There is competition in the market for almost everything, and if you want to be a strong competitor, you need a strong marketing strategy and an understanding of what keyword difficulty means.
This also includes thorough keyword research to identify the most relevant search terms and queries that your potential users are looking for.
This keyword research will help you better understand your target audience's needs and tailor your content to their search queries. By aligning your strategy with your users' needs and using the right keywords, you can drive more traffic to your website and improve your visibility in search results.
Keyword Difficulty (KD) is a metric used in search engine optimization to estimate how difficult it would be to rank on the first page of Google for a particular keyword.
Keyword severity is always just an estimate, as Google doesn't disclose all of its ranking factors. For this reason, various SEO-Tools use different approaches to calculate keyword difficulty.
Keyword difficulty is a useful metric when working with large keyword lists. However, manual SERP analysis is more informative if you want to accurately assess your chances of ranking for a specific keyword.
In addition to keyword difficulty, search volume and content quality should also be considered to improve ranking on the first page of Google.
The higher the search volume for a specific keyword, the more traffic you can attract to your website. High-quality content, in turn, ensures a better user experience and can help other websites link to your content, which further increases your online visibility.
Whether you realize it or not, keyword difficulty impacts both your strategy and resource planning. Understanding it will allow you to select the most effective keywords for your website and ensure your team receives the support needed to create successful content.
For example, imagine you choose "project management" as your next target keyword for your blog, solely based on its relevance and high search volume. You assign one of your editors to it without considering the difficulty involved.
Will your new article appear on the front page?
Perhaps, but you'd probably need to gather a lot of support first. If you don't know how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword, and why, you might not know how to do it.
In other words, the difficulty level of a keyword can help you determine how realistic your goal of launching a new page is. You can use this knowledge to create your content plan and allocate the appropriate resources.
It also helps you to better understand the search intent of your target audience and to ensure that you provide the right medium and appropriate content for your website.
But how do you know how difficult a keyword is? Several factors play a role here, including:
You can't rely solely on keyword difficulty metrics. To have a better chance of ranking, you need to manually check the SERPs and keep a few things in mind.
If you have two pages on the same topic, Google will often consider the page with the most backlinks to be more valuable.
In general, it's a good idea to get the same number of backlinks or more than the page with the best ranking.
Although Google refuses to use a website's authority as a benchmark for its ranking algorithms, pages on more reputable websites generally have a higher chance of ranking.
In search engine optimization, the authority of a website is determined by the number and quality of the links that point to it.
Therefore, if most search results come from websites with high DR, it is very likely that ranking for a search term will not be easy.
Analyzing search intent is crucial if you want to achieve a good ranking.
Essentially, search intent is the expectation people have when they search for something on Google. As a search engine, Google's job is to fulfill these expectations.
To exploit search intent, you need to analyze the content of the pages with the best rankings for a particular search term to see what users expect from these pages.
For example, if you analyze the top search results for "kitchen appliances," you'll find that various stores occupy all the results. This means the search intent is transactional, and you're unlikely to rank with a guide like "How to choose kitchen utensils."
Content quality is subjective, but there are some things you can consider to assess what Google considers "quality," including:
Ask yourself these questions and check if your content is better than that of the top-performing pages.
To know what a good keyword difficulty score is, you first need to know your website. If you run a domain with high authority, you may have the potential to win over difficult keywords more easily. In this case, it could be worthwhile to focus on search terms with a high difficulty score.
However, if you're running a brand-new website, the decision of whether to target the most difficult keywords might not be so clear-cut. In some cases, it could be wiser to avoid the most difficult keywords for now and instead focus on easier terms, building your authority over time.
However, if the most difficult search terms are also fundamental to your business, you should decide that it is worth the extra effort to focus on these search terms, even if it takes longer to appear in the rankings.
Let's say you work at a car dealership that offers car repairs. You should have a landing page for your service center, even if the search terms for car repairs in your area are highly difficult to find.
So how do you choose keywords based on their difficulty level?
Objectively speaking, the difficulty level of a simple keyword ranges from 0-29. However, as with "good" keyword difficulty scores, the answer can vary in practice.
For example, if your domain is considered a major authority in your field, you'll find it much easier to rank for keywords that might be too difficult for up-and-coming websites. In this case, a keyword difficulty level that's "easy" for you could be difficult for someone else.
When assessing how easy or difficult a keyword is, consider both its KD% and your own experience.
Long-tail keywords are longer search terms that typically have lower search volume and a lower level of competition. Because they are less competitive, they are more likely to have higher conversion rates.
To return to the example above regarding car repairs:
Your local car dealership may struggle to rank for "oil change", but it will do much better if you search for "oil change in Scottsdale".
So even if you receive less traffic overall, the likelihood of receiving relevant traffic (i.e., people who are actually searching for "oil change in Bern" in this example) is significantly greater.
From the user's perspective, the search engine tries to find the most specific answer to their question. If someone enters "tomatoes," they will receive fairly general results in the SERPs.
However, if he were to enter "Why are my tomato plants turning yellow", he would receive a much more specific result.
Don't make the mistake of basing your keyword research solely on search volume.
If you do that, you cannot set realistic expectations or estimate the time and resources required for success.
Take the time to understand how feasible it is to rank for the desired keywords, find quick-win opportunities (keywords with lower difficulty and higher value), and get approval for your strategy based on solid but realistic forecasts.
Use the Keyword Difficulty Score as a guideline and combine it with insights into your own domain's authority and ability to achieve rankings to create a roadmap of actions that will equip you for growth.
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