I'm breaking down where keyword research tools are headed in 2023. My issue with ahrefs (which I love in many ways) and some of the other keyword tools like Moz, SEMRush and ubersuggest is that they calculate their keyword difficulty scored solely on backlinks, which is a major ranking factor.
But... these tools put all of their eggs in the backlink basket when it comes to determining the difficulty of ranking for a keyword.
Other tools such as [ Ссылка ] and [ Ссылка ] look at other factors including topical authority, content clusters, page load speeds, and readability among other ranking factors.
When doing keyword research the three most important factors to me are:
1. Is it a valuable keyword for my business
2. Does it have a good volume (worth making content for)
3. How hard will it be to rank for the keyword
So the issue I have with ahrefs is that your ability to rank for a keyword goes far beyond just backlinks. It doesn't account for the topical authority of your website (MarketMuse) or the competition's weaknesses (TopicRanker).
