Understanding Keyword Difficulty and Its Importance

Just like bakers discuss flour, SEO experts frequently mention keyword difficulty. However, not every digital marketer may fully comprehend its meaning, or they might hesitate to ask for clarification.

Understanding keyword difficulty goes beyond surface-level knowledge and requires familiarity with Google’s ranking factors. Even if you grasp the concept, there are still crucial aspects to consider for making informed SEO decisions.

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In this blog, we will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of keyword difficulty. We will explore what the keyword difficulty score signifies and how to leverage it effectively. Additionally, you’ll gain practical tips and expert guidance on evaluating keyword difficulty and integrating it into your digital marketing strategy. Let’s dive right in!

What Is Keyword Difficulty?

Keyword difficulty, also known as keyword ranking difficulty or SEO difficulty, is a metric that assesses the level of effort required to achieve a high ranking on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) for a specific keyword. It provides insights into the competitiveness of a keyword and helps you refine your keyword strategies while effectively allocating your time and resources.

Various SEO and keyword tools utilise different methodologies to determine and represent keyword difficulty, often displayed as a percentage or numeric value. However, the common factor among these tools is the consideration of the quantity and quality of backlinks to the top-ranking websites for the keyword.

Keyword Strategy Ideas:

• By analysing keyword difficulty, you can estimate the challenges and investment needed to improve your ranking for a particular keyword.
• This knowledge allows you to adjust your SEO approach, prioritise keywords with manageable difficulty levels and optimise your overall keyword strategy for better search engine visibility.

Keyword Competition vs. Keyword Difficulty: Unraveling the Distinction

When discussing keywords, you might often encounter references to both keyword competition and keyword difficulty. However, it’s essential to understand the slight but significant difference between the two metrics.

Google assigns a difficulty score ranging from 1 to 100 to assess keyword difficulty specifically for organic search. On the other hand, Google also provides a keyword competition metric, which pertains to the level of competition in paid search campaigns.

To navigate through your keyword research ideas effectively, here are the key points to remember:

• Keyword Difficulty in SEO: This metric focuses on organic search and indicates the level of difficulty in achieving a high ranking for a keyword in organic search results.
• Keyword Competition: Unlike keyword difficulty, keyword competition primarily evaluates the level of competition among advertisers bidding for a specific keyword in paid search campaigns.

To gain a deeper understanding of how keyword difficulty is calculated and how you can leverage it to your advantage, let’s delve further into its significance and implications.

Keyword Competition vs. Keyword Difficulty: Unraveling the Distinction

When discussing keywords, you might often encounter references to both keyword competition and keyword difficulty. However, it’s essential to understand the slight but significant difference between the two metrics.

Google assigns a difficulty score ranging from 1 to 100 to assess keyword difficulty specifically for organic search. On the other hand, Google also provides a keyword competition metric, which pertains to the level of competition in paid search campaigns.

Here are some key keyword research tips to remember:

• Keyword Difficulty: This metric focuses on organic search and indicates the level of difficulty in achieving a high ranking for a keyword in organic search results.
• Keyword Competition: Unlike keyword difficulty, keyword competition primarily evaluates the level of competition among advertisers bidding for a specific keyword in paid search campaigns.

To gain a deeper understanding of how keyword difficulty is calculated and how you can leverage it to your advantage, let’s delve further into its significance and implications

The Importance of Considering Keyword Difficulty

When aiming for top rankings on search engines, it’s crucial to understand the capabilities of your competitors, market trends and the interests of your target audience. This is where keyword research comes into play.

Keyword difficulty is a metric that considers both competition and audience preferences to gauge the level of difficulty in achieving a desired ranking. It helps you assess your chances and determine the amount of effort required to reach your desired position on the search engine results page (SERP).

What To Know?

• Keywords with low difficulty scores indicate that obtaining a high ranking should be relatively easy. You won’t need to allocate significant resources, and you can expect to see results quickly.
• Conversely, when targeting keywords with higher difficulty levels, you need to plan for a more specific and targeted approach, including creating more content pieces, building quality backlinks and investing additional time and effort.

In summary, understanding keyword difficulty is essential for an effective SEO strategy. It allows you to make informed decisions about which keywords to target, set realistic expectations and allocate resources wisely. Now, let’s delve into the exciting details.

Estimating Keyword Difficulty: Factors to Consider

To estimate keyword difficulty, various tools are available, each offering a unique approach, although they all rely on Google’s ranking factors. The primary factors considered by these tools are content relevance and backlinks.

When examining a keyword like “hot air balloons,” the algorithm of these tools would analyse the top-ranking pages for that keyword and assess the number of backlinks on those pages. However, backlinks are not the sole criterion used in the calculation.

How Is Keyword Difficulty Calculated?

• Backlink Quality: Google prioritises high-quality content and ranks pages accordingly. The authenticity, accuracy and reliability of websites and pages linking to a site play a significant role. Reputable sites tend to link to reliable sources such as research institutes and libraries, which strengthens their link profile. Achieving a strong link profile requires demonstrating authority and proving your worthiness in the field, which contributes to the difficulty of ranking for a keyword.
• Domain Authority: Domain authority is influenced by the quality and relevance of the content on a website. Websites that consistently produce highly informative and relevant content within a specific field are regarded as authorities. However, if a site starts publishing unrelated content, it can harm its domain authority. Building domain authority takes time and effort, and until a site can establish itself as a reliable source within an industry or topic, its domain authority remains low.
• Content Quality: While content quality contributes to domain authority, it is also considered separately in the estimation of keyword difficulty. In cases where there is no existing authority for a keyword, and backlinks are scarce, the quality of the content itself becomes the primary indicator. Sites with the highest-quality content tend to rank higher for such keywords.
• Search Intent: Relevance and alignment with search intent are crucial factors in keyword difficulty. Google identifies four main types of search intent: informational, commercial, transactional, and navigational. For the keyword “hot air balloons,” the dominant search intent is likely transactional, as most searchers are seeking opportunities to ride in a hot air balloon. Understanding the search intent and aligning the content accordingly contributes to keyword difficulty.

By considering these factors, you can better estimate the difficulty of ranking for a specific keyword and adjust your SEO strategy accordingly.

How to Assess Keyword Difficulty?

To check the difficulty of a keyword, you can rely on several SEO tools that provide keyword difficulty (KD) scores. These scores are typically presented as numeric values or percentages, and the range is often divided into different groups based on the tool’s segmentation.

However, it’s worth noting that KD scores can vary across different tools, even for the same keyword. Backlinko highlights this discrepancy, as different tools may analyse different data sources and apply their unique methodologies. The accuracy of the KD measure relies on the quality and completeness of the data it utilises.

At Traffic Radius, we prioritise data accuracy by collecting information from multiple reliable sources. Our KD score is presented as a numeric value ranging from 1 to 100. Here’s how the scores are categorised:

• Keywords with scores between 1 and 20 are considered easy.
• Keywords with scores between 21 and 80 are considered moderate.
• Keywords with scores between 81 and 100 are considered difficult.

You can access the KD metric in various keyword research tools on the Traffic Radius platform, including the free keyword generator, keyword generator, keyword gap, keyword overview and the SEO competitive analysis section under search. For more advanced insights and practical keyword strategy tips on utilising keyword difficulty, you can refer to our additional resources.

Determining a Good Keyword Difficulty:

When it comes to keyword difficulty, there is no universally defined “good” level. Instead, it’s important to understand what the score signifies and how it impacts your SEO and marketing strategies.

Rather than limiting your keyword targeting to a specific difficulty level, it’s best to adopt a diversified approach. A mix of keywords with varying difficulty ranges can yield better results.

• When to Target Low-Difficulty Keywords: If your website is new, lacks domain authority, has limited content and few backlinks, it’s advisable to focus on low-difficulty keywords. At this stage, the priority is to drive traffic quickly and increase visibility. Targeting low-difficulty keywords increases the likelihood of ranking on the first page of search engine results and attracting traffic to your site.
• The key is to create content that is relevant to your audience and start building momentum. While generating traffic through low-difficulty keywords, you can allocate some resources to creating content that targets more challenging keywords.

Keyword Strategy Tips:

• Identify long-tail keywords related to your primary keyword if it has a high difficulty score and search volume.
• Targeting multiple long-tail keywords increases the chances of driving traffic compared to focusing on a single viral, short-tail keyword.
• Additionally, long-tail keywords enable more precise targeting, helping you reach your most valuable audience and generate quality traffic.
• Always ensure there is sufficient search volume for the keywords you target. If no one is searching for a particular term, ranking for it won’t bring visitors.
• It’s beneficial to include high-difficulty keywords in your SEO strategy. Keep in mind that reaching the top ranks of the search engine results page (SERP) takes time.
• Create exceptional evergreen content that remains relevant over an extended period and optimise and update the content regularly to build authority gradually.
• Websites with strong domain authority and robust link profiles, along with high-quality existing content, can prioritise targeting high-difficulty keywords to significantly boost organic traffic.
• In the medium keyword search difficulty range, it’s crucial to focus on producing top-quality content that precisely aligns with search intent and is well-linked.
• Effective and accurate keyword research increases your chances of success in ranking for these terms. Understanding your audience’s search behaviour and their specific needs makes medium-difficulty keywords incredibly valuable for your strategy.

Remember, a well-rounded approach that considers different keyword search difficulty levels and aligns with your overall goals and resources is key to achieving optimal results in keyword targeting.

Conclusion

In summary, keyword search difficulty is a crucial metric in SEO that helps digital marketers gauge the level of competition they may encounter when trying to rank for specific keywords. It considers factors like backlinks, domain authority, content quality and search intent to provide valuable insights into the effort and resources required to achieve desired search engine rankings.

There is no universally defined threshold for a “good” keyword search difficulty score. It is advisable to adopt a diversified keyword targeting strategy that encompasses a mix of low, medium and high-difficulty keywords.

Important Points to Know:

• Low-difficulty keywords are suitable for new websites with limited authority, as they can generate quick traffic and visibility.
• High-difficulty keywords demand extensive optimisation efforts and are more suited for established websites with strong domain authority.
• Medium-difficulty keywords can be valuable if accompanied by high-quality, focused content that aligns with search intent.
• Various tools are available to assess SEO keyword difficulty rating, each employing its own methodologies and data sources. It is crucial to rely on reliable tools and consider the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the data they utilise.
• Consistent monitoring, testing and using keyword difficulty checkers are essential for optimising keyword targeting and staying competitive in the ever-evolving online landscape.