Keyword Difficulty: How to Use It To Your Advantage

Bakers talk about flour. Runners talk about marathons. Salespeople talk about selling things. The girl next door talks about oat milk. SEOs talk about keyword difficulty.

Now, you probably have grasped what flour, marathons, selling, and oat milk are (and why these specific people won’t stop going on about them). But “keyword difficulty” might be something you want to know more about, as an SEO and a marketer.

Actually, it’s something you need to know more about if you want to boost your visibility on search and outperform your competitors.

Find out what it is, why it’s important to understand, and how to use keyword difficulty to your advantage.

What is keyword difficulty?

Keyword difficulty is a metric that predicts how challenging it should be to gain a high ranking organically on Google for a specific keyword.

You’ll find that different SEO and keyword tools apply various methodologies to determine and present keyword difficulty (or KD). Some display a percentage, others a numeric figure from 0 – 100. The higher the score, the harder it is to rank for.

⚠️ Keyword difficulty is not to be confused with ‘keyword competition’ which is for paid search campaigns, evaluating the bidding competition for a specific keyword.

We’ll talk about how keyword difficulty is calculated in just a second, but first: why should you care about keyword difficulty?

Why is keyword difficulty important to understand?

We talk endlessly about the importance of thorough keyword research and competitor research to achieve SEO success.

… and here we go again.

Keyword difficulty plays a huge part in understanding your competition’s capabilities, your target audience’s interest, current and ongoing market trends, as well as what you should be prioritizing as a business.

Helping you to assess your chances of *actually* ranking, keyword difficulty informs you of how easy or hard it is to achieve your goals, and how much work you’d have to put in.

A low keyword difficulty score should be easy to rank high for – you shouldn’t need to invest a lot of resources and should expect results fast. A high score, on the other hand, would require more planning, more content pieces, and more links. In other words: more time, work, and resources.

How do you estimate keyword difficulty?

Keyword difficulty analysis comes down to the number of quality links to top-ranking pages for specific keywords.

The more backlinks there are, the more a specific keyword or topic is being talked about.

Think about it; this is how search engines started out. Links were used to determine the quality of content. However, today’s SEO is far more complex and has to filter down to user intent, so on top of that, SEO tools now consider:

• Backlink quality: Are the links from an authoritative website?
• Domain quality: Does this content fit the E-E-A-T strategy?
• Content quality: Is the content written well for both Google and readers?
• Search intent: Is the content answering the questions that users are asking?

So, when there are more quality backlinks throughout the top-ranking content, there’s an indication of more high quality websites and more high quality content for a keyword.

Every tool that offers a keyword difficulty measure, will provide a unique score. This is because – even though they are all based on Google’s ranking factors – each tool analyzes different data, and therefore measures content relevance and backlinks differently.

For example, one tool might analyze the backlinks to the top 20 ranking pages for a keyword,* providing a much more realistic view of keyword difficulty compared to the tools that only consider the top 10.

*Shameless plug alert: Similarweb does indeed consider the top 20 ranking pages and its competitors do not (making it the best website to check keyword difficulty, naturally).

How do you check keyword difficulty?

To check keyword difficulty, you need to use the SEO tools that do all the hard work and calculations for you.

With platforms offering different keyword difficulty scores, your best bet is to choose the tools with the most accurate and freshest data.

*Cough cough* That’s Similarweb. *cough cough* 

Rand Fishkin shares his research about the most reliable third-party data traffic estimates, stating Similarweb best matches Google Analytics.

Similarweb is known for the quality of its data that it collects from multiple, reliable sources. We show the keyword difficulty score as a numeric value, ranging from 1-100.

• Keywords scoring between 1 and 20 are considered easy
• Keywords scoring between 21 and 80 are considered moderate
• Keywords scoring between 81 and 100 are considered difficult

You’ll find keyword difficulty (KD) listed within the various keyword research tools on the platform, including Keyword Generator, Keyword Gap, and Keyword Overview.

Here is an example of the search term “roasted potatoes recipe” in the Keyword Generator tool. As you can see, the core search term has a moderate keyword difficulty.

What is a good keyword difficulty?

Disclaimer: There’s no such thing as a good keyword difficulty.

Instead of focusing on ‘what’s a good keyword difficulty score?’, what should be good is your understanding of both the keyword difficulty score and how you can take advantage of this knowledge.

The best strategy involves a mixed bag of keywords with various difficulty ranges. Yep, that’s right – it’s not beneficial for your target keyword list to be filled with low-difficulty keywords, and it’s certainly not efficient to spend all your time working hard to catch all those high-difficulty keywords.

Let’s talk strategy.

When to target low-difficulty keywords:

You want to target low-difficulty keywords:

• For quicker wins with long-tail keywords
• When your website has no domain authority
• To start building your content and backlinks

…basically, it’s a great idea to target low-difficulty keywords to get the ball rolling. While the low-difficulty website traffic is coming in, you can channel some of your efforts into creating content that targets the keywords that are more difficult to rank for.

When to target high-difficulty keywords:

You want to target high-difficulty keywords:

• To reap the longer-term benefits of core keywords with high search volume
• For evergreen content creation, to build your business’ authority in its industry
• To boost organic traffic if you have strong domain authority already

It takes time to get to the top ranks on the SERP, especially when you’re targeting high-difficulty keywords. Build up momentum and authority by targeting long-tail keywords, and creating evergreen content that isn’t time-sensitive or related to current events, but remains relevant over time.

Getting to the top of the SERP – and holding that spot – requires intensive keyword research and content optimization efforts. You’re gonna need the staff ✅, the expertise ✅, and use the right tools ✅.

When to target medium-difficulty keywords:

You want to target medium-difficulty keywords:

• For the ideal target keyword balance of competition AND search volume
• When your website has some level of authority (as these are fairly easy to win)
• In the same opportune way that you target trending keywords

Medium-difficulty keywords usually indicate the SEO sweet-spot of low competition and higher search volume. This makes medium-difficulty keywords a great target, particularly for websites with some level of authority already.

That’s exactly why trending keywords are so important and advantageous to keep on top of. With low competition and a rising search volume, it makes them easier to target… and win visibility on search from.

When to target all keyword difficulties:

You want to target search terms with various keyword difficulty scores:

• If you want to gain more visibility on search
• If you want to gain more traffic through organic search
• If you want to see more ROI from your SEO efforts

Okay, jokes aside. As we already mentioned, the best SEO strategy covers all bases in terms of keyword difficulty. That makes for the perfect balance between long term and short term wins, low competition and decent search volume, as well as highly competitive keywords and lots of teamwork. Combine related keywords, trending keywords, long-tail keywords and question queries for the ultimate target keyword list.

As TLC famously said “Don’t (just) go chasing high-difficulty keywords, please stick to the varied keyword difficulty scores that you’re used to (seeing in your keyword research)”… or something like that anyway.

Create a killer keyword strategy with Similarweb

With Similarweb, you can complete the optimal keyword research process from beginning to end.

1. Understand the keyword gap between you and your competition
2. Find relevant keywords for your business to target on organic search
3. See how your competition is using – and performing with – these keywords
4. Discover the keyword difficulty scores for each keyword to prioritize efficiently
5. Keep on top of relevant trending keywords for quick wins in your strategy

Find the right keywords (with the right keyword difficulty scores) for your search strategy, and win more for your business through organic search. Try Similarweb for free today.

FAQs

What does the keyword difficulty score tell you?

Keyword difficulty helps you estimate the amount of effort it would take to rank high on Google for a particular keyword.

How is keyword difficulty calculated?

Keyword difficulty calculation is based on traffic and engagement metrics, and the quantity and quality of referring domains that lead to the top results for a specific keyword.

What is a good keyword difficulty?

There’s no one good keyword difficulty that can fit all. It depends on your resources, strategy, business needs, and on the industry and its competitive landscape. In your keyword strategy, you should eventually incorporate various levels of keyword difficulties.

by Gerald Murphy

Solution Business Manager, Similarweb

Gerald, with 10+ years in SEO for brands like Nestlé and Shell, drives Similarweb's SEO strategy and is a digital enthusiast.