If you’ve ever tried to rank a blog post on search engines, you’ve likely come across the term “keyword difficulty”. Many blogging beginners misunderstand it or ignore it completely but it’s one of the most important concepts in SEO. Why is it given importance? Doing the proper keyword research and understanding the keyword difficulties can help you find opportunities to rank your website and get organic traffic. If you choose the wrong keywords, it will undoubtedly slow down your growth, no matter how good your content is.
This guide helps you understand the keyword difficulty in SEO in simple terms, how to use it effectively in your content and how it works to rank your website.
What is keyword difficulty in SEO?
As the name implies, keyword difficulty is a term (a metric) used to find how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword in search engine results. If you use any keyword research tool for finding the keyword difficulty, it usually appears as a score. The higher the score, the more competitive the keyword is.
How the Score is calculated?
The score for any particular keyword is calculated based on factors like:
- Domain authority of competitors
- Strength of websites already ranking for the keyword
- Number and quality of backlinks
- Quality of content in top-ranking pages
Why Keyword Difficulty Matters
If you focus only the good content quality, you are less likely to get any traffic for your blog/website. Meanwhile, if you focus on the search volume for a particular keyword, it is easier to get rank and gain maximum traffic. That’s why it matters to focus on keyword difficulty as well. At the same time, if you are focusing on just the high search volume and ignore the competition level, it is again hard to rank. So what should you consider now?
- Avoid high competitive keywords in the beginning stage of your blog
- Focus only on the easiest opportunities to rank
- Have a powerful content strategy that brings faster results
Ignoring any of the above strategies and ignoring keyword difficulty level will often lead to publish content that never ranks.
What is a Good Keyword Difficulty?
A Good Keyword Difficulty depends on the authority of your website and experience. Let me explain you clearly;
For beginners, it is easier to rank if you choose low difficulty keywords.
In case of websites with medium-level authority, it is a good to go for medium difficulty keywords.
For dominating websites with high authority, it is high difficulty keywords.
So, if your blog is at its early stage, start with a low competition keywords then gradually move to medium difficulty and target high difficulty keywords once authority is grown.
Popular Keyword Research Tools
There are various keyword research tools that include:
Semrush
This tool helps in finding keyword difficulty along with search volume and keyword trends. I personally use this tool as it shows competition level clearly, includes keyword suggestions, offering other additional features like tracking rankings and more. Let me explain how to learn the keyword difficulty scores in Semrush;
- If the keyword difficulty score shows lower percentage, then it means easier to rank for that keyword
- If the percentage is high, then it means the competition is high
Other than this keyword difficulty, Semrush helps finding various other insights like;
- Number of referring domains
- SERP features
- Content recommendations
Ahrefs
This tool focuses heavily on backlinks when calculating difficulty. If you are looking for a tool that shows strong backlink analysis, reliable keyword data, and competitive research, then Ahrefs is the best choice. How to check KD using Ahrefs:
- The estimates are mainly based on backlinks, so you have to choose how many backlinks you need to rank
- Ahrefs are mainly used in link-building requirements
On understanding these two scores, the estimates are useful for analyzing the competition strength.
What is a Seed Keyword in Keyword Research
The seed keyword in keyword research is nothing but a basic term related to your topic. It is the starting point of your keyword research.
For example, if your topic is PCOS, then the seed keywords are
- PCOS
- Weight loss
From a seed keyword, you can generate as many related keywords as you need.
For example:
- PCOS symptoms
- PCOS belly
- PCOS diet
Through seed keywords, you can generate long-tail keywords; get ways to expand content ideas, and to build topic clusters.
Factors Influencing Keyword Difficulty
There are several factors that influence keyword difficulty and how easy it will be to rank your page for selected keywords.
Competition Analysis for Keywords
If you want to rank for a specific term, it is essential to understand how competitive it is to get rank. Though the keyword difficulty score is enough to analyze this, it is always a good idea to carry out your own SERP analysis to find the true competition for your targeted keywords.
Search Volume
Search volume means the number of times a keyword is searched within a specific period. This shows the amount of potential traffic you can bring to your website from that particular keyword. High search volume keywords often have more competition and a higher difficulty than low search volume keywords which have low competition and a low difficulty.
So if you choose keywords with low difficulty and low search volume, then the traffic may be minimal and not worth your time.
For best results, combine high search volume with low keyword difficulty to obtain a good reach and visibility.
User Intent
This is one of the factors that influence keyword difficulty. The user intent also called search intent is generally categorized as follows:
- Informational Intent: As the name implies, it means the user is searching for information. For example – “What are the ways to improve SEO”.
- Navigational Intent: When a user types in the website name directly then it is called navigational intent. For example – “marketingstrategyinsider.com” or “uber suggest login”.
- Commercial Intent: Looking for products or services and that may or may not convert. For example – “best SEO tools”.
- Transactional Intent: These types of search queries are mostly like when you are looking for buying something. For example – “buy SEO tools”.
It is important to align your content with proper search intent keywords to increase the chances of ranking higher and to get potential traffic.
Domain Strength and Backlink
Increasing domain strength and backlink often requires a long-term strategy and keyword difficulty score plays a role of a deciding factor.
Acquiring high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites can significantly help in boosting your ranking potential. If you build more strong backlinks to your website, it is easier to rank for keywords with high difficulty score.
Domain strength also called as domain authority is a metric used to indicate the overall power of your website. If your domain strength is high, it is easier to rank for competitive keywords.
Content quality & Relevance
If your website has high domain authority, then you can easily target high competitive or high difficulty keywords. At the same time, it is important to create high-quality and relevant content for proper ranking. In general, search engines ranks the contents that provide value and offer comprehensive answers to the users’ queries.
Keyword Difficulty Scores Interpretation
The accuracy of the keyword difficulty scores vary from tool to tool, but the interpretation is generally similar:
- Low Difficulty (0-29): These are easier to rank and are suitable for newer websites.
- Medium/Moderate Difficulty (30-49): These have medium-level competition; ranking is possible with good content and backlinks.
- High Difficulty (50-69): These require strong SEO efforts. Ranking is possible with a combination of high-quality backlinks and authoritative content.
- Very High Difficulty (70+): These are already dominated by well-established websites, so it is extremely competitive.
Final Thoughts
Analyzing the keyword difficulty in SEO for your target keywords is one of the crucial steps in your keyword research process. In order to drive valuable traffic to your website, you should analyze the competition and use strong strategies to improve your chances of ranking well. So, Consistency, relevance, and smart keyword selection will always outperform any random content creation.