What Is Keyword Difficulty?

Date First Published: 3rd December 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: SEO

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 5/10

Learn more about what keyword difficulty is in this article.

Keyword difficulty is a metric that estimates how difficult it would be to rank on the first page of Google for a specific keyword, based on factors, such as backlinks, organic search competition, relevance, and quality of content. Keywords with a high difficulty have large numbers of sites with hundreds or even thousands of backlinks targeting them and keywords with a low difficulty have fewer sites with only a small number of backlinks targeting the keywords.

Keyword difficulty is an important part of SEO. By researching keywords that have a low difficulty score and a sufficient search volume, it can greatly increase organic traffic since they are easier to rank for, which is a key part of keyword research.

What Factors Affect Keyword Difficulty?

The factors that affect the keyword difficulty score are:

The authority of the competing pages

The authority measures the relative strength of a page based on the quantity and quality of backlinks. Backlinks act as external votes for a page, which will indicate to Google that the page is of high importance. If a website owner wants their page to rank on the first page, they will have to get as many backlinks as the current top-ranking pages. If the top-ranking pages have gained hundreds or even thousands of backlinks from other sites, this will greatly increase the keyword difficulty.

The relevancy of the search results

Another important factor that determines the keyword difficulty is the relevancy of the search results. If there are very few relevant search results, the keyword will be much easier to rank for, but if the search results page is already filled with large amounts of relevant pages, it will increase the keyword difficulty.

The quality of content

The quality of content can determine the keyword difficulty. If there are already sites targeting a specific keyword with low-quality, duplicate content, stuffed keywords, or doorway pages that have little value for users, it will be much easier to rank on the first page for the keyword. But, if the SERP is already filled with lots of high-quality content, it will be more difficult.

Paid keyword difficulty score - Google Ads

Google Ads provides a keyword competition score in their Google Ad planner which measures the difficulty of ads ranking for a specific keyword. This focuses on the paid difficulty of keywords, which are the paid ads that appear at the top of the SERP before the organic search results. The more people that pay for ads, the more the keyword is worth to people. This could also lead to more competition in the organic search results as well.

How To Calculate Keyword Difficulty?

There is no specific formula for calculating keyword difficulty. Calculating keyword difficulty manually would be difficult and time-consuming as it would require all the numbers of backlinks of competing sites, competition, relevance, number of results, and quality of content to be calculated. There are online tools that can calculate the keyword difficulty of a specific keyword. Even though they all use the same 0-100 scale, each one calculates it quite differently, so checking the keyword difficulty of the same keywords using different SEO tools can result in numbers that vary quite a lot.

An example of a free keyword difficulty calculator is the Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty Checker. All you have to do is enter the keyword, complete the CAPTCHA, and it will then return with a keyword difficulty score. An example of a keyword difficulty result can be seen below. See how hard it is to rank for the short-tail keyword 'insurance' as it is not very specific and will return a ridiculously large number of search results when typed into Google, as shown in the screenshot below.

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