The following video is a snippet taken out from our Long Tail University Course. In it we share the importance of the KC metric and how you can use it to influence your decisions.
If you have a hard time figuring out whether a niche is too competitive for you or not, this post should help you to have a better idea before you start investing your time and money!
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The #1 Keyword Competitiveness Metric Out There
When we are doing keyword research we want to evaluate how competitive the keyword is and make strategic decisions based upon this. Keyword Competitiveness (KC) is a great measure of how difficult it is to rank for a given keyword.
KC is calculated based on a few different metrics that trust-worthy domains have in common, to output a number between 1 and 100, where 100 is the most competitive keyword. KC is one of the main reasons why paid keyword research tools like Long Tail Pro are so much better than the competition.
So how can you use this information to inform your decisions?
More difficult keywords generally will need you to build more backlinks to your page for you to rank on the first page. Therefore, we can say that the higher the KC the more links you’ll need to build to rank, given that all other factors are the same.
It’s important that you’re honest with yourself about your own ability to rank for keywords, the amount of time you have to dedicate to the project and the amount of money you have to invest.
As long as you have two of those three factors you should be able to rank for some medium competition keywords, around KC 30 – 40. If you have all three then the sky is the limit, whereas if you only have one of the three factors you are best of going for keywords around KC 15 – 20.
We are generally finding that Google is taking longer to rank pages than in the past, so unless you have the time to invest into your business and wait, it’s becoming more important for us to target keywords below KC 20. These are generally going to be “long tail” keywords, which are often those with more than 3 words per search phrase.
Why is KC so powerful?
The power of KC is in the ease of information that you can get rather than having to look manually through different platforms and metrics. Previously you would have had to go to Ahrefs and look at the Domain Rating, then to Moz to examine the DA and PA, before taking into account Majestic’s Trust Flow metric. That’s all before you start looking into the backlink profile of the domain!
That’s a lot of work!
KC uses a proprietary algorithm to do this in real-time which saves you time and money, allowing you to make higher level decisions and analyse competition in record time!
Update: We are currently looking at the option of moving from Moz to Majestic API, due to Moz API delayed database updates. This would mean that we will have to change the algorithm for KC. Looking at the data we’ve seen that Majestic has considerably more accurate ranking metrics and backlinks data, which means that we can more accurately determine the competitiveness of a keyword. Whilst we think this would be an amazing change, we also want to get feedback from the community, so please leave a comment down below and let us know what you think!
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Great post Jake. In terms of numbers what kind of DA or links should a site have before you should start pushing up over that KC of 30?
I’d want to have around DA 20, but DA is really just a terrible metric because it updates so slowly because the Moz scraper is very weak and takes ages to find links.
You’re probably better of looking at which sites are in that SERP and seeing if you can match + exceed their backlinks profile. If not, enter at your own risk.
Absolutely, yes! …meaning… you noted this: “We are currently looking at the option of moving from Moz to Majestic API, due to Moz API delayed database updates. This would mean that we will have to change the algorithm for KC.” I’m voting with $$ and continuing to subscribe to your awesome service 🙂 …I’m a much bigger fan of Majestic than Moz. Wholeheartedly recommending the KC code upgrade from Moz data to Majestic data. =-) Cheers! Will Kenderdine
I think after marrying majestic date in LTP we will get better idea, because i benchmark MJ TF as a ranking/juice factor while doing link building. MJ data and KC will allow me to come to conclusion like how many or how much links required for 20 KC keyword and so forth.
Yes, using Majestic’s API would be even better!
Hi Jake,
Would you like to keep both the KC’s, i.e. add a new KC column “KC as per Majestic” and rename the current KC column “KC as per Moz”?!?!
Unfortunately that would be both cost prohibitive (as they both require a hefty monthly fee to access their API) as well as an additional delay in the speed by which we deliver the KC score. But thanks for your suggestions!
Having Majestic data TF/CF would be fantastic as an addition. But I wouldn’t want to lose Moz data like DA and PA within LTP.
Unfortunately, because of the cost of the API access we would be unable to offer Moz and Majestic data without raising prices by quite a lot. You can easily check DA and PA through Moz’s site explorer if you wish, but Majestic offers better data and so it’s a better choice for in-app data.
Hey Jake,
It’s really good to hear that LTP is getting updated. It would be a great experience in keyword research while using Majestic’s features as majestic gives better results in terms of link origin insights, citation flow, back links profiling and many more. Hope to experience it better than before 🙂 All the best!!
Majestic – sounds great. Best would be both MOZ and Majestic. But both have their inaccuracy.
What about ahrefs regarding the external backlinks?
They all have their own shortcomings. At the end of the day, the metrics we resource from Majestic/MOZ is still only one part of the equation that is the KC score. Thanks.
Would not want to lose DA and PA….gaining TF and CF in addition to DA and PA would be great
We are working on it. 🙂
I need a ltp down load
Rick
Please use the instructions on the page below to download and install LTP.
https://longtailpro.com/demo-videos/
Thanks!
I’m a little distressed by the idea that now so much more is necessary to rank well. But yes, more accurate backlink info would be great since backlinks are so essential.
This is just part of the new 2016 SEO game, we’re playing to their rules. I’d highly suggest moving to larger more authoritative sites if you haven’t already, as opposed to smaller niche sites
I use both LTP and Market Samurai for this reason. Moz can’t be trusted like majestic, and market samurai uses data from majestic and Bing.
Now if only you could incorporate majestic and ahrefs together… Oh the possibilities.
We’d love to do that, but unfortunately Ahrefs doesn’t have a commercial API that we can use. So we are going to swap over from Moz to Majestic.
The KC seems good ,but would you be so kind to tell me how Google pagerank rule works
Hi Peng, Google PageRank is no longer relevant or updated even by Google. (at least not in a while).
From my experience, you can easily go for 20-25 sometimes with just content and good blog structure, for 30+ you need few links and 40+ I’m only going for them if I have to. Then I focus all my links on that page.
The problem is that because Moz’s data is so spotty sometimes KC can be accurate and sometimes it can be way off base. By replacing with Majestic data we hope that the accuracy of KC will increase substantially!
I agree completely. KC can be spotty.
Hopefully Majestic can make KC more accurate and a heck of a lot faster. With MS, the majestic API can pull tons of data instantly. So this should make loading KC for lots of keywords a much much quicker process (hopefully).
Also, the top 10 Google Analysis is a great feature that LTP has. Don’t change this! =)
Is there an ETA for this switch to Majestic?
What is KC score of -2?
Hi Reynor, Please update to the latest version. It should clear that up! thanks.
A word of caution to anyone considering .
I recently signed up for the Long Tail Pro Platinum annual plan which came with a generous ten day trial period.However, one of the key features of the software is of course KC, and at time of writing, this is not working. I simply have the dreaded “-” instead of the data.
LTPro Support explained that it’s due to a reliance on an external API and they are working hard on a fix. Now that I’ve read the “UPDATE” in this post, it has given me more details on what those changes are i.e. switching to Majestic API.
As a new customer trying to evaluate the software, I asked if my trial period could be extended once this fundamental issue was fixed, on the basis I couldn’t actually evaluate its requirements against my criteria. I was told this was not possible? :-(.
I have had to cancel my trial as I’m unable to fully test LTPro Platinum. It would be good to know an ETA for the KC fix. Without the KC metric, there are other tools that are comparable alternatives.
Hopefully the team will post an update on Twitter for those of us who are potential customers awaiting the fix that really sets LTPro apart from the competition.
very nice blog. thanks for sharing
Would not want to lose DA and PA….gaining TF and CF in addition to DA and PA would be great.
great work!
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