Same Competitiveness, But Different Ranking Difficulty?
I had a client ask me an interesting question today and decided to share the answer with all of Digitalpoint. The question was “Why are certain keywords harder to rank than others with the same amount of search results?”. This is actually a great question to ask, you’ll see a lot of SEO consultants trying to sell their service based on the amount of search results the keyword has; making this informational vital to not getting duped or taken.
You should always remember that just because two keywords have the same amount of search results doesn’t mean they are equally hard to rank. Many SEO consultants will use this type of factor to rate how much they charge. Below are two different factors that came make keywords with the same search results amount have different difficulties.
Competitors - Now, you can have a keyword with 500,000 search results and 1,000,000 search results; the real difficulty factor lies in how competitive they really are. The keyword with only 500,000 search results might have more SEO knowledge webmasters who put forth more effort in consolidating their rankings, verses the 1,000,000 search results competitors might not be as knowledgable with SEO and lack any actual optimization. Remember, review the first 3-5 pages of competitors to see where they stand SEO wise.
Search Volume - Remember, just because a keyword phrase has 1,000,000+ search results doesn’t mean it gets tons of daily searches. Using tools like Google Adwords External Keyword Tool and Google Trends is a great way to compare keywords and view what type of search volume they get on a day to day to month by month basis. Why would you pay top dollar for a so called competitive keyword if it only gets 5,000 searchs a month?
These two factors alone aren’t the only reason why search results can be more difficult than an other with the same amount of results, but they are they key 2 factors you can use when choosing a keyword to work with and also when choosing to pay a so called SEOs rates.