50 of the Most Competitive SEO Keywords! – Moz
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By: James Norquay
March 14, 2012
50 of the Most Competitive SEO Keywords!
Keyword Research
This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.
Note from editor: the following bullet points are an update to this post, added at 6:05 pm, Seattle time. The original post follows the bullet points.
This analysis was completed using only the SEOmoz keyword difficult tool as a metric: https://moz.com/keyword-difficulty
The keywords selected for the list were taken in via response from over 50 online marketing professional in Australia who submitted the keywords for analysis, I also added to this list with keywords I have also personally worked with in the past..
Other sections of this research were taken from the post: https://moz.com/ugc/the-25-absolute-most-difficult-keywords-to-rank-for-an-seo-nightmare (which formed a top level basis to work from, with the idea in mind to add to this old piece of research conducted.)
Please be aware this is in no means a definitive view of the top keyword in terms of competition, further research needs to be conducted, I have written on advanced keyword research strategies here: https://moz.com/ugc/advanced-seo-keyword-research-tips-and-ideas-14216 many external and internal factors come into play with the strength metrics behind keyword research and the difficulty behind specific search results.
Please be advised that this list is not yet complete it is in fact designed to be added too over time and for a more in depth list to be provided.
Further to this the research is 2 months old now so please be aware some CPC and Keyword Difficulty Score metrics may now be out of date.
So recently I was having a chat to some friends involved in the digital space and they had a question:
“Hey what do you think are the most competitive SEO term in the Australian SEO market?”.
Been involved with internet marketing for almost 8 years now I had a good grasp on some of the most difficult terms, I have personally worked in some of the most difficult markets in both Australia and the United States so I thought what better opportunity than to put together some research in this space.
I had a look on SEOmoz to see if anyone had done something similar in the past, one great post I found was made back in 2010: 25 of the most competitive keywords, yet this post was more targeted to the US market and mostly generic terms, I thought I could expand on this research for my friends at SEOmoz.
I decided I would put some research together to determine 50 of the most competitive SEO Keywords, not just competitive generic keywords but more commercial keywords too. Once I had determined these terms I then used the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool, I also matched up [exact] search traffic from Google Keyword Tool and average CPC data from Google for these terms.
Another important point of this post is that the data is using Google.com.au and terms are more based towards the Australian market.
The research left me with the following table of the top 50 most competitive keywords, I have also included a key to show how competitive each specific keyword are:
Click here to: Download PDF version here of the research above.
Also I would like to note if you feel you know something should be in the list please include it in the comments below with the keyword score.
Also if you want to comment if you have worked in one of the specific niches above let us know in the comments what type of battles and strategy do you use to target such competitive niches?
About James Norquay —
Director at a high performance SEO & Content Agency based in Sydney, Australia Prosperity Media We work in competitive verticals such as Finance, Online Education & Travel. 10+ years experience in SEO and Digital for high growth startups and big business.
Learn how to win more traffic with The SEO Keyword Research Master Guide.
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