What Is Keyword Difficulty In SEO? (Beginner’s Guide)

Do you know how to choose the right target keywords for your blog?

There are a lot of metrics to consider when doing keyword research, but keyword difficulty is among the most important.

Keyword difficulty is a metric calculated by your keyword research tool that determines how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword.

In this post, we cover what this metric is, why it’s important, how to find it and how to use it to choose the right keywords to target.

What is keyword difficulty?

Keyword difficulty in SEO is a metric created by keyword research tools to declare how hard it is to rank for a specific keyword. It’s graded on a scale from 0 to 100 with 0 being the easiest to rank for and 100 being the hardest.

ahrefs keyword difficulty score

But how is keyword difficulty calculated? A keyword’s keyword difficulty score is determined by many factors, and those factors differ from tool to tool.

For the most part, these are the metrics that determine keyword difficulty scores:

  • Search volume – The number of times a keyword is searched for on search engines on a monthly basis.
  • Number of backlinks – Some keyword research tools are able to calculate the number of backlinks a page has as well as the quality of those backlinks. They use this metric to determine how competitive the individual pages for your keyword’s search engine results pages (SERPs) are.
  • Average domain authority of SERPs – Another metric SEO tools have created is domain authority (DA), also known as domain rank (DR). These tools use this metric to grade domains on a separate scale from 0 to 100 with 0 representing a domain with the lowest authority and 100 with the highest. The total number of backlinks a domain has is a major factor that impacts DA. If these tools also have keyword research tools, they use the average DA of pages that rank for a particular keyword to determine how difficult it is to rank for that keyword.
  • SERP features – SERP features are snippets, local map pack results, top stories, video lists, forum lists, image packs, etc. If these appear on SERPs for a particular keyword, that keyword will be harder to rank for since you’ll not only compete with other pages that rank for that keyword but also all of the SERP features that appear alongside those pages.

Each SEO tool calculates this differently. And that may use additional metrics to determine a keyword’s difficulty score, but these have the most influence.

Is keyword difficulty important?

The keyword difficulty metric is very important. It’s one of the top reasons to perform keyword research in the first place.

It’ll help you understand which keywords are going to require quite a bit of work if you want to rank for them as well as which keywords you may be able to rank for even if your blog is still quite new.

It can even help you find an alternative target keyword if the one you originally intended to target is quite competitive.

Because each tool has its own way of calculating keyword difficulty, there’s not a set keyword difficulty score for every keyword out there.

For example, here are the keyword difficulty scores for the keyword “best handbag brands” from three of the most popular SEO tools out there:

KeywordSemrush KDAhrefs KDMoz KD
best handbag brands47750

This is why it’s best to stick with a single keyword research tool since another tool’s scores may be completely different and may throw you off base as you do additional keyword research in the future.

semrush keyword difficulty score

How does keyword difficulty differ from keyword competition?

When you’re new to search engine optimization (SEO), you may confuse keyword difficulty with keyword competition by mistake or simply not know the difference between the two.

While keyword difficulty is used to determine how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword, keyword competition is used to determine how much it costs to advertise for that keyword.

You’ve probably noticed a sponsored search result on Google here and there.

sponsored google search result

These results were paid for through the Google Ads platform. The higher you bid for a keyword, the more likely you are to appear in the sponsored section of the first SERP for that keyword.

Cost is usually determined based on the amount you paid versus the amount of ad clicks your sponsored result received. This metric is called cost per click (CPC) or pay per click (PPC).

Therefore, keyword competition is a metric that determines how much advertisers are paying per click for a particular keyword, making it much different from keyword difficulty.

How to find keyword difficulty scores

The easiest way to check keyword difficulty is by using a keyword research tool. It doesn’t really matter which keyword research tool you use. It just matters that you stick with the same keyword search tool while comparing multiple keywords.

Semrush, Ahrefs and Moz have built huge keyword databases that they rely on to output metrics for keyword difficulty, but they’re quite expensive as a result.

Tools like SE Ranking, Morningscore and KWFinder from Mangools are much more affordable and get the job done just fine.

They’re even easier to use from a beginner’s standpoint.

No matter what keyword research tool you use, to find a particular keyword’s difficulty score (this may be called SEO difficulty in some tools), all you need to do is enter it as a seed keyword.

A seed keyword is the original keyword you use to find additional keywords or similar keywords for a topic. It can also be the keyword you want to target.

If I want to write an article on how to choose filament for a 3D printing project, I’d use “3d printer filament” as a seed keyword.

semrush keyword overview

Your keyword tool will reveal your seed keyword’s difficulty score as well as the difficulty scores of similar keywords and related keywords.

semrush keyword ideas

Do you need SEO tools to determine keyword difficulty?

Not necessarily. It certainly makes it easier, and the scores allow you to compare different keywords against one another, but you don’t necessarily need SEO tools to understand how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword.

You can find all of the information you need about a keyword by analyzing a keyword’s SERP.

Use a free keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner to determine a keyword’s approximate search volume.

google keyword planner search volume

Run each domain on the first SERP through a tool like Ahrefs’ free domain authority checker or even Moz.

You can even use these tools to determine the number of backlinks a page has.

Just remember, the higher authority a domain has and the more backlinks they have, the harder they’ll be to outrank.

You’ll run into limits with the free versions of these tools, but they’re still useful if all you want to do is research a single keyword.

You should also analyze each individual page and look for things like how they use the keyword you want to target (especially in their title, URL and headings), how many times they used the keyword you want to target, the keyword they seem to be targeting, similar keywords they use, related keywords they use, how many words their article is, and whether or not they’re matching search intent.

Search intent is the type of results a user is actually looking for when they enter a particular keyword into a search engine like Google.

When a user enters “best handbags” into Google, they aren’t looking for search results that describe where to find the best handbags on the web, they’re looking for product results or product recommendations of the best handbags on the market.

google search result best handbags

Therefore, an article that targets this keyword should have a list of handbags the site deems as being “the best.”

If a page on the SERP for your target keyword doesn’t seem to match the search intent of the keyword, they may be an easy page to outrank, especially if they don’t have much authority.

How to use keyword difficulty while performing keyword research

Let’s get back to using SEO tools to find keyword difficulty scores, specifically, what do you do when you reveal those scores? What’s a good keyword difficulty score to target?

This is where this metric gets quite complicated and why it’s worth learning what exactly keyword difficulty means for the particular tool you’re using.

A good keyword difficulty score is determined by the authority of your own domain. If you’re new, target long-tail keywords that have green scores in your tool.

If your blog has been around for a while, you may be able to rank for keywords that are orange in color.

Go through your tool’s knowledge base to determine how they calculate keyword difficulty and what the scores mean. You can even ask the tool’s support team directly.

For example, here’s what Semrush’s keyword difficulty scores mean, according to their knowledge base:

  • 0-14 – Very easy to rank for
  • 15-29 – Easy to rank for
  • 30-49 – Possible to rank for
  • 50-69 – Difficult to rank for
  • 70-84 – Hard to rank for
  • 85-100 – Very hard to rank for

The problem with keyword difficulty scores like these is that they’re quite generic and don’t take into account your own domain’s authority.

If your site is brand new, you probably won’t find targeting keywords with scores between 30 and 49 “possible to rank for.” You should target keywords in the 0 to 14 range instead.

This is why Semrush allows you to personalize keyword difficulty scores using your own domain authority as a baseline, but again, Semrush is quite expensive and may not be worth the extra cost if you’re new to SEO or only need to perform light keyword research.

Again, it’s best to do a bit of research on the tool you want to use to determine what they mean when they say a keyword has a difficulty score of “47” or “14.”

Keyword filters

Once you determine what keyword difficulty range you should target, use it as a keyword filter when performing keyword research, especially if the seed keyword you want to target is quite competitive.

Good keyword difficulty maximums to use as filters are “30” if your site is brand new, “40” if you’ve been publishing for at least a year and “50” if you already rank for a few keywords in your niche.

What to do with highly competitive keywords

Highly competitive keywords sometimes represent highly-relevant topics for your niche. In this case, you may need to write articles that target them even if you have no chance in ranking for them.

Here are our recommendations for dealing with highly competitive keywords:

  • If a keyword you want to target is highly competitive, use keyword research to find a similar but less competitive keyword to target.
  • Write an authoritative article that targets a highly competitive keyword or less competitive similar keyword that represents a relevant topic in your niche, meaning a topic your readers would find useful.
  • Use the keyword as a seed keyword to find related but less competitive keywords to target with additional content.
  • Use your target keywords and related keywords to create topic clusters on your site.
  • Use internal links to connect individual articles in a topic cluster together.

Do this for every highly competitive keyword you eventually want to rank for.

Regardless of how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword, you should always optimize your article for any keyword you target.

Start by determining the search intent of a keyword. You can do this by entering the keyword into Google and seeing what type of results pop up.

Then, create an outline of topics to cover in your article being sure that those topics match the search intent you found.

Use keyword research tools and on-page optimization tools like Frase, Surfer SEO and NeuronWriter to find additional relevant keywords to include. The latter tools will even provide suggestions on word count and the number of images to include.

Use your target keyword in your page title, one H2 heading, permalink, SEO title and meta description. Use synonyms for your keyword throughout your article.

Once the article is published, promote it, and use link building techniques to build backlinks for it to increase its authority.

Final thoughts

Keyword difficulty is a useful metric that you can use to prioritize which keywords to optimize for next. And use it to understand whether your site may stand a chance of ranking.

But this metric is an estimate only.

You should always look at what’s ranking for any search query to see if Google or other search engines are actually ranking your type of website. For example, if you run a content site and SERPs are full of ecommerce listings, it’s unlikely that you’ll rank.

So, use this metric as a guide rather than a definitive answer.

Related reading: