Forum

[bizbop]

Hello,

I was just wondering how Traffic Travis Gives stars for particular keywords as it seems to be off. I've seen keywords that should be considered 4 stars be ranked 2 or 3.

For example I ran across a keyword that had maybe one keyword rich domain on the page, had 3 articles from article directories and 1 web 2.0 property. 6 of the sites where less than PR4 and the top 3 didn't have a PR at all.On site SEO was poor except the fact that 5 of the sites had there page in the dmoz directory and a couple had the keyword in title.

The offsite SEO was the only thing that would be somewhat of a challenge because 4 of the sites had over 300 backlinks (not Onsite Optimized at all though) to that page. The top 3 domains have less than 30 backlinks...

Meanwhile I've seen Traffic Travis say relatively easy for keywords that have pages with mid range PR, 3+ years DA, some backlinks, and better optimized for the keyword than what was explained above.

Can you please give me an idea on the scoring system before I just discard some keywords that look good?

Thanks,
-Biz

 

[michellerana]

The keyword difficulty section is currently under review and overhaul.

The current rank is heavily based on 'on page' factors which we are changing to more off page.

Sorry for the inconvenience

 

[esolutions]

Hi Michelle,

When is the keyword ranking overall scheduled to be released?

In the meantime we shouldn't really use the data given due to it being based on on-page factors? For example, if a keyword is ranked "Very Difficult" does that just mean that there are plenty of other sites that have done A+ on-page work for it?

Thanks!

 

[mikeantiga]

Currently, we focus a lot on the on-page factors (and some off-page factors) of a website to determine the overall rating of the keyword. These include things like (and not limited to):

* keyword in title
* keyword in h1
* number of words on the page

We also look at a few off page factors as well like (and not limited to);

* domain age
* page rank
* backlinks

However our method is far from perfect and is under review. There is no definite date yet as to when will the changes to this method be implemented.

 

[digiblue]

I have never used Traffic Travis's star rating for keyword research. It is really hard to make a system that will give a star rating for how easy or hard it is to rank for a certain keyword. There are just too many factors at play.

On page factors hardly count for much and are easily optimized for. The bulk on ranking abilities relies on off page factors. But even these are hard to analyze and devise a scoring system. For instance a software can give you an indication of how easy it will be to rank but you will still need to use your mind and do your own research.

Even if Traffic Travis measures off page factors it still is not effective enough in my opinion. Leaving this up to software is not the smartest decision and it's good to see that the Mods admit this. I would like to see how this develops in the future though, but even then I still think people need to learn how to analyse keywords on there own or by using both software and the grey matter between their ears to make the final decision.