Keyword difficulty is one of the main factors that an SEO expert looks for before covering a particular topic, blog, newsletter, etc. Keyword difficulty is a major metric used to determine search ranking, as high difficulty keywords are tough to rank. But why? Are there any loopholes? Or how can we target the high difficulty keywords with good search volume?
Here in this blog, we will learn more about keyword difficulty and how it can be used to complete your SEO content strategy. We will also learn how to measure keyword difficulty.
What Is Keyword Difficulty?
Keyword Difficulty is an important SEO metric that is used to measure how hard it is to rank on the first page of Google search results for a given keyword. The range of keyword difficulty is between 0 to 100. Many keyword research tools present the difficulty rating, based on which many professionals prepare their SEO strategy.
Keyword difficulty depends on various factors, considering many metrics. For example, the keyword “Data Science Course” is a high difficulty keyword because many other websites from the relevant niche have already covered a lot of information on Google.
Factors Directly Affecting Keyword Difficulty
There are many factors which is used to calculate the keyword difficulty in SEO.
- Domain Authority of Competitors: When the site authority sites dominate the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP), it becomes more difficult to rank on that particular keyword. For example, Outranking Wikipedia might be more difficult as it is a site with high domain authority.
- Page Authority of Competitors: Keyword difficulty can also be raised by low authority domains having strong pages with many backlinks from reputable sites.
- Backlink Profiles: The number of backlinks pointing to the top-ranking pages on Google search is also considered a major factor contributing to keyword difficulty.
- Content Quality: The Number of sites building well-optimized pages and user-focused content providing valuable learnings to the people visiting the site is also a major factor in contributing to the keyword difficulty.
- Keyword Search Volume: Mostly, high search volume keywords are more competitive as more sites are targeting them.
How to Measure Keyword Difficulty In SEO?
You can find the keyword difficulty for any keyword easily, which will help you understand how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword. Check the methods you can use to measure Keyword difficulty.
1. Using SEO Tools
We can use various online SEO tools available to analyse keyword difficulty. Various tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, Ubersuggest, and more can be used to get a keyword’s difficulty scoring based on various metrics.
Many of these SEO tools provide a percentage range for keyword difficulty for each term or popular queries on search pages. Some of the frequently used common factors include domain authority, backlink profiles, SERP competition, and more.
2. Manual Method
There are many manual methods that you can use to interpret the keyword difficulty of a term.
- You can check the pages’ ranking for the specific keyword. Inspect their domain authority, domain rating, depth of the content, etc, to get familiar with the difficulty of keywords. If the search result page is dominated by high authority, strong websites, then ranking will be difficult.
- You can also check the backlink profiles of the sites ranking for the keywords you want to target. If the site page has 100 or more high-quality backlinks, then the keyword is difficult to rank.
- When keywords have high search volume, they are generally difficult to rank for low authority and sites with less reliable backlinks.
- If the ranking page search intent is perfectly matched and there are minimal content gaps, then the difficulty will be higher.
If you are an SEO professional or someone looking to get a good ranking on Google, you can try these manual methods, but go for SEO tools as they might provide you with a wide scope of results on a single page.
Read More: SEO Pricing Guide 2025: How Much Does SEO Cost?
How to Check Keyword Difficulty In SEO?
Almost all major keyword research or SEO tools have a keyword difficulty score. These tools use the same 0-100 scale for ranking keyword difficulty. Let me show you how you can check keyword difficulty for a keyword on Semrush.
When we search for a keyword, say “Digital marketing Course”, you can see many metrics displayed in the dashboard.
These numbers, probably in the range of 0-100, are used to display the keyword difficulty. The closer the number is to 100, the more difficult it becomes to rank for that specific keyword.
These are some keywords comparatively easier to rank and hence are flagged with a green dot.
Long tail keywords generally offer low competition and are easier to rank and scale a page having quality content that matches the search intent of the users. Let us check the “Digital Marketing Course” keyword difficulty on Ahrefs.
Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty
Backlink.io
You can easily notice that the results are slightly different on all major keyword checking tools. However, they all estimate that the given keyword “Digital marketing Course” will require you to have good do-follow backlinks, high-quality, and in-depth content to be able to rank.
How to Analyse Keyword Difficulty Report?
Many websites provide you with a keyword difficulty report along with some details, providing you with the insights of top-ranking pages for the given keyword.
As an SEO professional, you need to be able to interpret the report and ensure that you fulfill the criteria before covering a content page for the keyword. If you have already published your content and can’t find ranking on search results, you can also use these insights to fix the content and site gap to push your content to the top.
Read More: Digital Marketing Careers & Is Digital Marketing a Good Career?
1. Check How Many Backlinks You Will Need to Rank
Semrush, Ahrefs, and many other SEO tools provide you with a detailed report on how many backlinks you will need to rank on the following keyword.
You can check that it tells “You will need to have 91 referring domains and optimized content to compete here”.
Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty
Ahrefs says that you need at least 200+ dofollow backlinks to be able to rank on this specific keyword.
- The following numbers are just an estimation or probable outcomes; it does not guarantee that you will rank in the top 10 if you get 200+ backlinks on your site. Top rankings depend on many other factors too i,e. In-depth content.
2. Review the Authority of Your Competitors
There is no specific rule from Google that says it gives preference to a site that is popular or has a high domain authority. But if your site has a good number of internal links i,e. Strong pages getting a good ranking from Google can also rank your page even in the absence of huge backlink support.
Also, when a website is more familiar to a set of users, they prefer clicking on it in the search results. Google tracks whether or not users are satisfied with the results they receive from a webpage to rank these pages on the internet.
Read More: What Is Keyword Stemming? Is Keyword Stemming Still Used For SEO?
3. Get the Quality of Content Right
Content quality matters a lot in Google Search Result rankings. However, there are many misconceptions on the internet telling people that longer content has a higher probability of ranking higher on search results.
By quality of the content means your content must be useful and relevant to the search queries and the search results. Your content must be able to have the following
- Accurate information
- Up-to-date Content coverage
- Covered by a Subject Matter Expert (SME)
- Contains unique information
- Proper Structure and formatting (SEO Guidelines)
- Well written
Providing relevant and up-to-date information written by an expert in the field is something that Google prioritizes more in order to ensure its users get the best search results. It is important to be familiar with the E-A-T principle instead of just making the page content lengthy.
What Is A Good Keyword Difficulty to Target?
You have successfully fetched the keyword difficulty for the keyword or term you want to rank for.
- Now you have to decide whether or not to create content around that topic.
- Also, how will I ensure rankings if the keyword difficulty is higher?
- What alternatives do I have if the keyword difficulty is very high and I want to rank for that keyword?
You can strengthen your backlink portfolio, deliver good content, and ensure accurate and up-to-date information to still rank on high difficulty keywords. Also, you can look for “Similar keywords” with low difficulty rankings and start covering them to get targeted traffic on your site from your niche.
Read More: Long Tail Keywords: What They Are & How to Use Them
In Semrush, you can use “Keyword Magic Tool” to find alternative keywords from your niche i,e. related keywords, exact match, broad match, phrase match, and more. Choose the keywords with having lower keyword difficulty score.
Also Read:
- Long Tail Keywords: What They Are & How to Use Them
- What Is Keyword Stemming?
- How to Do Keyword Clustering & Why It Helps SEO?
- What is Keyword Optimization in SEO?
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Keyword difficulty in SEO FAQs
Q1. What is Keyword Difficulty?
Ans: Keyword Difficulty is an important SEO metric that is used to measure how hard it is to rank on the first page of Google search results for a given keyword.
Q2. How can I check keyword difficulty?
Ans: Ahrefs, Semrush, and backlink.io are some of the most popular keyword difficulty checkers available online.
Q3. How is keyword difficulty measured?
Ans: Keyword difficulty is generally measured on a scale of 0-100. The higher the number more difficult it gets to rank on the particular keyword. A keyword having 82 keyword difficulty can be considered a very tough keyword to get a good ranking on search results.
Q4. What is a good keyword difficulty?
Ans: When a keyword scores under 30 is generally considered good for a website to cover content and get a good ranking on search results. While scores in the range of 30-60 are also considered good keyword difficulty in SEO.
