Keyword Difficulty & Competition: Choose Keywords That Rank

Choosing the right words to target is often the most stressful part of any digital marketing campaign. You find a term with high search volume, get excited, and then realise that massive global corporations have held the top spots for a decade.

This is where understanding Keyword Difficulty & Competition becomes vital. Many students and marketers waste months trying to rank for impossible terms because they overlook these metrics. This article breaks down how to assess the “ranking hurdles” of any search term, helping you build a strategy that actually delivers traffic rather than just frustration.

Table of Contents

What is Keyword Difficulty?

In the world of search engine optimisation, Keyword Difficulty & Competition is a metric used to estimate how much effort is required to rank in the top 10 organic search results for a specific term. While various tools have their own proprietary ways of calculating this, the core concept remains the same: the more authoritative and well-optimised the websites currently on page one are, the greater the difficulty.

Search engines like Google aim to provide the most helpful results. If the top results are already occupied by high-authority sites with thousands of backlinks, a new or smaller website will find it difficult to displace them. Evaluating this early helps you avoid targeting terms that may be difficult for your current site strength

How Keyword Difficulty is Calculated?

Different SEO platforms use different formulas, but most rely on a few pillars of data to determine the keyword difficulty and competition score.

Referring Domains: This is often the most significant factor. Tools look at the average number of unique websites linking to the top-ranking pages. If the top results have hundreds of high-quality backlinks, the difficulty score will be high.
Domain Authority/Rating: This measures the overall strength of the entire website, not just the specific page. Ranking against a “household name” brand is harder than ranking against a niche blog.
Search Intent: If Google has decided that a keyword is “transactional” (people wanting to buy), it is much harder for an informational blog post to rank, increasing the perceived difficulty.
Content Quality: Sometimes, a keyword has a high score because the existing content is incredibly deep and well-structured, making it a high bar to clear.

Keyword Difficulty vs Competition

It is common to confuse Keyword Difficulty & Competition with the “Competition” column found in Google Ads (formerly AdWords).

Organic Difficulty: This refers to the struggle to rank in the “free” organic listings. It is based on SEO factors like links and technical structure.
Paid Competition: This refers to how many advertisers are bidding money to show ads for that keyword.

A keyword might have “Low” competition in Google Ads because no one wants to buy ads for it, but it could have “High” organic difficulty because reputable news sites or Wikipedia already cover the topic extensively. Always ensure you are looking at the organic keyword difficulty and competition metrics when planning your content strategy.

How to Analyse Keyword Difficulty?

When performing keyword difficulty and competition analysis, you should look beyond a single number. Most tools provide a score from 0 to 100, but experienced strategists look at the following:

1. Backlink Counts

If the top three results have an average of 500 referring domains, you may need a similar number to compete. If the number is below 10, the keyword is considered “easy.”

2. Authority of Competitors

Check if the results are dominated by “Mega Sites” like Amazon, BBC, or Government portals. These sites have so much “trust” from Google that they can rank for keywords even with mediocre content.

3. SERP Features

Are there many “People Also Ask” boxes, Featured Snippets, or Image packs? These features take up space and can make even a low-difficulty keyword hard to get clicks from, as the user gets their answer without clicking a link.

Keyword Difficulty & Competition Examples

To better understand how this works in practice, let’s look at some keyword difficulty and competition examples across different niches:

High Difficulty: “Credit Cards” or “Insurance.” These terms are dominated by massive financial institutions with decades of authority and millions of backlinks. The difficulty score is usually 90-100.
Medium Difficulty: “Best running shoes for flat feet.” This is more specific. While big brands are present, a high-quality, specialised review site could rank here with enough effort. The score might be 40-60.
Low Difficulty: “How to clean a vintage 1950s toaster.” This is a “Long-tail” keyword. Very few people are competing for this specific phrase, making it easier for a new site to hit the top spot quickly. The score is likely 0-15.

Keyword Difficulty & Competition Tools

You don’t have to guess these numbers. Several keyword difficulty and competition tools exist to provide data-driven insights.

Semrush: Uses a percentage scale (0-100%). It considers the number of backlinks and the quality of the domains ranking in the Top 10.
Ahrefs: Primarily focuses on the number of referring domains pointing to the top-ranking pages. They provide a clear estimate of how many backlinks you might need to reach the first page.
Mozilla (Moz): Uses Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) to calculate a difficulty percentage.

By using these tools, you can filter out keywords that are “Too Hard” and focus your energy on “Low Hanging Fruit”—keywords with decent volume but low competition.

Keyword Difficulty & Competition Strategy

A successful keyword difficulty and competition strategy involves balancing your ambitions with your current website’s strengths.

For New Websites:

Focus on keywords with a difficulty score of 0-30. These are often long-tail phrases (4+ words). While they have lower search volume, they are much easier to rank for and help you build initial traffic and authority.

For Established Websites:

If your site already has a good backlink profile, you can target medium-difficulty keywords (30-60). At this stage, your keyword difficulty and competition comparison should focus on whether you can create content that is significantly better or more up-to-date than the current top results.

The “Power Up” Method:

Rank for several low-difficulty keywords.
Link those small articles to a “Pillar Page” targeting a high-difficulty keyword.
As the small pages gain authority, they pass that “power” to the main page, helping you climb the rankings for harder terms.

Disadvantages of Keyword Difficulty & Competition

It is important to remember that a keyword difficulty and competition score is just an estimate. It doesn’t take into account:

Content Relevance: You can outrank sites with more authority if the top results are only “kind of” relevant to what the searcher is looking for, and you make a perfect match.
Brand Preference: Google sometimes shows a mix of brands.
Technical SEO: If your site loads in 1 second and your competitor’s takes 5 seconds, you have a clear edge that the difficulty score doesn’t reflect.

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FAQs

What is a good score for keyword difficulty?

A score below 30 is best for new websites. You can slowly start to target keywords in the 40–70 range as your site grows and gets more backlinks.

Should I avoid the keyword if it has a high competition score?

Not always. A lot of competition for a keyword usually means that it is worth something and will lead to sales. But it does mean that you'll need more time and money to see results.

How do keyword difficulty and competition tools get their data?

These tools crawl the internet to map out backlinks and track millions of search engine result pages (SERPs) daily to see which sites are moving up or down.

Is keyword difficulty the same as competition?

In SEO, they are often used interchangeably. However, "Difficulty" usually refers to organic ranking, while "Competition" often refers to the density of advertisers in paid search.

How long does it take to rank for a high-difficulty keyword?

For a high-difficulty term, it can take anywhere from several months to over a year, depending on your link-building efforts and the quality of your content.