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When people are discussing what affects their search engine rankings on this particular forum,  which has got to be one of the most read on the Internet just how much guesswork is really going on? It seems like God almighty Google works from its own criteria and the rest of us all scrap to guess! I myself in the last week of posted various topics on here and are conflicting reports by so-called experts not that I am being critical for the sake of it. If you to one website and said to all the people on this forum just exactly why is it ranking to a degree for this particular key phrase or not as the case may be would there be any truly accurate knowledgeable answers that will come through and explained the difference? If you have a top 10 of most important things that would influence your rankings that are not guesswork would that be possible to say based on knowledge and expertise? And if so spill the beans what are ? What are the movers and shakers in their particular keyword phrases doing ongoing that's getting them the great results we all want ? Or is the entire subject of how well you rank ultimately not totally understood and only the realms of guesswork based on observation. When I was young I trained as electrician which dealt in facts, it seems like this is not possible with the world of business and search engine rankings?

So SEOMoz says that I've consistently ranked #6 for a certain keyword. But when I search I'm no where to be found. I've done regular searches, incognito and some non-seomoz reports and all come up with nothing in Google. I noticed it a week or two ago, but didn't think it would continue. This is no bueno. I wouldn't be surprised if I got penalized (luckily my homepage relatively well for similar keywords), an old seo consultant used very spammy tactics. I recently removed them, but not before I started to notice that I fell off the map. Why would SEOMoz not recognize this, and continue to say I'm ranking well? The keyword is bpi building analyst the page is http://www.cleanedison.com/courses/bpi-building-analyst

For the most part, SEOMoz's keyword analysis tool has been in line with other tools like Adwords keyword tool with regards to competitive level. I have just encountered a keyword though that a client may choose to compete on that seems to be far off. keyword phrase: online math games Adwords competitive level: Low SEOMoz competitive level: 80 This seems like a sizeable difference (I know the two compare all results vs first page authority's, but typically they are in line with each other). With other related keywords for the industry in question, SEOMoz and Adwords seem to be in line. This one just got me thinking. I know the SEOMoz score is a sign of the strength of the top results and that the "low" score from Adwords may be a sign of much weaker results on the following pages (with a higher number of weaker pages vs fewer high authority outliers). **Question: ** How accurate is SEOMoz keyword analysis tool and what other keyword analysis tools are you guys/gals using that you like? I have tried others but many provide duplicate insights.