Everyone around the office knows I’m an SEOmoz homer. I love their tools and trust their data, and this extends to their research tools. We use SEOmoz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool during our Keyword Analysis phase quite a bit. We use the number it produces to help us know if how competitive the phrase will be, and how long it will take us to rank there. It really helps us to manage our expectations and determine the effort and time required to dominate for a particular phrase.
If the number is ranked below 40% then we know we will be able to dominate in a fairly short period of time. Between 40-60% and it will require a significant effort, with a lot of content and link building required. Over 60% will require a long time (8 months or so) and a significant investment of time each month.
In this short tutorial I walk you through the tool and show you a thing or two that I pay particular attention to.
If you use a similar tool, I’d love to hear about it– and do a review. Feel free to add any recommendations you may have.