Keyword difficulty is a metric, usually scored from 0 to 100, estimating how hard it would be to rank on the first page of search results for a specific keyword. It's calculated primarily from the strength and authority of the sites already ranking for that term.
What Drives a High Difficulty Score
- Strong domain authority among currently ranking competitors
- A large number of quality backlinks pointing to those top-ranking pages
- Generally high overall content quality among existing top results
- High commercial or informational value attached to the term
How to Actually Use This Metric
- Newer or smaller sites should generally start by targeting lower-difficulty keywords
- Established, authoritative sites can reasonably compete for higher-difficulty terms
- A healthy content strategy typically mixes both easier wins and more ambitious, longer-term targets
Where to Check It
Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz all provide a keyword difficulty score, usually alongside search volume data — together, those two numbers help identify realistic opportunities, rather than chasing high-volume terms that are essentially unreachable for a newer site.
« Back to Index