Keyword Difficulty

How do you analyze keyword difficulty?

Previous to a few days ago, I analyzed keyword difficulty by using seomoz and their "keyword difficulty tool". I would only go for keywords that had a rating of 40% or less.

By reading this forum I have discovered most people use the method of looking at how many competing pages there are for a keyword. I find this interesting.

Previous to all of this I would look at the PR of the top 4 in Google page 1. If the top 4 listings had PR of 4+ I would not go after that keyword.

Each of these methods is backed up by credible individuals. Yet sometimes they conflict with each other. What do you think is the best and why? Also answers/discussion is greatly appreciated. Thanks

I pretty much use your method by using seamoz and their tool. Sometimes I would go back to the method you previously used.

When you use seomoz, at what point do you personally deem a keyword difficult? What work do you need to put in to rank for a keyword at say 40% verses 50%? I always found this very vague.

Windmill said:

Previous to all of this I would look at the PR of the top 4 in Google page 1. If the top 4 listings had PR of 4+ I would not go after that keyword.

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Why?

If you stick to that strategy are you going to miss out a lot of good and easy opportunities. Just because a domain has a high PR does not mean that it's hard to beat. A lot of high PR sites have really bad onsite and off site SEO.

Just my experience

Good luck with your project.

I suggest you to read the thread "step-by-step keyword research for newbies" posted by IamNRE. That gives you a clear idea of what factors to analyze for keyword difficulty.

cyberzilla said:

I suggest you to read the thread "step-by-step keyword research for newbies" posted by IamNRE. That gives you a clear idea of what factors to analyze for keyword difficulty.

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I already read this but I probably missed something. I will go back and reread it again. I'm more interested in the why another method is better than seomoz's because that one often conflicts with IamNRE's method. Its still an excellent guide though! Thanks

Chrisss said:

Why?

If you stick to that strategy are you going to miss out a lot of good and easy opportunities. Just because a domain has a high PR does not mean that it's hard to beat. A lot of high PR sites have really bad onsite and off site SEO.

Just my experience

Good luck with your project.

Click to expand...

Thanks

I initially did this because there was a niche keyword blog class I took. I think their names are Court and Mark or something? This is how they analyzed the competition. Its not about the PR of the domain as it is the PR of the URL thats ranking. They said that anything that is PR5 in the top 4 of google is going to be extremely hard to beat and not worthwhile. Some big SEO expert "grizzly" kept recommending them so I took it up.

I do understand their way of thinking and in some cases does it makes sense.

I just recommend that you don't skip a good keyword, just because a few of your competitors have a high PR for the site. At least use 2 min to look over the onsite SEO before moving on.

There is no easy and quick way to find a good kw. I use a lot of time on finding a good keyword, because the initial work, will save me for a lot of time, when I'm going to work on my backlinking.

And no matter how many blogs and forum posts you read - then will you make mistakes. The good thing is however, that every time you make a mistake, you gain a knowledge, that you will benefit from in your next project.

Cool. I will definitely do that from now on. Thanks

The way through which you are trying to solve your problem is almost right.

You need to take a look at all the factors and check the page of the competition itself, Like amazon for example has high ranking pges but is easy to out rank because they dont do seo for keywords. they just have so much content they get high page rank but are easy to beat