my site gets pushed back for lower difficulty, higher volume keywords, which literally pisses me off.
We often focus too much on competitive metrics and not enough about the presentation that we are making to our visitors. Many search professionals believe that google is looking at the behavior of visitors, how long they stay, how far they scroll, the number who click in, do they bookmark, do they share your site with friends... and more important... Are They Asking for You By Name in navigational and domain queries?
This is much of the "machine learning" that Google has patented and what they say they are using in some of their new algorithms. I've believe that this has been important for a long time and was willing to stick my neck out about it and bet my ranch a long time ago.
lower difficulty, higher volume keywords
The numbers you are looking at are not based upon what visitors think of your site and how they behave, they are based upon completely different things. I don't think that Moz or others who publish keyword difficulty estimations have very good abilities for determining how visitors behave. Google is the one who has that data, both from the SERPs and from Chrome, and from the engagement platforms like bookmarks and + and other things that they either control or can count.
Keyword difficulty is a brute force metric. Visitor satisfaction is much more discerning and very hard to measure.
which literally pisses me off.
How do your visitors feel when they try to use your website? Compare your site to the sites at the top of the SERPs. Do they have better content? Do they give a better visitor experience? Do they have a broader menu? Is their design better for navigation, comfort of reading, scanning, sharing, and all of the things that people want to do on a website. How do visitors feel when they click in.
Lots of people believe that it is really easy to earn good metrics. Really easy. But it is harder than Hell to please your visitor. How are you doing there? Take a look at be honest.