If you have started shaping your plan for digital marketing, you will discover methods such as SEO. Search Engine Optimization is among the top methods to aid your company get more valuable leads. However, it might be tricky to manage if you’re not familiar with SEO.
In SEO, keywords are very important. Choosing the right keywords for your landing page or blog post can make or break your website. And if you have entered this industry or are already in it, you might be looking for a way to find long-tailed keywords that might help you rank high in search engines.
You have at least heard of the Ahrefs tool and what it does, right? Ahrefs is a tool that helps in finding long-tail keywords for proper ranking. But does it really do that?
We shall know all that in this guide and why it’s not a good tool for finding low, competitive keywords.
What is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is an SEO tool that has tools for keyword research, link building, competitor analysis, site audits, and rank tracking. All Ahrefs’s features are solely for marketing professionals. In short, it’s a known SEO software that individuals use for higher rankings on Google.
Ahrefs is popular for its live backlinks. It provides people and organizations with a strong and dependable backlink checker, which provides a lot of backlink profiles for any site or URL. Ahrefs is also known for it’s keyword research tool and keyword tracker function.
What is KD in Ahrefs?
KD( Keyword Difficulty) represents the estimation of how hard it can be to rank on Google’s first page for any given keyword.
KD score of Ahrefs is calculated by taking the trimmed mean of linking domains number to the latest top ten ranking pages and then plotting the outcomes on the logarithmic scale of 0 to 100. No other variables are considered whatsoever.
The number you get offers a reasonable estimation of the number of backlinks you need to rank in the top 10 for the chosen keyword.
Why can you not trust the KD (Keyword difficulty) score?
Keyword difficulty simply means ranking the keyword, and the way many bloggers do it is very dangerous. Ahrefs mainly rely on incoming backlink scores to know how easy it can be to rank a certain keyword. While researching the keywords you can use to develop a piece of review or content for your website or blog post, you obviously pay attention to Keyword Difficulty (KD) shown by ahrefs.
It is supposed to provide you with an idea of how a specific keyword can easily rank Top 10 on Google. Also, it tells you the number of backlinks needed to reach page 1 on Google. Do not be fooled by a false sense of easiness. Those keywords with low or 0 KD will not necessarily win in terms of ranking.
Ahrefs evaluates the KD score based on backlinks
As per Ahrefs, KD is calculated considering the number of backlinks to the particular website, ignoring the on-page SEO completely, or even the authority of the top ranking websites for a specific keyword. Backlinks shouldn’t be used when finding the KD score since they have nothing to do with the competition of a certain keyword. So, this will imply that the topmost pages for your keyword don’t have any inbound links.
So, do not trust Ahrefs and use it to find your keywords. You will just be misguided, thinking that you’ve got everything sorted out! This tool can do you more harm than good (For example, if you put a lot of money or time into creating content that is labeled as “easy”). The evaluation of Ahrefs for the keyword competition is absolutely wrong and is misleading.
As per Ahrefs, if a certain keyword has a keyword difficulty of 2, it is considered EASY and might need backlinks from three sites to rank top 10 in Google.
Is this true?
No, because the keyword tool doesn’t look at the content itself, the user intent, the page authority, or the quality of the content.
Therefore, Ahrefs evaluates the competition for a keyword absolutely wrong and it is fatal to rely on Ahrefs’ KD (keyword difficulty).
Even if we write articles with KD 0, we will not automatically appear in organic search results. Many people misunderstand this and wonder why they don’t rank with KD 0 keywords.
It’s all about organic competition, not keyword difficulty misrepresented by Ahref’s keyword tool.
Ahrefs ranks its KD scores on assumptions.
For instance, if you search for the keyword “e commerce alternative to square or stripe” in the Ahrefs keyword explorer tool, you will find it has 400 searches every month with a Keyword Difficulty of 0, a very easy targeted keyword as per Ahrefs.
Actually, this is so tempting. 400 searches a month is a lot of visitors you could get by only this keyword/topic. But, in a real sense, is this true? Not really.
If you try the same keyword in the Google search field, you’ll be surprised.
You will find about 659, which is a lot of results (Especially for a keyword with a KD0…). And also, these sites that are already ranking for this keyword are really high authority, established websites, and have good content. So concretely, when you are writing content about “e commerce alternative to square or stripe”, you will compete with 659 other high-authoritiv pages. Precisely, the very first competitor on page one will be an established blog with a lot of deep and good content, which isn’t an easier fight.
So, in short, don’t trust Ahrefs. It will mislead you instead of helping. It doesn’t give a clear picture of the complete overview.
Ahrefs has an algorithm that evaluates keyword difficulty (KD) based on incoming backlinks. Backlinks have nothing to do with the difficulty or the competition for a specific keyword! This means that the top pages for the keyword “e commerce alternative to square or stripe” do not have inbound backlinks. But that says NOTHING about the difficulty of the keyword!
Will you rank with a KD score of 0?
With a KD score of 0, you will certainly rank. But is this true in a real sense when using Ahrefs?
For instance, if you search for the keyword “big butts” with a KD of 0 in Ahrefs, you will find it has 23,900,000 results in Google. This is a highly competitive keyword from Google results.
Well, you can see the results from Ahrefs are surely nowhere near Google’s search engine. So, it is better to be safe than sorry. Don’t trust Ahrefs.
Remember, a keyword with a KD of 0 does not guarantee easy ranking because the KD is based on assumptions.
Lastly, don´t take those keyword difficulty scores to determine whether or not you should target a particular keyword. Instead, take them to see the keywords you are analyzing more in-depth.
Do not use the KD scores to determine if you should target a certain keyword or not. Rather, analyze them more in-depth and use LongTailPro tools instead.
From there, you will have a better idea of the kind of keywords to go for.
In many blogs or on YouTube there is talk about how easy it is to be displayed in the top 10 organic search results with KD0 keywords without any problems.
However, this statement is absolutely not true. The so-called KD (keyword difficulty) says nothing about the competition in the organic search on Google.
Ahrefs uses different data and weights metrics differently, which makes you find completely different results when using Google. Actually, this can be fatal, and instead of going a step ahead, you will still be lagging behind. So, don’t risk.
That doesn’t mean that you can rank on the first page with a KD 0! Don’t trust the KD in Ahrefs!
Isn’t there a better alternative to the Ahrefs keyword tool?
We have tried many different keyword tools and tested them for you. If you are looking for a keyword tool, you will find our personal favorites below.
When making our selection, we made sure that the keyword difficulty is determined by real competition in the organic search on Google and not just by backlinks or the length of the content.
But you can also search google manually and find keywords there that have little competition or even no content that fulfills the “user intent”.
A better alternative than relying on keyword tools is if you’re doing a manual search on Google and if you’ve found a keyword that isn’t being fully answered or the existing answers aren’t well described or are off-topic, then this is one very good opportunity to get into the top 10 for this search term with high-quality content.
What is the LongTailPro Keyword tool?
It is a keyword research tool that allows one to undertake detailed keyword research. The software offers valuable and detailed information to assist you in selecting keywords you can focus on and finding the available site addresses based on the keywords chosen.
LongTailPro displays information on the searches for the related keywords and the terms you use. With this information, it is very easy to choose keywords that are likely to rank.
Why LongTailPro is the better choice to find better keywords
LongTailPro is known for its effective keyword research. So, if you’re on the hunt for great keyword research software with a fully automated system to help find niche-related keywords that are long-tailed, then Long Tail is the way to go.
Have you started working on a blog or website? If yes, then you know how challenging it is to increase your site’s traffic and get a good rank on Google. The Long TailPro tool can help you sidestep this problem.
Operated on Adobe Air, this is a tool you must have for keyword research. It quickly helps you find the right keywords, analyze the keyword backlinks, keyword competitiveness, and tacking your rank.
Long-tail keyword research impacts SEO performance.
Selecting the right keyword is one of the challenging processes when optimizing a site. It plays a paramount role in enhancing performance and organic reach. Besides, it also serves as a medium when making an SEO strategy.
As such, Long TailPro is a tool specifically made for SEO. It can generate approximately 800 keywords in one search using the Google keyword tool to make the selection procedure inexhaustible.
Great finder for long-tail keywords
The LongTailPro provides advanced keyword research making the whole procedure faster, thus avoiding wasting time. It enables you to search a single or many long-tail keywords at a time, thus saving you the hassle of exploring and checking the suggestion individually.
The tool will show low competitive keywords and their estimated search volumes and competitiveness. Actually, this is exceptional since you can easily find the keywords that fit your content for quick marketing. This is the best thing with the Long TailPro. It brings you only the targetable long-tail keywords after sorting them out.
You will also be able to search for the keywords your competitors have used.
Backlink analysis
This is undoubtedly one of the valuable services offered by LongTailPro. To win any SEO campaign, you have to search your competitor’s backlink, which usually takes a lot of time. However, LongTailPro will make that very easy for you.
The LongTailPro will assist you in finding where to get the guest post. It will help you find and analyze where your competitors are getting their backlinks.
Actually, backlinks are a great feature when analyzing the competitiveness of a certain keyword. So, they must be taken into consideration.
Checks keyword rank
The LongTailPro will offer you pretty good and pretty insights on the keyword rankings. The service is very cool since you may easily track the ranks of the keywords.
You have to enter one keyword or multiple of them manually, and you’ll get valuable metrics and a good overview of every entry. The software also allows one to know information on backlinks and your competitors’ keywords.
Besides, the records are kept safe and can be used to compare the performance and ranking. This will aid in analyzing your growth and aim for improvements.
The most important aspect of writing for the web is using the right keywords. This can also be the most difficult part of a content strategy, as it requires us to focus on how people search the internet and understand what kind of material they would like to see.
However, if you choose the right terms for a particular article and make good content, you will notice that your results will be much better. Knowing how to choose the right keywords is the path to good search engine rankings and can attract organic visitors like no other SEO resource.
When potential consumers search for something on Google, they use specific terms, and if you want to be among the top results, the best thing to do is search and try to understand what those terms are. All search engines catalog the internet and store your pages according to their popularity and relevance. Because of this, they can identify the most important words in content and make them return search results.
SEO is not an extremely complicated science. You need to find the right keywords and make them work in favor of your strategy. However, in addition to identifying the right words, a marketing plan needs to be able to deliver quality results on time.
Using the right keywords in the content to rank well can have many positive effects. After all, these terms will make up a good part of your title and meta description, so they will be the first thing your reader will see. It is in these initial seconds that the public’s attention is gained, and, unfortunately, it can also be lost.
Additionally, the research you put into creating an article’s keywords will likely guide the rest of your content. All the things you don’t define as main themes can become secondary and tertiary topics, which transform your reading material into a more complete and interesting work for those who access your page.
Understands the search intent
As we’ve already said, it’s important to get into the mind of whoever is researching a certain thing. So you should understand what their main concerns are and what kind of interest this person has when searching for things as common as “apple pie” or “pastel.”
If that person wants to find a recipe, the type of content you should post is one, but if they want to understand the origin of these foods, the materials they are looking for can be different. LongTailPro aids in better understanding your visitors’ search intent.
Checks search volume
The correct keywords are not merely the terms that most match your posts, but they are also the most searched words by users. To find out if the ones you’ve chosen fall into this select category, a tool like LongTailPro can help. It analyzes how the search volume is going for a given set of words and can better guide you about your choice.
Studying the keywords of content will make you a better reader and writer and give you insights into how your audience sees or expects to see certain material. So it is essential to choose the right terms.
Good research is the key to good SEO work because it gives you the opportunity to understand what is going on in the minds of people who have a particular problem. It is extremely important to put yourself in the shoes of a searcher if you want to get the best results, and it is equally important to understand how the subject is treated on the internet today.
Which blogs have the most hits and are already debating the issue? Is there anything you could do differently? Are there questions that have not yet been answered? All of this will be apparent in your search and will allow you to find long-tail keywords to explore and get as much traffic as possible for the lowest cost.
Is LongTailPro worth it?
When you look for the top keyword software in the market, you’ll find LongTailPro on top due to its ability to bring out honest results. It can’t be compared to Ahrefs, as we have seen. Ahrefs results aren’t completely true as it mainly dwells on backlinks and not on SEO on the page. Thus, this makes its results great, but in a real sense, they are misleading.
The best thing with the LongTailPro tool is that it provides competitor analysis with the tracked keywords, which most tools don’t. That is why it is the best keyword-finding tool that helps you get low competition keywords. So, try it and see how you will be able to find great keywords that have low competition!
