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Keyword Explorer Overview

Frequently Asked Questions

  • If you see "Data Not Available", this means that we haven't yet collected data for this keyword. It may be that there isn't data or that we haven't yet collected it from our data sources. We collect new keyword data every month. One way to verify if there is a small amount of search volume is to see if Google Suggest autofills it in when you type in the search box. If it does, that's usually a sign there's at least some volume (even if it's only a few searches a month.)
  • Our Search Volume buckets show the average range of searches per month to give you an idea of the level of demand for your target keywords. Our volume buckets have greater accuracy and less spikiness month to month than showing a single number. In addition, we try and capture the fluctuation of traffic due to seasonality and other trending factors. In any given month, you should feel confident that the actual volume for a keyword will fall within our ranges.
  • Keyword Explorer does work in any language. However our scores and suggestions are English-language centric at present. In the future, we plan to add other languages to the tool and expand the keyword corpus and the score modeling to account for these. Note that most scores should be accurate in all languages, but our CTR modeling is based on data from English-language clickstream data in the US, so Difficulty and Opportunity will both be more English-centric.
  • Monthly volume expressed as a single number shows you a precise volume prediction. Viewing volume this way simplifies the keyword research process and gives you a single number, off of which to base your strategy and choices.
  • Volume ranges see less spikiness month to month than showing a single number. Some SEOs prefer using a minimum and maximum anticipated volume to inform their SEO strategy. You will have the option to toggle between a single number and ranges in the Keyword Explorer interface.
  • Monthly volume as a single number is limited to US, CA, AU, and UK. If you are not seeing the option to view volume as a single number, this means you are searching within a search engine outside these 4 supported options.
  • Monthly volume as a single number is available for Google US, CA, AU, and UK.
  • Monthly volume as a single number is limited to US, CA, AU, and UK. If you are not seeing monthly volume as a single number, this means you are searching within a search engine outside these 4 supported options.
  • At the moment the data for our Keyword by Site corpus is limited to include US, UK, Canada, and Australian data.
  • Yes! You have the option to purchase extra Keyword Queries per month with subscription add-ons.

What's Covered?

Why Use a Keyword Research Tool?

Keyword research is the bedrock of SEO. People search for things online and you want your content to pop up in the results. Keyword research tools, like Keyword Explorer, help you figure out what keywords people are searching, what keywords you're already ranking for, the demand for certain searches, and the strength of other sites competing for your target keywords.

Start Your Keyword Research

Starting your keyword research is as simple as typing your keyword or website into Keyword Explorer.

Do you sell cat costumes? Type in “cat costumes.”

Want to know what keyword your site or page already ranks for? Select one of the domain options or exact page from the drop-down menu, and enter your URL.

Keyword Explorer dropdown menu

Keyword Research by Keyword

When you enter a keyword in the search bar, you’ll see a Keyword Overview Report with keyword metrics for your searched keyword.

Keyword Explorer metrics overview

Keyword Suggestions

The Keyword Suggestions panel gives you a sneak preview of some keywords you may not have thought of, along with Monthly Search Volume. If you are searching with Google US, CA, AU, or UK the default view for the Monthly Search Volume metric will be a single number with the option to view this metric as a range. If you are seeing the Single number option greyed out, this indicates you are searching with a search engine for which we do not support single number volume data.

Keyword Explorer keyword suggestions

Suggestions are ordered by Relevancy. Relevancy is determined by how often we saw these keywords in our data and the lexical similarity to the seed keyword — i.e. the keyword you entered when you started your search.

Five blue circles indicates maximum relevancy.

Keyword Suggestions and Relevancy Guide

SERP Analysis

SERP Analysis helps you answer those burning questions like "who the heck is performing for this keyword?” You’ll be able to preview the top 3 results pulled in live from the SERPs directly in your Keyword Report. You’ll also get a sneak peek at the Title, URL, Page Authority and Domain Authority of those results.

Keyword Explorer SERP Analysis Guide

Keyword explorer SERP analysis overview

Find Keywords by Site

Want to find what keywords you’re already ranking for? Enter your website URL and select root domain, subdomain, or exact page, as well as the country and click search. You’ll see a Site Overview Report with Top Ranking keywords and the option to add additional sites to compare with your own.

Keyword Explorer select location for ranking keywords

Top Ranking Keywords

The Ranking Keywords panel gives you a sneak preview of some keywords you are already ranking for. Within Ranking Keywords, you can filter by ranking, difficulty, and volume. The default for the Monthly Volume metric is to view it as a single number. To see monthly volume as a range, click Top Ranking Keywords and toggle via the radio buttons. You can also select keywords you’d like to start tracking in a keyword list or in your Campaign.

Keyword Explorer Ranking Keywords Guide

Keyword Explorer ranking keywords

Ranking Distribution

The Ranking Distribution graph shows you the keywords your searched URL ranks for, broken down by ranking position.

Hover over the graph to see the number of keywords this URL is ranking for in position #1-3, #4-10 and so on.

In this example we can see this URL is ranking in the top 1-3 positions for 9.6K keywords.

Keyword Explorer ranking distribution graph - hover over each bar to see how many keywords are in each ranking bucket.

Understanding Keyword Explorer Terminology

More information about Keyword Metrics is available in the Keyword Metrics section. More definitions for Moz Pro terminology can be found in our glossary.

Monthly Volume - The number of searches for that keyword for any given month - this is an indication of demand for that keyword
Min Monthly Volume - (As seen in CSV exports) The lower end of the search volume range for a keyword
Max Monthly Volume - (As seen in CSV exports) The higher end of the search volume range for a keyword
Specific Monthly Volume - (As seen in CSV exports) The single number search volume for a keyword
Difficulty - Shows you how hard it would be to rank in the top 10 positions in the SERP for this keyword
Organic CTR - An estimated relative click-through rate for organic web results for this keyword
My Score - An adjustable score which allows you to apply importance to keywords in Keyword Lists
Priority - Combines all our other metrics to create a single, sortable number you can use to effectively prioritize keywords

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