Your opinion on this opportunity's difficulty?
-
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:
- Go on engineering blogs for keywords
- Use Wordstream's Keyword Suggestion Tool for ideas around it
- Use Google Keyword Tools for keywords above 50 searches in direct match
- Use SEOmoz Keyword difficulty report, looking more deeply at keywords under <50%
- 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
-
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 think that you are putting way too much analysis into this. (Engineers tend to do such things
Here is my suggestion....
Go build your kickass tool. Place it on a page with a title tag and optimization that describe that tool perfectly.
Be sure that you explain it clearly and perfectly. Be sure that it works flawlessly (Engineers will pick at very tiny problems
When it is ready for use and for other engineers (who will try to break it) then share the URL with some engineers who blog. Share it on a couple of engineering forums.
If your tool is really valuable then taking the steps above will be like throwing gasoline on a fire. You will have people calling and emailing to ask if they can have the calculations so they build the same tool on their own sites. People will be writing to you asking you to explain the calculations.
Don't launch prematurely. You will get their good attention the first time but not on a relaunch or a repair.
Good luck.
(I hope that you already have some highly related content and content that supports people who will use this tool. If they see your tool AND other information then your site can become a "go to place" for that topic. If you don't have other related and supporting information try to get it ASAP... preferably before launch.)
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Understanding Moz Opportunity and Potential
Hello Friends - I am just learning Moz tool via Udacity I was doing some analysis using Moz for the following keyword "digital marketing courses" This is the result what I get. Moz tells me the opportunity is 83. This is a high number and does not reflect what I see when I search in google. The page is full of ads. A organic click is going to be very difficult.
Moz Pro | | udacity-singhvishu
Moz potential also says 79 - again a high number which does not seem to be the reality. It is going to be very difficult for a new service to rank higher. I have fundamental doubt on whether SEO will work on keywords which are in high demand by paid ads. more that 30% of the real estate on screen gets taken by paid ads. Even if one searches for long tail key word the story remains same. Does SEO really have a chance to compete with paid ads for business driving keywords? pub0 -
Comparing New vs. Old Keyword Difficulty Scores
We've had a few questions regarding the new Keyword Difficulty score used in Keyword Explorer, and how it compares to the old score in our stand-alone Keyword Difficulty tool. Specifically, people want to know why some scores are much lower using the new tool. There a general discussion of the math behind the tool in this post: Keyword Research in 2016: Going Beyond Guesswork One of the problems we had with the original Keyword Difficulty score is that, because it's based on our Page Authority (PA) score and PA tends toward the middle of the 0-100 range, Difficulty got a bit bunched up. A Difficulty score in the low-to-mid 20s (via the old tool) is actually very low. So, we set out to re-scale the new tool to broaden that score and use more of the 0-100 range. We hoped this would allow more granularity and better comparisons. While the logic is sound, we're concerned that we may have been too aggressive in this re-scaling, given recent feedback. So, we're going to be analyzing a large set of keywords (anonymously, of course) that people have run through the tool to see if too many Difficulty scores seem too low. If they do, we'll make some adjustments to the math. In the meantime, please be aware that low scores may appear lower in the new tool and very high scores may appear higher. We wanted to address some of the limitations in V1 and feedback over the years, and so the old and new scores really can't be compared directly in a meaningful way. We're sorry for any confusion that has caused, and we will re-evaluate if necessary.
Moz Pro | | Dr-Pete3 -
SeoMoz reporting 301 redirects I can't find
So I'm trying to find a bunch of redirects that SeoMoz is reporting that were created by Wordpress but I can't seem to find. I'm finding a bunch of redirects FROM pages like this: www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/mimbo/page-name.com redirecting to www.mysite.com/page-name.com Anybody have any idea how I can track down the offending page that has a link to that url. I took a look at my templates and content with the pages and can't seem to find anything that would create it.
Moz Pro | | brandco0 -
SEOmoz report vs. Google's Algo
Hello, I got an SEOmoz Report for one of our clients and the report is showing these pages and many more others as duplicate page content. Thing is the page content is not duplicate however there is very little data differentiating the contents. My question is does Google see the following pages contents as duplicate? because seomoz does. http://dallastxlofts.com/blog/2012/06/using-a-loft-for-commercial-or-office-space.html/img_9632/ http://dallastxlofts.com/blog/2012/08/newly-renovated-in-victory-park.html/3-2/ http://dallastxlofts.com/blog/2012/08/pedestrian-friendly-uptown-west-village.html/attachment/18/ http://dallastxlofts.com/blog/2012/06/using-a-loft-for-commercial-or-office-space.html/img_4322/ http://dallastxlofts.com/blog/2012/08/historic-deep-ellum-lofts.html/2012-08-18-11-24-30/ http://dallastxlofts.com/blog/2012/08/pedestrian-friendly-uptown-west-village.html/attachment/13/ http://dallastxlofts.com/blog/2012/06/using-a-loft-for-commercial-or-office-space.html/842-4/
Moz Pro | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
I'm trying to get 'tigi bed head' up most of all...
I'm 87th ish with this term and I don't know why?! crap result I know. With every other phrase I use 'cheap tigi bed head' 'buy tigi bed head online' etc etc, we are on the first page all day long, pls help this worthy cause? I am www.thehairroom.co.uk, free hair products for the best results. Thank You.
Moz Pro | | smoki6660 -
I have a Rel Canonical "notice" in my Crawl Diagnostics report. I'm presuming that means that the spider has detected a rel canonical tag and it is working as opposed to warning about an issue, is this correct?
I know this seems like a really dumb question but the site I'm working on is a BigCommerce one and I've been concerned about canonicalisation issues prior to receiving this report (I'm a SEOmoz pro newbie also!) and I just want to be clear I am reading this notice correctly. I presume this means that the site crawl has detected the rel canonical tag on these pages and it is working correctly. Is this correct?? Any input is much appreciated. Thanks
Moz Pro | | seanpearse0 -
How can I Pull OSE Data for Multiple URL's at once
I'm putting together a link prospecting csv (very basic/simple). I'm doing my own manual hunting for link prospects and compiling them in a list in that excel doc. Once I'm done with that, I want to pull OSE data on a larger scale (MozRank, PA, DA, etc.). I know Niel Bosma's SEO tools for Excel exists, but I have a Mac, and it's not available for that. And I can't really pay for any of the big tools right now (ie BuzzStream). Does anybody know of a good tool or way of going about pulling this data in a way that will save time? As opposed to pulling data for each URL one by one. ANY tips would be GREATLY appreciated.
Moz Pro | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
SEOmoz Crawl CSV in Excel: already split by semicolon. Is this Excel's fault or SEOmoz's?
If for example a page title contains a ë the .csv created by the SEOmoz Crawl Test is already split into columns on that point, even though I haven't used Excel's text to columns yet. When I try to do the latter, Excel warns me that I'm overwriting non-empty cells, which of course is something I would rather not do since that would make me lose valuable data. My question is: is this something caused by opening the .csv in Excel, or earlier in the process when this .csv is created?
Moz Pro | | DeptAgency2