Crucial steps in SEO to help you find your audience
Analyzing keyword difficulty and search volume are two crucial steps in SEO to help you choose keywords that are both relevant to your audience and achievable to rank for. They tell you how hard it is to rank for a keyword and how many people are searching for it.
Keyword Difficulty (KD):
This measures how challenging it is to rank on the first page of Google for a specific keyword. It's usually represented by a numerical score (often on a scale of 0-100, but sometimes other scales). A lower score means it's easier to rank; a higher score, much harder.
How to Understand It: KD considers factors like:
Domain Authority of Ranking Pages: Are top results from powerful, established websites (like Wikipedia or Forbes)? These are harder to beat.
On-Page Optimization of Ranking Pages: Are they using the keyword effectively in their titles, descriptions, and content?
Backlinks to Ranking Pages: How many and how high-quality are the links pointing to the top-ranking pages?
Content Quality and Relevance: Is the content on the top pages comprehensive, informative, and engaging?
Example:
Let's say you want to rank for "best running shoes for beginners." After analysis, you find a keyword difficulty score of 75. This suggests that ranking on the first page for this keyword will be very competitive, requiring significant effort and potentially a long time.
Alternatively, "running shoes for beginner women with flat feet" might have a KD score of 30. This indicates it's a less competitive, more niche keyword, potentially easier to rank for.
Search Volume:
This represents the estimated number of times a specific keyword is searched for in a given period (usually monthly) within a particular geographic location. It indicates the potential traffic a keyword can bring.
How to Understand It: Search volume gives you an idea of the keyword's popularity. Higher search volume means more potential traffic, but also usually higher competition.
Example:
The keyword "coffee maker" might have a search volume of 100,000 searches per month. This shows it's a very popular keyword.
However, "pour over coffee maker with gooseneck kettle" might have a search volume of 500 searches per month. While much lower, it's more specific, attracting a highly targeted audience.
How They Work Together:
The ideal keyword is a balance of both. You want a keyword with decent search volume (to bring traffic) but relatively low difficulty (so you have a realistic chance of ranking).
High Volume, High Difficulty: "Weight loss" is a popular search, but ranking is incredibly difficult due to intense competition. You likely won't see significant results quickly.
Low Volume, Low Difficulty: "Handmade birdhouses for purple martins in Ohio" might be easy to rank for, but the low search volume means you'll get very little traffic.
Medium Volume, Medium Difficulty: "Best ergonomic office chair under $300" could be a good target. It has reasonable search volume and a difficulty level that might be achievable with effort.
In short, you aim for keywords where the search volume is high enough to make the effort worthwhile, and the difficulty is low enough that you have a reasonable chance of achieving a good ranking within a reasonable timeframe. By analyzing both, you can make data-driven decisions about which keywords to target, increasing your chances of SEO success.