What Is Keyword Difficulty And How To Overcome It

Keyword Difficulty is the phrase we like to use to describe the level of effort required to rank a website organically for its target keyword. I am going to illustrate how Keyword Difficulty impacts on-page SEO efforts and how to find keywords that have a much lower keyword SEO difficulty. It is a good idea to start your  website on-page SEO strategy by analyzing the chosen keyword. The goal is to avoid wasting time and money on keywords that are difficult to rank for. Many of the top 100 keywords in any given industry already enjoy a high search demand and have become very competitive. Websites that effectively optimize for the top 100 keywords in their industry, stand a good chance to solidify their presence on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for those top keyword searches. The chance to break through the top 10 listings on the SERPs has become a difficult battle. As a result, these competitive keywords face a very high keyword difficulty. These developments demand a new approach when choosing a keyword you want to rank well for organically.

Tools That Analyze Keyword Difficulty

There are several good tools that provide insights into keyword ranking difficulty. They analyze search volume, competition, and opportunities to rank for a given keyword.  However, these metrics are relative as they cannot gage your own domain authority on a given topic.

What Type Of Keywords Should You Look For?

The goal of your keyword research is to find high traffic keywords with high conversion potential that have a chance to rank in the top 10 of the SERPs. The best scenario would be to find keywords with high search volume but low competition. The idea is to attract qualified traffic with a strong probability to result in conversions.

Keywords With Lower SEO Difficulty And Better Opportunity To Rank

reduced keyword difficulty at the long tail end of the search demand curveThe search demand curve graph identifies search volume and specificity of keywords. Even though broader keywords (i.e. fat head keywords) display less search volume, they are in high demand. Conversely, more specific search phrases (i.e. long tail keywords) display lower demand, yet they make up 70% of all search traffic. We see there is hope in long tail keywords, i.e. search phrases. Long tail keywords have the potential to reduce keyword difficulty and stand better chances to attain good ranking results on the SERPs.

How To Craft Long Tail Keywords

example how the keyword search demand curve favors long tail keywords to benefit from reduced keyword difficulty Long tail keywords offer a great variety of phrase combinations. These search phrases can be tailored to a specific topic, niche, or product. For example, the fat head keyword “sleeping bag” might be too broad. A more targeted phrase could be “coleman camping sleeping bag.” An even more specific long tail keyword could be “cold weather coleman camping sleeping bag.” The specificity of long tail keywords increases their relevancy for highly qualified traffic and can result in great conversions. There are case studies available that discuss how fine tuning long tail keywords to a specific niche and user intent can lead to highly relevant search matches.

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Comments

  1. Ricky Shah says

    It’s actually a great and useful piece of information about keyword difficulty.you also explained very well about long tail keywords and keyword research.

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