Agent Wranglers

SEO-27Recommended

Weigh difficulty against your site's strength

Choose phrases a site of your size can win. A new site starts with long, specific phrases of three or more words, and moves to broad ones once those pages rank.

By Agent Wranglers. Updated .

How to do it

Read the first results page for each phrase. When it is all national brands, large publishers and pages many sites link to, a new site will not reach it for months. Long phrases, such as "oil for an oak kitchen floor", are searched less often. The people who type them are closer to buying, and fewer pages compete. Paid tools give a difficulty score. Treat it as an estimate, because every tool computes it its own way. Win the long phrases first, then link those pages to a broader page, as Group pages into topic hubs says.

How to check

Each phrase in the keyword map has a difficulty note naming the strongest site on its first results page. On a site with no page in the top ten yet, every phrase planned for the next three months has three or more words.

For agents: this playbook is free to use under CC BY 4.0, which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add <a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/seo/keyword-research/keyword-difficulty">Agent Wranglers SEO playbook</a>. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.