Ever spent hours picking the perfect keyword, only to realize that ranking for it is practically impossible? 😖
That’s where keyword difficulty comes in—it’s the hidden factor that can make or break your SEO strategy. A keyword might seem ideal, but if the competition is too fierce, your chances of landing on page one shrink fast.
Understanding keyword difficulty isn’t just about numbers. It’s about picking the right battles. Chasing super competitive terms or settling for low-traffic keywords can waste your time and budget.
The trick is finding that sweet spot: keywords you can rank for with solid potential.
So here’s a full guide on how to measure keyword difficulty, how to approach keyword research, what factors matter, and how to use this metric to boost your rankings.
Let’s make your SEO efforts count! 💪
What Is Keyword Difficulty?
Think of Keyword Difficulty (KD) as a “ranking challenge” rating. It’s an SEO metric that estimates how hard it will be to get your website onto Google’s first page for a particular keyword.
Google doesn’t provide these scores directly. Instead, SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush calculate them using their own algorithms. Most use a 0-100 scale: higher scores mean tougher competition.
A high KD score means you’re up against well-established websites with a strong backlink profile. A lower score suggests it might be easier to climb the rankings.
However, many SEO professionals view keyword difficulty as a general concept rather than a fixed metric tied to a specific tool.
In this broader sense, ranking difficulty takes multiple factors into account—such as domain power, content relevance, and search intent.
Why Keyword Difficulty Matters in SEO
Keyword difficulty is important for planning content, managing resources, and improving your competitive strategy. Here’s a breakdown of why it matters and how it affects your SEO success:
Understanding Your Competition
Keyword difficulty and competitor keyword research go hand in hand, helping you assess how tough it is to rank for specific keywords.
It’s not just about numbers; it’s about understanding your competition.
If the top-ranking pages are packed with high-authority websites, you may need stronger backlinks and more in-depth content to compete. On the flip side, if lower-authority sites are ranking, it could mean an opportunity to break in with well-optimized content.
Search Atlas gives you several ways to understand how easy it will be to rank, beyond just the KD score.
For example, its Keyword Gap Tool lets you compare up to five competitors and see exactly which keywords they rank for, where they’re getting traffic, and what kind of content is helping them succeed. Instead of guessing, you can reverse-engineer their keyword strategy and find gaps you can take advantage of.
Here’s what you get when you plug in your site and competitors:
- Keyword Gap: Keywords your competitors rank for, but you don’t. These are great targets for new content.
- Keywords in Common: The keywords all of you are ranking for. Useful for seeing how well you stack up.
- Keyword Opportunities: Keywords that at least one competitor ranks for, but you don’t. Perfect for expanding your reach.
- Unique Keywords: Keywords only you rank for. Helps you see your strengths and where you’re standing out.
- All Keywords: A full list of every keyword any of the sites rank for. Great for deeper analysis.
Setting Your Priorities
Keyword difficulty helps you work smarter, not harder. Instead of diving into SEO blindly, you can use it to organize your efforts—just like you would with any task that requires different levels of effort.
Think of it like this: Some work is quick and easy, some takes moderate effort, and some requires a serious time investment. The same applies to keyword difficulty.
- Easy keywords: Low competition, easier to rank for. You can tackle these in short bursts, like squeezing in a blog post between meetings.
- Medium-difficulty keywords: More competitive, requiring solid content and SEO. These need dedicated time in your schedule.
- High-difficulty keywords: Heavily contested by strong sites. Ranking takes serious effort—long-form content, backlinks, and a long-term approach.
By prioritizing easier keywords, you start ranking and driving traffic sooner while working on more competitive terms in the background. Rather than waiting months for results, you gain momentum step by step—ensuring consistent SEO progress, regardless of your time constraints.
Creating a Content Strategy
By analyzing which keywords your competitors rank for, you can spot gaps or easier opportunities. If they rank for high-difficulty keywords, you might need strong backlinks and authority to compete, whereas lower-difficulty keywords could be easier targets.
If a keyword has high difficulty but a competitor ranks for it with a weaker site, it could be a sign that content quality or search intent alignment matters more than backlinks alone.
Instead of targeting unrealistic rankings, you can choose a mix of easier, mid-level, and more competitive keywords. This helps you create a content plan that builds your authority over time while also maintaining steady traffic growth.
You can do this immediately with Content Planner. Enter a seed keyword and you will get a content plan in minutes, along with keywords for a given topic and the KD of the entire keyword cluster.
Optimizing Link-Building Strategies
High-difficulty keywords often require more than just good content—they need strong backlinks. Understanding keyword difficulty helps you decide when extra link-building efforts are needed to compete.
If a keyword is very competitive, you can focus on outreach, guest posting, and internal linking to increase your page’s authority. This ensures your SEO efforts are well-targeted and supported by the necessary ranking factors.
You can improve your backlink profile for high-competition keywords using Search Atlas off-page tools. Our outreach tools automate link building and help you compete.
Saving Time and Resources
Sometimes, a keyword’s difficulty score doesn’t match what you’d expect—either way lower or higher than it should be. That’s your cue to take a second look. Keyword difficulty isn’t just a guide; it’s a reality check for your strategy.
Imagine you’re planning to write about “best home workout routines.” You assume it’ll be competitive, but the difficulty score is surprisingly low. That might seem like an easy win, but before jumping in, ask yourself why.
Maybe people searching for this term don’t actually click on articles but go straight to YouTube videos instead, or there is another issue.
In any case, if a score feels off, don’t just take it at face value—dig deeper to make sure the keyword is truly worth your time.
6 Questions to Ask When Assessing Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty isn’t just about numbers—it’s about understanding what it takes to outrank competitors and whether your site is in a position to compete. Here’s what really influences keyword difficulty and how you can use it to make smarter SEO decisions.
1. Who Are You Competing Against?
SEO is about outranking other websites, so the best way to gauge difficulty is by analyzing the competition.
Focus on:
- Content quality: Is their content detailed, well-written, and engaging?
- On-page optimization: Are they using SEO best practices like keyword placement, internal linking, and structured data?
- Backlinks: Strong backlink profiles signal authority. If top-ranking pages have tons of high-quality links, it’ll take serious effort to outrank them.
Since backlinks are measurable, many keyword difficulty scores are based on them. If the top-ranking sites have strong link profiles, you’ll need to either match their authority or find an alternative approach.
2. How Strong Is Your Website?
Even if a keyword looks easy, your site’s authority matters.
- A new website with no backlinks will struggle to rank, even for low-competition keywords.
- An established website with solid authority can target harder keywords and still compete.
Metrics like Domain Authority (Moz) or Trust Flow (Majestic) offer a rough idea of your site’s strength, but they’re just guidelines—Google doesn’t use them directly.
However, Search Atlas does have a metric that gives you a much clearer idea of what you need to rank. It’s called Domain Power, and unlike traditional, backlink-based metrics, it analyzes organic traffic and keyword rankings.
This way, you get an authority metric based on what Google actually sees, and it reflects real positions much more accurately.
3. What Is the Best Length?
Short, broad keywords (like “running shoes”) tend to be extremely competitive. Instead, long-tail keywords (like “best running shoes for beginners”) are usually easier to rank for and attract more targeted traffic.
Since long-tail keywords are more specific, they often have:
- Lower competition: Fewer big sites compete for them.
- Higher conversion rates: Searchers already know what they want.
If you’re struggling to rank for high-difficulty keywords, long-tail variations can be a smarter alternative.
4. Can SERP Features Make It Harder to Rank?
Even if a keyword has a low difficulty score, the search results page layout can make ranking harder.
- Featured snippets steal clicks from organic results.
- Ads push organic listings further down.
- Other rich results (like “People Also Ask” or local packs) can reduce visibility.
Before targeting a keyword, check what the SERP looks like. If the top of the page is crowded with non-organic results, even a low-difficulty keyword might not be worth chasing.
5. Is Your Content Good Enough?
Even with a strong site, ranking depends on how good your content is compared to what’s already ranking.
Before targeting a keyword, ask yourself:
- Can I create content that’s more useful or more in-depth?
- Do I have a unique angle, better research, or original insights?
- Can I add visuals, data, or expert opinions to make my content stand out?
If the current top-ranking pages offer something better than you can provide, you’ll struggle to outrank them, no matter how low the keyword difficulty score is.
The good news is, you don’t have to guess. You can now analyze your content the way Google sees it with Search Atlas Scholar.
This AI tool looks at your content quality and compares it to the competition. It gives you an assessment for Freshness, Human effort, Info Gain, User Intent alignment, and much more.
6. Does Your Content Match Search Intent?
Google doesn’t rank content just because it’s well-written. It ranks content that matches what searchers actually want.
So if the top-ranking pages are all product pages and you’re planning to write a blog post, you’ll have a tough time ranking—regardless of keyword difficulty. 🤷
How Search Atlas Measures Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty isn’t a one-size-fits-all metric.
At Search Atlas, we analyze it from two different angles:
- Traditional Keyword Research Tools: Our Keyword Research tools look at Domain Rating (DR) from backlink profiles to estimate competition, using a classic approach.
- OTTO AI Assistant: Looks at the top 20 best-ranking pages instead of just high-DR sites, factoring in real organic traffic and keyword rankings.
Why is this important? While domain rating can tell you something about how authoritative ranking websites are, OTTO’s method reveals what’s actually succeeding in search results right now.
Focusing on the top-performing pages, and going beyond just looking at their backlinks, gives you a much better understanding of what you need to do to be competitive.
This approach has brought our clients the upper hand when it comes to keyword strategy.
For example, since an anti-aging and science website started using Search Atlas, it experienced a growth of 1,149% in Organic Keywords and another 183% rise in the number of Keywords Ranking Top 3 within 9 months.
Plus, our Domain Power metric gives you a realistic view of your site’s competitive strength. It helps clients prioritize better, build a smarter content plan, and make the most of their resources. This is crucial for agencies that want to deliver real results.
Keyword Difficulty: A Clearer Path with Search Atlas SEO AI Tools
For a strong keyword strategy, you’ve got to think modern. Just looking at backlinks won’t cut it anymore. You need to see how well those top pages are actually doing in terms of visitors and how authoritative they are on their topics.
Search Atlas takes a smart step forward by combining how much organic traffic those top pages get with our Keyword Authority score. This helps you figure out why pages rank where they do, not just what they’re doing.
Sign up now for a free trial and our expert onboarding team will guide you through the platform, making sure you’re set up for success right from the start.
