How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

How to Determine SEO Keyword Difficulty and If You Should Optimize

Assessing the difficulty of a keyword is one of the most difficult phases of the research process for keywords. A variety of available software tools that are available (such like Ahrefs, Mangool Keyword Tool, SEMrush) offer the assessment of the difficulty of keywords using their own internal metrics. However, none have the exact formula to determine the right time and place optimizing your website to certain keywords. To determine the difficulty of a keyword properly, you must combine the marketing, semantic, and computer data and then make use of your intuition in the process of evaluating. However, let’s take a deeper glance at the entire procedure. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

What is Keyword Difficulty?

Let’s first attempt to define the concept of keyword difficulty. It is often known as the keyword contest, keywords’ difficulty is a term used in the field of the field of search engines (SEO) is a measurement of how difficult it is going to become to be ranked for a certain keyword. The determination of keyword difficulty can help you determine whether or not you should create content specifically for a specific search term. However it should be noted that keyword difficulty isn’t necessarily a metric that is purely numerical. It’s more of a mixture of humanistic and mathematical analysis of the keywords that are within our range of competitiveness. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Keyword Difficulty Software Approach

How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty – There are many tools available on the market that let you measure difficulty in a keyword. Although they could be useful for evaluating the effectiveness of a phrase however, it is crucial to note that they’re just an element in the overall mix necessary to determine the degree of competition a particular keyword is.

Here are the top keywords software tools to help you overcome difficulties:

1. Google Keyword Planner gives you the search volume for the keyword, along with the the competition for that keyword. In this instance the competition is determined on the amount and quality of the pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements for the targeted keyword. Because the keyword planner is based solely on PPC metrics, it’s not as useful to SEO goals. However looking at the volume of searches and competition could come in useful when assessing the competition of a term. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

1. Ahrefs calculates the difficulty of a keyword using a set of domains that refer at each page that appear within the first 10 Google results. It allows you to estimate an approximate amount of referring domains required in order to rank for a particular keyword. But it doesn’t take into the quality of your website or the importance of your website to the keyword in question. Also, it doesn’t consider the value of linking pages. That’s the reason Ahrefs is mostly useful as an alternative measurement. It is possible to learn more about Ahrefs in this article. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

• Ahrefs SEO Toolbar

To analyze our data for analysis, we’ll use Ahrefs ‘ SEO Toolbar It is available to install in FireFox or Google Chrome. It is necessary to establish an free Ahrefs account before you can use the tool. The toolbar allows you to examine specific search engine result pages, as well as the information about links for each domain and page: – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

• Domain Rating (DR)
• URL Rating (UR)
• Estimated Organic Search Traffic (ST)
• Keywords that rank high (KW)
• Referring domains (RD)
• Backlinks number (BL)

1. SEMrush is a different paid application that makes use of data from backlinks to determine keyword’s difficulty. It’s useful, but has the same limitations as Ahrefs. More details about it here.
2. Google’s Mangools Keyword tool estimates the difficulty of keywords by using the metrics offered by link-building tools such Moz and Majestic. The calculation is primarily based on link building metrics, and not on the relevancy of the particular page. For more information about how Mangools determines the difficulty of a keyword go here. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Important Takeaways While there’s software which estimates difficulty of keywords however, it considers the link-building information, leaving out the significance of the particular page. It isn’t a the sole measure of keyword difficulty. In order to accurately assess the difficulty of keywords, you’ll need to look at something else. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

3 factors that determine the Keyword Toughness

How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty – To determine the real significance of a term it is necessary to consider different factors that impact the position of the chosen pages in the search engine result page (SERPs). These include:

1. Content of web pages which appear on the top results of Google’s search engine (Yes Google’s second result could be equally effective in searching for relevant keywords, but we’ll come back to with it in a bit) – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty
2. The intent of the search engine user (We must know what type of content Search Engine User expect after selecting a specific keywords)
3. Authority of the page and Domain as well as links’ popularity (Consider how many links a certain page get, and how high the quality of them) – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Factor 1 Content of pages in Google’s top 20 results.

Examining the content on the two first pages of Google lets you evaluate the chances of achieving a position within the top 10 very precisely. The results of the first 10 positions will give you an idea of the kind of content Google requires to attract traffic to the search engine. Pages from the 11-20th position can be a great source of newly developed content which can assist you in discovering new trends. Sometimes, an emerging page on the second page could provide us with more data to study than pages from the top 10 positions. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

“Traditional” and “old-school” SEO focused on analysing the most common SEO elements, such as keywords in titles tags H1 URL, H2, and keywords within the text (especially when it comes to the beginning). However it is becoming more difficult to analyze the changes in Google’s algorithm (especially following Pandaand Hummingbird changes) this kind of analysis becomes outdated.

Instead of analyzing the keyword position it is better to look at the contents of the webpage and determine what type of content has been being published, and the actual content on that particular page. Does the content come from an author who is trustworthy? Are you able to find it in depth? Does it specifically address the subject you are interested in or is it more of an article that is generic? These are all questions you should be asking yourself as you go through the Google results review. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Example:

Let’s consider the word “office desks” as an illustration to illustrate the concept of analysis of content.

“Office Desk” SERP (USA, NYC) – First Three Results

• The samples of the analysis were developed in May 2020 and may differ from the results currently displayed on the search engine results pages. They may also include the local NYC pages, since the research was conducted through the use of an NYC IP address. They are, however, adequate for explanation reasons. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

The No. 1 result (https://www.officefurniture.com/Office-Desks) managed to get the first position, in spite of having rather low domain rating (DR 42). The site’s written explanation about”Office Desks,” and a description of “Office Desks” category, and a number of hyperlinks to subcategories. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

What’s crucial in this case, is the presence of a lengthy descriptions of the class which is definitely valued by Google: – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

“Office desks” SERP, second Page (USA, NYC)

It’s also fascinating to check out page 2 of Google results which includes numerous local websites that offer workplace furniture within NYC. The domain ranking of the websites is very poor, but they are able to show up on the second page of Google. It is possible that with stronger link-building campaigns, they might even be among the top 10 results of Google. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Let’s look on the exemplary structure of https://d2officefurniturenyc.com/ . It’s a traditional website with a presentation page that has textual content mixed in with images. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

The result of this search tells us that if we’re marketing a local website that is specialized for office furniture, we need not be worried about competition from giant online retailers. Google offers a place for local offices desk stores as well. It should be not forgotten that Google will display city-specific results for only specific IPs that are associated with the city. In our case , the IP originates in New York City, so Google shows NYC offices, desks and stores. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Key Takeaways:

• It is crucial to search at the quality and nature of the content that is displayed on Google First 20 results.
• Examining the content of pages of Top 10 10 may give you an idea of what type of content will work best.
• The results of 11-20 can give one an indication of the type of content can be promoted, even with a tiny budget for building links. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Factor 2: Search Engine User’s Intent

In the process of preparing content that will be included on Google’s first page, it’s important to know what type of content the user will be looking for in a particular keyword. There are many different intents in the world, but for now we’ll concentrate on two: – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

1. commercial intent – A person wants to purchase or is planning to purchase something. For instance, “office desks” is one of the keywords closely associated with commercial intention. The best way to satisfy commercial intent is to present an eCommerce website, or a company presentation website (just like the two “Office Desks” websites we analyzed in the first point: – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficultyhttps://www.officefurniture.com/Office-Desks and https://d2officefurniturenyc.com/ )
2. Informational intention The person is searching for information about a certain product, such as “best office desks” keyword is a typical informational keyword. In this scenario, writing an article on a blog or the “ranking page” content would be the most effective method to go about it. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Example:

Let’s see if we can spot the difference in intent with our two keyword phrases: “office desks” and “best office desks”.

Keyword “office desks”

CommentFor”office desks” as a keyword “office desks” only e-commerce-related content is presented on both the primary and second page on Google results. The best way for your website to show up in these results is to present an extensive eCommerce experience or an in-depth overview of your company with top-quality copywriting. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Keyword “best office desks”

Comment For the “best office desks” keyword the goal is to search for information and then navigate the context of the content and through images. Therefore review sites and blogs are the primary kinds of content that appear in Google’s SERPs. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Important takeaway: Check whether the kind of content you’re creating is in line with the type of content that users and search engines anticipate. Avoid using keywords with commercial intent to create informational content. The reverse is also true. Sometimes , it is difficult to be ranked for a commercial keyword even if the content that appears on the SERPs is informative. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Very Important: Beware of being an analytical slave. If you believe you can come up with a unique kind of content that is not yet listed on Google Results, go for it!

Factor 3: Domain and Page Popularity and Authority

The third element of difficulty of keywords is the popularity of the domain and page and authority. In terms of this, you should be able answer the following questions: – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

1. Which number of backlinks or referring domains do the page on the SERP page get?
2. What number of backlinks as well as referring domains do the SERP domain get?
3. What do you think about how good are these backlinks as well as the which domains are the referring ones on each of the pages? – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty
4. How closely related are the backlinks of each page? (If we look at the term “office desks” then how many of the links are from websites that discuss “furniture?)

The positive side is that the three initial queries can easily be solved with Ahrefs software which is an excellent toolbar that I strongly recommend. It can give you numbers of backlinks (BL) as well as domains that are referred to (RD) and also the generic URL (UR) and the domain rating (DR) that can indicate the quality of hyperlinks that link to a particular website and its domain. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

The downside is that there’s not a software that can analyze the content of websites that are linked to each website around the globe. In the end, based on information from the toolbar, you can evaluate the overall popularity and authority however you don’t take into account “topical” popularity and authority. However, combining the domain and page link as well as authority information with analysis of content and the search intent analysis is sufficient to assess the quality of the keyword. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Final Keyword Difficulty Analysis

Your primary goal in your final review is to find out the number of websites with low authority (domain ranking Ahrefs) websites are listed on the first 20 pages of SERPs. This will help you determine the kind and quality of content required to be ranked in the top 10 and determine the quantity of high-quality links you’ll need be able to get in order to bring organic traffic. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Examples: “Office Desk” Keyword Top four results

Comment: In case of “Office Desk” keyword, we see that even the lower domain-authority website like https://www.officefurniture.com/Office-Desks (domain rating 42) can beat highest domain-authority website (Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Home-Office-Desks/b?ie=UTF8&node=3733671 (domain rating 96) . It is worth noting how the URL Rating of the initial result is 35, whereas the second result has a 40 URL Rating. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Conclusion

However, in the case of content that is focused on office furniture, and link-building campaigns that are based on this specific area, it is possible to rank higher than major players like Amazon as well as Wayfair. In order to rank in the top 10 of the “office desks” keyword, you need to have a website that is extremely relevant for your keyword (like https://www.officefurniture.com), with a proper copywriting on the category page (like https://www.officefurniture.com/Office-Desks). It is also possible to require around 100 domains that refer at your website and 1000 referring domains at your website, along with an overall score of at minimum 42. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

It is recommended to ensure that the content analysis is in line with the domain and page popularity and analysis of authority. What websites that have an authority that is less or equal to yours rank in the top 20? What kind of structures do they use? Can we compete with sites with even more authority in the domain by creating more relevant content, and linking it to the most relevant sites? – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty – These are queries that need to be addressed when conducting keyword difficulty analysis. Evaluating the difficulty of a keyword is among the most challenging phases of the process of keyword research. There are a variety of software options available that are available (such such as Ahrefs, Mangool Keyword Tool, SEMrush) offer the analysis of difficulty in keywords through the internal metrics of their software. But, none has the exact formula that explains the best time optimizing your website to the specific keyword. To evaluate the difficulty of keywords properly, you must mix the marketing, semantic and technical information, and then make use of your intuition in the process of evaluating. Let’s take a closer review of the whole process.

What is Keyword Difficulty?

Let’s first look at defining keyword difficulty. Sometimes known as keyword competition, the term “keyword difficulty” is a term used in the field of SEO or search engines (SEO) is a measurement of the difficulty it will get to position for a certain keyword. The determination of keyword difficulty can help you determine whether or not you should create specific content for a particular keyword. However it is important to note that keyword difficulty isn’t necessarily a metric that is purely numerical. It’s more a mixture of humanistic and mathematical analysis of the keywords that are within our range of competitiveness. – How To Determine Seo Keyword Difficulty

Keyword Difficulty Software Approach

There are a variety of applications available that let you measure the difficulty of a keyword. Although they could be useful for evaluating the effectiveness of a phrase but it is essential to remember that they’re only an element in the overall mix that determines the level of competition that a certain keyword is.

The following are among the top effective keywords software tools to help you overcome difficulties:

1. Google Keyword Planner provides you with the search volume for the keyword, as well as the competition for keywords. In this instance the competition is based on the quality and quantity in pay-per click (PPC) advertisements that are placed for specific keyword. Because the keyword planner is based exclusively on PPC metrics, it’s not relevant to SEO goals. In the same way looking at the volume of searches and competition could come in useful in determining the level of competition of a particular keyword.

1. Ahrefs calculates the difficulty of a keyword using a set of domains that refer at each page found within the first 10 Google results. It allows you to estimate an approximate amount of referring domains required in order to rank for a particular keyword. But it doesn’t take into account the power of your site, or the importance of your site’s content to the particular keyword. It doesn’t take into account the importance of linked pages. This is why Ahrefs is most useful as an alternative measure. Learn more about Ahrefs here.

• Ahrefs SEO Toolbar

For purposes of analysis We will be using Ahrefs SEO Toolbar It is available to install for FireFox as well as Google Chrome. You’ll have to sign up for an account for free Ahrefs account in order to access this tool. The toolbar lets you look at specific search engine results pages, and also the information about links for each domain and page:

• Domain Rating (DR)
• URL Rating (UR)
• Estimated Organic Search Traffic (ST)
• Keywords that rank (KW)
• Referring domains (RD)
• Backlinks (BL)

1. SEMrush is a paid-for software that utilizes backlinks information to calculate the difficulty of a keyword. It’s helpful, however, it has the same limitations as Ahrefs. More details here.
2. Mangools Keyword Tool is estimating the difficulty of keywords using the metrics offered by link-building tools such as Moz or Majestic. The calculation is primarily based on link building metrics, and not on the relevancy of the particular page. For more details on how Mangools determines difficulty for keywords, click here.

Important Takeaways: Although there are programs that estimate the difficulty of a keyword, it only considers the data on link building, leaving out the significance of the specific page. It’s not a the sole measure of keyword difficulty. To be able to evaluate the difficulty of a keyword, you have to concentrate on something else.

3 factors that determine the Keyword difficulty 3 Factors that Determine the Keyword Difficulty

To determine the actual significance of a term it is necessary to consider different factors that impact the placement of your chosen pages in the search engine result webpages (SERPs). These include:

1. It is the content on websites that appear in google’s Top 20 search results (Yes the Google’s second result could be just as effective for discovering relevant keywords, we’ll get back to with it in a bit)
2. Search Engine User’s Intent (We must be aware of what kind of content Search Engine User expect after selecting a particular search term)
3. Authority of the page and Domain as well as links’ popularity (Consider how many links a particular page get and how good quality they are)

Factor 1 Content of pages that are in Google’s top 20 results.

Examining the content on the two first pages of Google lets you evaluate the chances of achieving a position within the top 10 with precision. The top 10 positions provide an idea of the type of content Google requires in order to increase traffic to the search engine. Pages from the 11-20th position are an excellent source of content that is emerging, which can help you find new trends. Sometimes, a page that is emerging on the second page might provide more data to study than pages that rank in the top 10.

“Traditional” and “old-school” SEO focused on analysing the usual SEO elements, such as keywords in titles tags H1 URL, H2, and the keywords within your content (especially when it comes to the beginning). However it is becoming more difficult to analyze the changes in Google’s algorithm (especially following Panda as well as Hummingbird updates) this kind of analysis is outdated.

Instead of analyzing the keyword position you should examine the contents of the webpage and determine the type of content published and the content on that particular page. Are the articles written by an authentic author? Are you able to find it in depth? Does it specifically address your subject or is it an article that is generic? These are the main ones you need to ask yourself when conducting the Google results review.

Example:

Let’s consider the word “office desks” as an example to demonstrate the concept of analysis of content.

“Office Desk” SERP (USA, NYC) – First Three Results

• The analysis examples were developed in May 2020 and may differ from the results currently displayed on results pages of search engines. They could also include pages that are local to NYC pages, since the analysis was conducted using the use of an NYC IP address. They are, however, adequate for explanation reasons.

The No. 1 result (https://www.officefurniture.com/Office-Desks) managed to get the first position, in spite of having rather low domain rating (DR 42). The page provides a detailed overview for”Office Desks,” and a description of “Office Desks” category, with numerous hyperlinks to the subcategories.

What’s crucial in this case, is the existence of a lengthy explanation of this category which is definitely valued in Google:

“Office desks” SERP, second Page (USA, NYC)

It’s also interesting to check out page two of Google results on page two, which contains many local sites that sell workplace furniture within NYC. The domain score of these websites is very low, yet they are able to be listed on the second page of Google. It is possible that with more effective link-building strategies, they could even be among the top 10 results of Google.

Let’s look on the exemplary structure of https://d2officefurniturenyc.com/ . It’s a classic website with textual content mixed with pictures.

The result of this search tells us that if we’re marketing a local website that is specialized on office tables, then we should not be worried about competition from large online retailers. Google gives a space to local desk stores for office furniture too. It should be taken into consideration that Google will display specific city results for only specific IPs that are associated with the city. In our case , the IP is in New York City, so Google displays NYC office desks and stores.

Key Takeaways:

• It is crucial to search at the quality and type of content displayed on Google First 20 results.
• The content analysis of pages in the Top 10 10 may give you an idea of what type of content will work best.
• The results from 11-20 will give users an insight into the type of content can be promoted with a tiny budget for building links.

Factor 2: Search Engine User’s Intent

In the process of preparing content that will be included on Google’s first page, it’s important to know what type of content a user will be looking for when searching for a specific keyword. There are more intentions out there, but for the moment, we’ll focus on two:

1. Commercial intent – the reason a consumer would like to purchase or is about to purchase something. For instance, “office desks” is one of the keywords closely connected to commercial intention. The best way to satisfy commercial intent is to present an eCommerce website, or a company presentation website (just like the two “Office Desks” websites we analyzed in the first point: https://www.officefurniture.com/Office-Desks and https://d2officefurniturenyc.com/ )
2. Informational intent is when a person is seeking information about a certain product, for instance, the “best office desks” keyword is a typical keyword for informational purposes. In this scenario the publishing of a blog article or an “ranking page” content would be the ideal option.

Example:

Let’s look at the difference in user intention for 2 keywords: “office desks” and “best office desks”.

Keyword “office desks”

Comments: In the search term “office desks” only e-commerce content is displayed, both on the first and two pages of Google results. The best way for your website to be found among these results is to present an extensive eCommerce experience or an in-depth presentation of your company’s offerings, using the best copywriting.

Keyword “best office desks”

Comment: For the “best office desks” keyword the goal is to look for details and browse through relevant content, as well as through images. Thus review websites and blogs are the most popular kinds of content that appear in Google’s SERPs.

The most important thing to consider is whether the kind of content you plan to create corresponds to the expectations of users and search engines. are looking for. Avoid using keywords with commercial intent for informational content , and vice versa. Sometimes , it is difficult to be ranked for a commercial keyword when the majority of content in the SERPs is informative.

Important: Don’t become an analytical slave. If you think you are able to create a new kind of content that is not yet listed on Google Results, go for it!

Factor 3: Domain and Page Popularity and Authority

The third element of difficulty of keywords is popularity of the domain and page as well as authority. In the same way, you must be able answer the following questions:

1. Which number of backlinks or domains every page on SERP web page get?
2. What number of backlinks as well as domains the SERP domain get?
3. Which is the best quality backlinks as well as the the domains that are referred to on each web page?
4. How closely connected are the backlinks to each page? (If we look at the term “office desks” then how many of the links are from websites which talk about “furniture? )

The positive side is that the initial three queries can easily be solved with Ahrefs software, which is a toolbar that I highly recommend. It will provide you with information on the amount of backlinks (BL) as well as the domains with a resemblance (RD) and overall URL (UR) and the domain rating (DR) which show the quality of links that are coming from a specific website and its domain.

The downside is that there’s no software that can analyze the content of websites that link to all websites across the globe. Based on the information from the toolbar, you can evaluate the overall popularity and authority but don’t take into account “topical” popularity and authority. The combination of URL and domain link, as well as authority information with analysis of content and the search intent analysis is sufficient to assess the level of difficulty associated with the selected keyword.

Final Keyword Difficulty Analysis

The primary goal of your last analysis phase is to find out the number of websites with low authority (domain ranking Ahrefs) websites appear on the initial 20 pages of SERPs. This will allow you to determine the kind of and the quality of content required to be ranked in the top 10 and determine the number of high-quality hyperlinks you’ll have to be able to get in order to bring organic traffic.

Examples: “Office Desk” Keyword Four results, the top four

Comment: In case of “Office Desk” keyword, we see that even the lower domain-authority website like https://www.officefurniture.com/Office-Desks (domain rating 42) can beat highest domain-authority website (Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Home-Office-Desks/b?ie=UTF8&node=3733671 (domain rating 96) . Note that the Rating of URL of the first one is 35, whereas the second result has a 40 URL Rating.

Conclusion

However, in the case of specific content on office furniture, and link-building efforts that target this particular area, it is possible to beat out giants like Amazon and Wayfair. In order to rank in the top 10 of the “office desks” keyword, you need to have a website that is extremely relevant for your keyword (like https://www.officefurniture.com), with a proper copywriting on the category page (like https://www.officefurniture.com/Office-Desks). It is also possible to require around 100 domains that refer at your website and 1000 referring domains at your website, along with an overall score of at 42 or more.

It is recommended to align the content analysis to the page’s and domain’s popularity and analysis of authority. Which sites with an authority that is less or equal to yours rank in the top 20? What kind of layout do they employ? Can we compete with sites that have higher domain authority , by creating more relevant content, and linking it to more relevant websites?

These are the questions that must be addressed during the analysis of keyword difficulty.