Are we actually getting accurate data on keyword volumes from Moz (or other sources)?
-
I have a client who does patio furniture repair and restoration. When performing keyword research in Moz for terms like "patio furniture repair" I see that only 11-50 people in the entire US are searching for this term according to the Moz data. However, running an Adwords campaign currently and our top keyword is the phrase match for "patio furniture repair" which has generated over 100 clicks in just a couple of months in ONE county.
Is there a better way to research more accurate results on search volume estimates? This makes organic SEO and keyword targeting hard!
Thanks,
Ricky
-
I feel that the search volume shown in MOZ is generally low compared to other sources. I feel it is more accurate with search terms that have a lot of volume, but in search terms that are under 1000 searches a month, I start to have a lot of problems with the data. Many times there is no search volume data at all for lower volume keywords which get just a few hundred searches per month or less.
Problems with the volume data effect almost everything else in Moz so I hope MOZ sees this and tries very hard to correct these issues.
-
Hey there, Ricky! Tawny from Moz's Help Team here.
We use several different sources for our search volume data, including Keyword Planner and anonymized clickstream data. From there, we built a model that predicts the search volume range a keyword is likely to have with ~95% accuracy. For the nitty gritty details explaining how the model works, check out this article: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/sweating-details-google-keyword-tool-volume
You can read more about the Keyword Explorer Metrics in our Guide.
I've also got a few resources about keyword research and keyword strategy that might be helpful:- The Keyword Research guide is a really good place to start if you need a refresher course!
- There's a great post in the Moz Blog about creative free keyword research
- If you're looking for insight into competitor keywords, try heading over to Open Site Explorer, pop in your competitor's URL, and take a look at the anchor text associated with their links. This can be a huge indicator of targeted keywords, which you might now decide to compete for!
- If you're curious how well you (or a competitor) is ranking for a certain keyword, or how well a certain page on your site ranks, hop on over to the Rank Tracker
- Use the Keyword Explorer tool to check how hard or easy it will be to rank for a certain keyword. Words with a higher difficulty score are harder to achieve rankings for, so some users will target lower difficulty words first and later tackle the hard ones. Something different works for everyone, though!
- When you've got your keywords and are ready to optimize your pages for them, check out the On-Page Grader. This will check a particular URL for optimization with a particular keyword or keyword phrase, and offer a grade based on how well it fares, as well as suggestions for improvement.
I hope that helps! If you've still got questions about the volumes you're seeing, feel free to shoot us a note at [email protected] and we'll do our best to answer all your questions in more depth.
-
Kris beat me to it! I was coming here to say basically the same thing.
-
Something that has tricked me up a few times in the past is the difference between broad and exact search volume. Every time you compare MOZ keyword volume to Google, just know there is a slight +/- in volume. Plus, its never an exact science, rather than an estimation based on historical data from Google...and subsequently, MOZ.
If ever in doubt, I would utilize Google's data over any other source of data.
-
Hi Martijn,
Yep noticed that with Google the keyword data is much different than Moz, but I've read (I believe here on Moz) that the GOOGLE data is apparently unreliable. Seems a lot more accurate than the Moz data at this point.
Guess I'll go back to using Google Keyword Planner for keyword research
-
Hi Ricky,
That's weird. If I put the same keyword in the Google Adwords Keyword Tool it comes up with an Average Monthly Searches of 1000, see: https://monosnap-m.s3.amazonaws.com/Keyword_Planner__Google_AdWords_2017-08-04_09-41-28.png . While it could be that some other keywords have been grouped in that it seems that the data you've seen before is far off.
Martijn.
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
-
How do you use Moz to research related topics?
Like most of the folks here I'm a pretty big fan of the content that comes out through Whiteboard Fridays, and I try to apply the things I learn, but one of the WBF videos that I'm following along with does not do a stellar job of detailing execution using Moz KW Explorer. https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/related-topics-in-seo-whiteboard-friday Now granted, this came out in 2016, but I still feel the core principle and strategy results in a higher quality piece of content and is still relevant to discovering and understanding searcher task completion requirements, and drafting content that fulfills those requirements. Towards the end Rand sort of mentions that you'll be able to do this with KW explorer, but I'm not really seeing the functionality. The steps I followed were to enter in the keyword in kw explorer, went to keyword suggestions, and selected "based on closely related topics" and ran it, but received no suggestions - came up blank. I then selected "based on broadly related topics" and the same thing happened. I tried this out with the keyword r22, keeping it very broad to start but that didn't seem to work. So what do you all do to perform this sort of research within Moz? Or do you even feel it's relevant in today's Rank Brain driven world?
Moz Bar | | brettmandoes0 -
Does "Disallow: /xmlrpc.php" in robots.txt affect moz tools ability to fetch DA?
Just checked a website for Domain Authority using Moz' tool, however it returned 1 for DA, which should be unlikely. I have been trying to find the problem and found "Disallow: /xmlrpc.php" in robots.txt. Could this affect Moz' tools ability to get the required data?
Moz Bar | | Foli0 -
Moz Site Crawl Test 404
Crawled site a number of times using Crawl Test. Its reporting 404's from files that are actually present. What do you make of this? Justin
Moz Bar | | GrouchyKids0 -
Is Moz going to provide mobile ranking tools?
With the mobilegeddon update quickly approaching us on April 21, I wanted to know if Moz is going to provide any insight into mobile rankings vs. desktop rankings? Are there any other tools we can use to benchmark and gain insight into this kind of data?
Moz Bar | | jgrammer2 -
I want to uninstall the Moz SEO toolbar. How do I do this?
I installed the Moz toolbar and I don't understand it and it covers up important parts of websites and makes them inaccessible. I want to get it off my computer. I installed it in chrome. How do I get it off?
Moz Bar | | Bonnie761 -
How can the Moz Page Grader support a 'keyword portfolio' approach?
I used to use the Page Grader tools to support the old philosophy of one page - one keyword. With more focus now being given to a portfolio of keywords around a topic area - what would be a good approach to using the page grader tool? Obviously getting A's and B's is impossible for multiple keywords. The only way i've seen suggested in moz tools to help with keyword portfolios is to use labels in the ranking measurement and then find averages of the results. Are there other strategies that I can try?
Moz Bar | | AISFM0 -
Keyword Grader & OmniExplorer_Bot Question
I found this in several of my clients Robots.txt "User-Agent: OmniExplorer_Bot Disallow: /" Right now I cannot grade any of them that are on a particular platform that has that written in. Would this block the keyword grader? Thanks!
Moz Bar | | OOMDODigital0 -
New website launched 3 weeks ago but not sure what Moz Analysis is telling me?
Hi 3 weeks ago I re-branded and completely changed the proposition on www.over50choices.co.uk as the URL is appropriate to the proposition. And whilst it looks good I am unsure what the Moz Tools are telling me, other than it doesnt look good? There should be about 163 pages, but Moz reports over 500 due to i think so many 301's? Plus most pages under the HTTP Status reports No Data! Most of the the 404's are from the old site. Webmaster Tools say 163 pages submitted but only 2 indexed, but on site:search it says about 117 but 40+ of these are the old site. It looks a mess...! Sleepless nights have started - any thoughts!? Thanks Ash
Moz Bar | | AshShep10