract "number" to the real world?
Thank you!
-
Wow, that IS good! I like the free copy of Declaration of Independence etc. idea a lot
There is a translation company behind the website and the targeted audiences are people who need professional services to translate their documents / websites accurately.
I like the free translation tool idea as well - to get some browers' traffic - hopefully pick up some buyers from there. It is actually not too difficuilt or expensive to produce. We could use Google Translate API if they did not shut it down, but I believe there are other API available.
Based on your suggestion, we are going to offer webmasters free translation copies of their important web pages right away. Do you have any suggestions where to fish? (for high quality websites) We need to find webmasters who are honest and will keep their words to put up our links on their pages. I mean people could have taken our translation and NOT add our links there - and we can not do anything about it if that happens.
The cost to translate a typial web page is $30~$50. So if we can get a permanent link on a deep subpage of a quality website, it is worth to do it, is that right?. The big assumption is the our link will be put up there and will stay there as long as the page exists.
-
Translation isn't my field of expertise... but if I was going to attack it I would want a free translation tool. However, I know that those are very expensive to produce.
Short of that, if I was ignorantly going to attack it I would got a large number of important documents that are relatively short but of interest to worldwide scholars. These might be documents such as the US Constitution or Declaration of Independence and translate them into various languages. Then I would offer these translated copies as .pdf documents to professors and institutions to place on their website. Each of these would have an attribution link or two in it that points to my website.
If this worked I would continue producing those documents and distributing them for free. You might also offer free or discount translation service to webmasters who would like to have a few important pages of their website in another language. Each of these would have an attribution link.
I would also study the backlinks of some competitors to see where they are coming from. Perhaps they have a strategy that you can employ.
Another method that I have done is to simply buy one of the top ranking websites. It can be a lot more economical than defeating them.
-
For this particular case, it is a typical translation service provider - nothing for people crazy about.
But you check list inpires me on the next project I will pick up. I will pin your list on my office wall, and read it a few times every day
Thank you!
-
Thank you EGOL! As a guru, you may set your goal as #1 postion. For us, top 10 or even top 20 positions could make us happy,** simply because**: about 50% of the top 10 websites listed on Google for those keywords in my question are automatic translation tools. When a visitor looks for professional translation services, he has to scroll down the ranking page to find a real company to do that for him, even go to the second ranking page for that.
Can you offer some advices on that case -- strategies to rank for top 10-20 for 70% difficulty keywords? Now the website (6 months old) is ranked between postion #80 to #120 for those competitive keyword phrases.
-
Great advices!
When you look for some less competitive phrases, do you have a upper limit when you do that? Say 50%, 40% or 30% difficuilty at max to start with a generally new website? (new = a few months old)
-
Could be easy or near to impossible
- How good is your product?
- What is you products USP?
- Is it viral?
- Does it naturally acquire backlinks and social shares as part of its operation?
- Are you going to be able to create amazing stories and content from it to promote it?
- How much creative freedom do you have to promote?
- Are people going to hit your website and go "OMG this is amazing"?
When I see these types of questions, I think the the answer is normally to go back to the product level and engineer a product that wins for you
-
I think that you can only really appreciate a difficulty of 70% if you already have a site that is ranking at TopSERPs for a similar term.
If somebody came to me with a brand new site and wanted a #1 position for a 70% keyword I would know that there will be an awful lot of work going into it and that a #1 position might be impossible to obtain depending upon who is already there and who might launch after we begin.
This is not a KW that you will compete for at the $1000/month level.
-
I look at numbers like that and consider goals. If my long term goal is to compete at that level, and if I think there's going to be a lot of work involved, I'll seed my site and all my SEO methods with a mix of those phrases and others that aren't as competitive. I'll work on all of it over time.
I may start out only seeing results on less competitive phrases, yet as that happens, that alone will help build toward the long term more challenging phrases also gaining ground.
PPC can be a relatively fast way to get visibility for those more difficult phrases, and that can buy me some time on the organic side.
this strategy has worked for countless clients I've used it on.
Also, it's just one metric. Under the current landscape it may appear they have a difficulty of 70. Yet that could be because all competitors in that niche market for that phrase are mediocre. If none stand out, that's a golden opportunity for me to get past the perceived wall.
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
-
Cant find any keyword for my site
I searched for keyword rank for shoreloop.com but couldn't find any. What could be the problem?
Competitive Research | | killerseo20200 -
What a Brand should do first for Their Blog Keyword Research or Topic Research?
Hello Moz Community, Need your help guys. What a Brand should do first for their Blog? Keyword Research or Topic Research? Like for the Brand Product page/ eCom Pages, it's quite easy > 1. Buy "Product" Online
Competitive Research | | Max_
2. Buy "Product" "Geo."
3. Product Reviews [for Guest Posting or Reviews]
4. Best "Product" Online and so But, for the blog, it's tough for searching out the keywords that will work if the SEO team or the keyword research team is not aware or don't have the detailed knowledge about the niche they are working on. Please verify: Is it a correct method that an editor should provide a "topic" to the SEO team to find relevant keywords by using a Keyword Research tool that there are enough searches for it which can provide benefits to the blog via the search engine.0 -
Possible google sandbox issue? Organically ranking page 1 for our number 1 keyword, but page 5 sometimes 6 on google?
What are some things I can look into to figure out why google is ranking us on page 5 sometimes page 6, with some slight rank boosts to rank 36 from 48 but then falls right back. While Yahoo and Bing rank us page 1 consistently, without these big drops back. I use google search ( webmaster tools ) daily, fix 404s and make sure to fetch new content I create. Our site is within the Sandbox issue time frame, google 1st indexed the site about a year and a half ago, the site has been through various SEO service checks, and has had those issues fixed ( some bigcommerce won't allow, such as full sitewide ssl and a few other small factors ) but all the big stuff was handled or will be 100% handled after this redesign is complete. But just still seems we're stuck in the google hole again. We do use adwords, but no clear signs as to why we'd suffer such hardships with google ranking, only thing we don't have optimized in terms of on page optimization from moz is keyword in url, of which will be changing within the next month or two, as we're rolling our a new redesign with SEO 100% at the forefront, nice url paths, with keywords in their url, much more responsive site that uses less resources. But before we release this redesign, I'd like to find out what toe we stubbed of google's to give us such a ranking blackeye... We don't have that many backlinks, and I know these are a huge factor, however, building quality backlinks it's harder than walking on water at time and on the same level as spinning hay into gold. Any ideas community...
Competitive Research | | Deacyde0 -
Google Keyword Tool Alternatives
Hey All, So ever since Google shut down the Keyword Tool we have used the keyword planner and a few other tools only to find they aren't quite the same, I was wondering what everyone is using now to get there keyword research and average traffic estimates ? We previous used keyword tool for phrase match and now not much offers phrase match or provides us with what seems as accurate results. We have tried Word Tracker after a numerous amount of research to find a alternative to the keyword tool, and found that the results are very different from the Google Keyword Planner, 1 noticeable result would be of "Web Design Melbourne", in Word Tracker it showed the average search of 9,900 (per month or year I'm not sure) and we compared that to the Google Keyword Planner and it showed 3,000. I have looked over a number of tools and found they weren't quite what we are looking for (Word Tracker, SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner) so I have turned to the MOZ Community. So my first question for everyone would be: A) what do you use for Keyword research and average search estimates now (any good tools with phrase match)? B) If you have used Word Tracker have you found accurate results in your keyword research? If you have found any tools that have proved beneficial and useful please let me know 🙂 (paid or free) Thank you
Competitive Research | | KBB_Digital
Jake Crone0 -
Where do we find a Keyword Discovery Tool in SEOmoz?
I've been looking for a way to compare keywords amongst my competition websites.
Competitive Research | | homesonthesound0 -
Reached No. 1 for my Keyword, what next?
Hi, After months of targeting, promoting etc... I have now reached Google.co.uk rank position 1 for my phrase "creative recreation trainers" and I stand at rank 3 on Google.com. I am happy with these results as this is the phrase I targeted and this is the brand I wanted to rank first for. But were do I go from here? I am thinking I change brand and try work some magic on that, but still continuing to add backlinks etc... to the Creative keyword phrase? What would people advise? Also can anyone do an analysis of any sort on that keyword phrase and/or the url http://www.designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/creative-recreation/ and tell me some good points, bad points, what to do next and so on? Any help would be great. Thanks
Competitive Research | | YNWA0 -
My site is ranked in the top 5 for my keywords, but howcome I'm low in an organic search results for my key words?
Are the other factors such as page rank, Alexa rating and mozRank used to determine where I will show up in search results, over Goggle's key word rank for my key words?
Competitive Research | | allstatetransmission0 -
What keywords would you suggest for interesting concept?
Not sure if it's OK to ask just about anything as long as it is relevant, but I would love to hear thoughts about good keywords to promote an app that will make it easy to migrate/move phone data and files - contacts, photos, music, calendars - from one phone - like a BB, iPhone or WinMo - to an Android phone or device? I'm having the darnest time coming up with phrases that people who are searching for such an app would use? Thanks
Competitive Research | | holdtheonion0