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Those are great thoughts, thanks!  There really is no good reason for me not to have a homepage, even if it's simple.

I don't have a homepage built yet, and I suspect that my blog will be my primary SEO draw in the long term, so I'd like to do a 301 redirect (for the techies, I'm doing it in Django with http.HttpResponsePermanentRedirect )

I just wanted to confirm that this wouldn't cause any problems as Google gets used to my page (it's only been up for a few days)

Thanks!

-matt

Gotcha - thanks!

You're absolutely right, engineers do tend to overthink things.  I've realized that it's hard to get a sense of the optimal thinking/doing ratio in a given situation.  When designing bridges, it's very different than when hitting a baseball.  I'm not very good at either of those (don't worry - I attempt either of them either!)

I've launched the site, but as you recommended, I won't go wild publicizing it until it's got a  critical mass of great content.

Thanks,

-matt

I'm building a tool for mechanical engineers, and I'm trying to find 10 low-competition keywords to target in my first few content marketing efforts.  I've got a lot of maneuvering room, so (with a bit of expert advice) I bet I'll be able to find some low-hanging fruit.  Here's what I've found:

Most keywords are seem to have about 40% difficulty.

• What's the highest level of SEOmoz "keyword difficulty" that a new website should reasonably try for?

Some ranking high-authority pages are don't appear to be targeted at the term

• Is it fair to say that I could beat any page with less than a 'C' ranking for on-page optimization?  (Assuming I target the term with general best practices)*

Thanks!

If you're interested, here is my current process:

1. Go on engineering blogs for keywords
2. Use Wordstream's Keyword Suggestion Tool for ideas around it
3. Use Google Keyword Tools for keywords above 50 searches in direct match
4. Use SEOmoz Keyword difficulty report, looking more deeply at keywords under <50%
5. If I can find a top 10 page that's less than 30PA and less than 40DA, or has less than 'C' ranking for on-page optimization, I consider the keyword achievable within 3mo, using general best practices.

*Except for YouTube/Wikipedia/etc