by SEO is vital for your business to rank well on the results page. Keywords play a huge role in SEO performance. However, to find a suitable keyword, one must consider both volume and difficulty. Is there a perfect sweet spot between these two factors?
A study shows that 93% of online trips start with a search engine. Therefore, a well-thought-out search engine marketing strategy will help drive potential customers in your direction.
To recap, keywords help search engine crawlers determine what your webpage is about. When a user enters a keyword, the search engine includes the webpage in the user’s search result page (SERP). This is why the right keywords are so important for search engine optimization.
There are two main factors for keywords:
- Keyword volume – the total number of searches on a search engine per month
- Keyword Difficulty, a metric used to determine the difficulty of achieving a high ranking for a given keyword
The higher the volume, the harder it is to appear in the top 10 SERPs.
When doing keyword research, one must ask the question, “Are we able to rank high enough for this keyword to achieve any of the search volumes?”.
You want to attract enough visitors to your website. Therefore, your keyword must have sufficient search volume. However, if the difficulty is too high, you won’t see the right results. Is there a “sweet spot” between search volume and difficulty, and if so, what does that “sweet spot” look like? To answer this question, we must first take a look at the factors that determine keyword quality.
Keyword Difficulty for Beginners Explained
As mentioned earlier, keyword difficulty determines the difficulty of ranking high in the SERPs. It gives a value of 1-100% and shows how difficult it is to take the top 100 position from one of your competitors. The higher this percentage is for your keyword, the harder it is. There are four categories that you can categorize keyword difficulty into.
- Over 80%: It makes no sense for new websites to bet on these keywords. These are the most difficult keywords. You need a lot of backlinks and invest a lot in SEO to get a top 20 position.
- 60-79%: These keywords are of medium difficulty. It’s still difficult to get into the top 20 Google results. However, if your website has quality content and relevant backlinks, over time it is possible to outperform the competition.
- 40-59%: These keywords have the potential to rank high in the SERP. For starters, these keywords have good potential.
- Below 40%: These keywords make it easy to rank high. However, the search volume will be lower. The keywords are likely too specific or too niche.
Several tools help determine the difficulty level of a particular keyword. Ahrefs is a free, easy-to-use web utility. In addition, Google also has a program that will help you analyze the keyword you want.
From this, we can conclude that the optimal range for keyword difficulty is between 40 and 59 percent. But what kind of volume can we expect from it?
Keyword volume explained for beginners
The keyword volume indicates how many searches per month are carried out for a keyword. It’s a crucial part of a keyword. If your keyword doesn’t have volume, no one will search for your keyword and find your content. When a keyword has too much volume, you have to deal with extremely high competition. So is there an optimal volume for a keyword? The simplest answer to the question “What is the optimal volume for a keyword?” is between 100 and 1000 searches per month. However, as mentioned earlier, many different factors affect the results.
- Volume is affected by the industry you are in
- The size of your website affects the results
A balance between low and medium-volume search terms allows you to compete in the SERPs with targeted search terms. There are several tools to help you determine traffic for your keyword. An example is Google Trends. Here you get a clear overview of the number of searches, also per region.
It is worth noting that keyword volume can be divided into two categories:
- Seasonal: Seasonal keywords are searched at specific times of the year.
- Evergreen: Evergreen keywords are regularly searched.
(Periwinkle Keyword)
(seasonal keyword)
Domain authority is one of the factors that, if high enough, allows for achieving higher volume. Read more about this below.
In summary, the optimal volume of a keyword is between 100 and 1000 searches per month. However, many factors play a role in keyword volume that can be achieved. The domain authority plays a major role in this.
Domain Authority explained for beginners
Domain authority is a metric used to determine the likelihood that your website will rank high in the SERPs. Domain authority is based on several factors. The total number of backlinks and the engaging content affect the result. There are several tools that you can use to calculate your score on a scale of 1 to 100. Moz is the original developer of this metric and came up with a tool that calculates how high your domain scores are. You can try this tool for free on Moz’s website. In addition, Semrush is also a paid tool. The higher the domain authority, the stronger your website. This gives you an advantage over your competitors if your domain authority is higher than your competitors. This could allow you to aim for higher volume and difficulty in keywords since your site is strong.
last words
In summary, a keyword difficulty of 59% or less combined with a search volume of 100-1000 searches per month is optimal for new businesses. However, over time, it is possible to target higher volume, higher difficulty keywords. As your site traffic increases and domain authority increases, you can aim for higher difficulty levels and search volumes over time. In summary, there is no fixed sweet spot between volume and difficulty. When searching for keywords, several factors play a role, which varies depending on the domain.
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