Keyword Difficulty In A Nutshell

It measures how much effort you’ll need to rank on specific key phrases. It also helps understand the likelihood of your website ranking on Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

KD (Keyword Difficulty), or SEO competition score are other terminology for the same thing. The amount of times keywords appear on the search results page is referred to as keyword difficulty. A high difficulty means many other keywords compete for the same rank in search engine results.

Keyword Difficulty tells you the difficulty it will be to rank for specific keywords. You can use this data to help you pick which keywords to target.

If you’re going after a high-competition keyword, you’ll need to devote more resources to your campaign and expect delayed results.

You can attain higher ranks with less work by picking a low-competition term.

It measures how tough it is to rank well for a specific keyword. This metric is based on the number of monthly searches for each keyword.

This detailed post will show you how to check for KD in various ways.

Here are different levels of scores that you can leverage for keyword-based rankings:

  • KD score 0-10: Easy (Less than 10 domains)
  • KD score 11-30: Medium (11-36 domains)
  • KD score 31-70: Hard (37-200 domains)
  • KD score 71-100: Extremely Difficult (200+ domains)

Now let's discuss some of the tools you can use for SEO-based insights for Keyword Difficulty.

keyword difficulty blog

SEMrush is a platform that may support you with SEO analytics for your website content. It aims to improve the rankings of sites online by providing insight keyword difficulty analytics to users. One of the best advantages of SEMrush is the ability to compare domains and keywords side-by-side.

keyword difficulty ahrefs

Ahrefs is used to review the link profile, keyword rankings, and SEO health of a website. It is used by small businesses to locate the material that has worked well (in terms of social shares and/or links) on a specific topic. It is an SEO-based tool that lets you know several insights for your web pages, such as the number of referring domains, domain authority, and other significant variables. It can also be used to analyze keyword difficulty.

keyword difficulty keyworddit

This is the tool to use if you need to quickly generate many keyword suggestions. It generates roughly 1,000 ideas every minute and allows you to export the results for free with a single click.

The only disadvantage of this is that it’s elementary.

It doesn’t display search volumes or trends data, and it does not categorize keywords in the same way that Keyword Planner does.

However, it offers one remarkable feature: positive and negative filters.

keyword difficulty kwfinder

If an actual free and effective keyword difficulty checker is what you want, I recommend this tool. The free version has limits, but nothing crippling, as opposed to many other tools that impose heavy limits on free users.

canIrank keyword difficulty

It makes specific recommendations to your site, so you aren’t fighting for the exact keywords as everyone else. It also demonstrates a balance between traffic potential and keyword difficulty ranking compared to your current website.

Evaluating your content’s target markets is one of the most significant impacts of using these tools to determine keyword difficulty. And as keyword difficulty may be considerably more competitive for a specific niche, you can still rank for it.

Let's Talk About Keyword Difficulty In SEO

In SEO it analyzes the quantity and quality of backlinks to the 10 leading pages on a keyword’s Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

Then, focusing on their strong backlinks measures how competitive these pages are.

SEO tools determine how easy it is to rank for specific keywords by examining the domain authorities (or domain ratings) and page authorities (or URL ratings) of pages currently ranking for those keywords.

There are several methods for determining keyword difficulty.

Keyword Difficulty Checker

It’s one of the most common approach in checking KD. These tools scour the internet and analyze the competition for specific keywords. They will then provide you a report with an estimated keyword difficulty score.

While this process is quick and straightforward, it does have some drawbacks. The most significant disadvantage is that these tools can only examine competition on the page. This implies they can’t take into account off-page SEO or brand recognition. As a result, their estimations may be slightly off.

Competitor Analysis

Simply start by researching a few websites ranked for your intended keywords. Afterward, you examine their backlinks and traffic sources.

If they have a lot of high-quality backlinks and traffic from well-known websites, it’s a solid indication that the term is difficult to rank.

If their backlinks are primarily from low-quality websites or they don’t get much traffic, it’s a good sign that the term is easy to rank for.

While one of these strategies can be helpful, combining them is the most accurate way to measure keyword difficulty.

Using various methods can provide a more comprehensive picture of the competition. These approaches will allow you to make better recommendations regarding your SEO campaign!

Keyword SEO difficulty is merely another keyword research metric.

Google Search

Another way to determine keyword difficulty is to manually search on Google. Simply start by putting in your goal keywords and reviewing the results.

If you find a lot of big brands or well-known websites, it’s a good sign of intense competition.

On the other side, if you notice many small websites and blog entries, it’s a positive indication that the keyword is easy to rank for.

Of course, because it relies solely on your observations, this method is less trustworthy than a keyword difficulty checker.

It’s also important to note that your findings may differ from others owing to customization and geography.

Choosing Keywords For SEO

When it comes to SEO keywords, the main goal is to determine those with a significant search volume to drive search engine traffic and a low keyword difficulty score.

Choose keywords with a monthly search volume of at least 100. The keyword difficulty to target will be determined by the strength of your website, but anything under 30 is a decent starting point.

Why Consider Keyword Difficulty Before Selecting A Keyword?

When assessing which keywords to target, keyword difficulty is an important statistic to consider. You should avoid targeting excessively competitive keywords because ranking for those queries is difficult. You also don’t want to target exceptionally low-competition keywords because they rarely have high search volumes.

As a result, it’s crucial to find a middle ground between search volume and keyword difficulty. You should target keywords with moderate to low competition and high search volumes.