Opens in a new tab
digital muzes digital marketing agency

Fortune Favors The Optimized!

Keyword Difficulty In SEO

What is keyword difficulty in SEO?

Keyword difficulty measures how difficult it would to rank for a particular SEO keyword in search engines. The number of links domains linking to the top 10 pages ranking for a keyword determines its difficulty. This is then used to calculate the final result on a scale of 0-100. This number will give you an estimate of the number of referring domains that you need to rank among the top 10 pages for your target keyword.

How does the Keyword Difficulty Score get calculated?

Ahrefs is a keyword research tool. The Ahrefs keyword difficulty score can be calculated using a variety of factors including:

  • The number of domains that referred to the top 10 ranking pages for the target keyword.
  • These domains have an average authority score.
  • These pages have an average number of backlinks.
  • The average difficulty score for the target keyword on the top 10 pages.

The Ahrefs keyword difficulty score can be used in many different ways. This will help you choose which keywords to target. It may be harder to rank keywords with high keyword difficulty scores than keywords with lower keyword difficulty scores. This will allow you to track your progress over time. You will see an increase in your keyword difficulty scores as you build more links to your website and improve its authority.

To compare different keywords side-by-side. This is useful when trying to determine which keywords are worth your time and effort.

Keyword Research Tool Semrush

The Semrush keyword difficulty score can be calculated using the authority of pages currently ranking for the keyword, the quality of backlinks they have (both do-follow and non-follow), and other keyword-specific data.

Similar to Ahrefs you can also use Semrush for a quick check of the difficulty of your target keywords to help you make decisions about your SEO content strategy.

What Factors Influence The Keyword Difficulty in SEO?

Strength of competitors

Keyword difficulty in SEO can be determined by how strong your competitors are in relation to the number of keywords you want to rank for. It will be more difficult to rank for keywords if there are many strong competitors.

Your websites domain authority

Domain authority is the number that indicates how heavy a keyword carries relative to its competition. This value is a measure of how difficult it will be to rank for a keyword in the SERPs. Domain authority is not enough to tell you how difficult it will be for a keyword to rank.

Your content’s quality

Keyword difficulty is determined by the quality of the content. Your website will be more popular with people searching for very specific terms if it is designed to that term.

The search intent

Search intent describes what the searcher is trying to find by entering a query. This could include anything from finding information to purchasing a product to completing a task.

Search intent is a measure that indicates how difficult a keyword will be to find. It will determine whether it is worth your time and resources to work on a specific keyword.

How to use Keyword Difficulty in SEO

In general, choose keywords with lower keyword difficulty score. These keywords should be included in your blog and website content. These keywords can be optimized for your website using on-page SEO techniques such as title tags, meta description, and header tags.

Target Long-tail Keywords with low Keyword Difficulty

Long tail keywords with low volume and low keyword difficulty should be targeted. Long tail keywords tend to be less competitive than general keywords. Because they are more specific and related to what people are searching for, they have higher conversion rates.

There are many ways to find long-tail keywords. You can use a keyword research tool such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner, SEMRush, Ahrefs, etc. You can also look at search results related to your keyword to see what terms people are searching.

Author Bio

digital muzes

Daniella Simon, M.A., J.D.

SEO Consultant & Growth Consultant

Daniella Simon is the CEO of Digital Muzes. She has a diverse professional background as a Litigation Attorney, Managing Broker,  Business Broker and Vocational Expert. Throughout these professional experience, her greatest passion was for marketing. She started digital marketing in 2012 for a handful of clients and has grown her services into a local digital marketing agency.

“I am grateful to be able to leverage my professional and personal small business experiences and natural analytic and creative talents into digital marketing. For the past 11 years, I have created, strategized and implemented local SEO plans for my clients and have been awed by the transformative power of digital marketing for small businesses.”

BOOK A DEMO!

Share On Social!

Related Posts

Fortune Favors The optimized

Your Page #1 Ranking Awaits!