Keyword Difficulty

What is Keyword Difficulty?

In the SEO industry, keyword difficulty is a crucial metric that helps marketers and website owners determine the competitiveness of a keyword. High keyword difficulty means that many authoritative websites are already ranking for that term, making it harder for new content to break through. Conversely, low keyword difficulty indicates fewer competitors, making it easier to rank higher in search results. Various tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz provide keyword difficulty scores, usually on a scale from 0 to 100, where higher scores represent more competition. This metric aids in strategic planning, helping to focus efforts on keywords where there's a realistic chance to achieve a high ranking, driving more organic traffic to the website.

Keyword difficulty is a metric used in SEO to evaluate how challenging it would be to rank for a specific keyword in search engine results.

Examples

For a new blog about healthy recipes, targeting a highly competitive keyword like 'best diet plan' (with a difficulty score of 85) would be challenging. Instead, focusing on a less competitive keyword such as 'easy avocado toast recipe' (with a difficulty score of 25) would be a more attainable goal.

An e-commerce site specializing in eco-friendly products might find it difficult to rank for the keyword 'sustainable fashion' (difficulty score of 78). However, targeting 'affordable bamboo clothing' (difficulty score of 33) might yield better results, allowing them to attract more niche traffic.

Additional Information

Keyword difficulty is just one of many factors to consider in SEO; search volume and relevance are also important.

Regularly updating your keyword strategy is essential as competition and search trends change over time.

References

What is Keyword Difficulty? - Ahrefs

Keyword Difficulty: What It Is and How to Measure It - Backlinko

What Is Keyword Difficulty? (And How to Measure It for SEO)