How To Measure Keyword Difficulty | What Is It?

I still remember the feeling. Vividly. Early in my SEO career, I burned a solid week digging through keyword tools, and I finally struck gold. The “golden keyword.” It boasted 1,500 monthly searches, high commercial intent, and a “Keyword Difficulty” (KD) score of 2. A two. I practically sprinted to my boss’s desk, positive I was about to be employee of the month. I hammered out a 2,500-word “ultimate guide,” smashed the publish button, and waited for the glorious traffic wave to hit.

And I waited.

And waited.

Crickets. The article collected dust on page six. I was completely baffled. The tool promised me it was easy! That experience was my first, painful slap in the face from a fundamental SEO truth: the keyword difficulty score isn’t the whole story. Honestly, it’s often a pretty misleading first chapter. If you’ve ever felt that same sting—targeting “easy” keywords that went absolutely nowhere—you’re in the right place. We’re about to rip the curtain back on how to measure keyword difficulty for real. It’s so much less about a single number and so much more about becoming a digital detective.

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Key Takeaways

• Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores from SEO tools (think Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz) are mostly just measuring the backlinks—both quantity and quality—pointing to the top-ranking pages.
• These scores flat-out ignore other massive ranking factors: content quality, search intent, on-page SEO, brand authority, and Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) guidelines.
• Real keyword difficulty analysis is a hands-on, manual job. You have to personally get in there and analyze the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) to see what the actual competitive landscape looks like.
• Difficulty is relative. A “hard” keyword for a brand-new blog might be a piece of cake for an established powerhouse like Forbes. You have to measure difficulty relative to your own site’s authority and resources.
• The juiciest opportunities often hide where the KD score looks high, but the actual content on page one is low-quality, outdated, or just plain misses the searcher’s intent.

So, What Is This “Keyword Difficulty” Score Everyone Talks About?

Alright, let’s start with the basics. When you log into your SEO tool and see “Keyword Difficulty,” “KD %,” or “Competition,” you’re looking at a metric built to simplify your life. It’s almost always a score from 0 to 100.

Zero is the dream. “Easy.” You could supposedly rank with little to no effort. One hundred is the nightmare. “Hard.” You’d be trying to outrank titans like Amazon or Wikipedia.

The promise of this metric is beautifully simple: “Here’s a number that tells you how hard it’ll be to rank on the first page of Google for this term.”

But what’s it actually measuring? In nearly every case, that score comes from analyzing the backlink profiles of the pages currently sitting in the top 10. The tool looks at how many websites link to those top pages and how “strong” (authoritative) those linking websites are. A keyword gets a high difficulty score if the top-ranking pages are juiced up with thousands of high-quality backlinks. It gets a low score if the top pages have few or no backlinks.

It’s a “link-based” metric. That’s it. And that, right there, is the problem. Google’s algorithm is a complex beast with hundreds of ranking factors. Backlinks are a massive piece of the puzzle, no doubt, but they aren’t the only piece.

Why Do SEO Tools Even Bother With a KD Score?

This probably sounds like I’m bashing the tools. I’m not. I live in them every single day, and they are worth their weight in gold. The KD score is a necessary, if imperfect, filter.

Imagine you’re researching a topic like “dog food.” Your tool might spit out 50,000 related keywords. You can’t possibly sit there and manually analyze the SERP for all 50,000 terms. You’d lose your mind.

The KD score lets you apply a broad, first-pass filter. Got a brand-new website? You can instantly tell the tool, “Show me nothing with a KD over 20.” This single click transforms an overwhelming list into a manageable list of potential targets to investigate further. It’s not the final answer. It’s the tool that helps you find the right questions to ask. It’s a starting point, a way to slice the maybes from the no-ways.

My First Big “Keyword Difficulty” Mistake

Let’s circle back to my “KD 2” keyword that crashed and burned. I was so blinded by that tiny, beautiful green number that I failed to do any real analysis. When I finally forced myself to look again (months later, feeling like a fool), the problems were glaringly obvious.

First, the top-ranking pages were all massive e-commerce category pages from household-name brands. I had written a blog post. The intent was completely wrong. Google had clearly decided that people searching this term wanted to buy, not learn. My article, no matter how great I thought it was, was the wrong type of content.

Second, while those individual pages had few direct backlinks (hence the low page-level KD score), the domains themselves were monsters. We’re talking DR 90+ sites. My little blog was a DR 12. I was a rowboat trying to race a battleship. The tool’s “Keyword Difficulty” score didn’t—and couldn’t—capture that nuance. That day, I learned a hard lesson: the score is just data, but the SERP is the reality.

Why Is That Little Number So Misleading?

The core problem is us. As humans, we crave simple answers. We want a single number to tell us “go” or “no go.” And SEO tools give us one. But ranking on Google is a complex, multi-dimensional game. Relying only on the KD score is like judging a five-star restaurant based only on its water glasses. You’re missing the food, the service, the ambiance… you’re missing everything that actually matters.

An SEO tool’s crawler isn’t Google. It’s a third-party script making its best educated guess. It’s gotten incredibly good at analyzing one major factor (links), but it’s completely blind to many others.

What’s more, every tool measures this differently. A KD of 40 in Ahrefs is not the same as a 40 in Semrush or a 40 in Moz. They all use their own secret sauce, their own calculations, and their own backlink indexes. It’s a proprietary guess. You can’t even compare the scores between tools. You can only use it to compare keywords within the same tool.

Does Google Even Use a “Keyword Difficulty” Metric?

In a word: no.

There is no “difficulty score” field inside Google’s algorithm. It doesn’t look at a keyword and say, “Oh, this one is a 78. Let’s make it tough.”

Instead, Google’s algorithm evaluates your page against a query on hundreds of different factors in real-time. It’s constantly asking questions like:

• How relevant is this page to what the user just typed?
• Does this content fully answer the user’s question, or will they just hit the ‘back’ button?
• What is the search intent? Are they trying to buy, learn, or find a specific site?
• Does this page load fast and look good on a phone (Page Experience)?
• Is this content from a source that demonstrates real Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)?
• And yes, how many other authoritative sites have vouched for this page by linking to it?

Your page is judged on its own merits against the competition. “Difficulty” is just the outcome of how well your page stacks up against everyone else’s on all these factors.

What’s the “Big Brand” Blind Spot?

This is one of the biggest failings of KD scores. They just can’t properly account for the massive, unearned authority that big brands carry.

Let’s say The New York Times and I both start brand-new blogs about gardening today. We both target the exact same “KD 10” keyword. We both write a 1,500-word article. My article might even be better, with more practical tips and nicer photos.

Whose article do you think will rank first?

The New York Times. And it’s not even a fair fight. Their article will probably hit page one within days, maybe hours. Why? Because the domain it’s published on has overwhelming authority. Google already trusts nytimes.com as a source. It has zero trust in https://www.google.com/search?q=my-new-gardening-blog.com.

The KD score, based on the page’s backlinks (neither of us has any yet), completely misses this “domain-level” authority. It creates a massive blind spot. When you look at a SERP and see the top 10 is just a wall of household-name brands (Forbes, Wired, CNN, WebMD), you have to realize the true difficulty is infinitely higher than whatever number the tool is showing you.

What About Search Intent?

This is the big one. The killer. If you get this wrong, nothing else matters.

Search intent is the why behind a search. Why did the user type this specific phrase into Google?

Broadly, we can slot intent into four main types:

1. Informational: The user wants to learn something. (“how to tie a tie,” “what is keyword difficulty”)
2. Transactional: The user wants to buy something. (“buy blue running shoes,” “iphone 15 pro max price”)
3. Commercial Investigation: The user is planning to buy soon and is comparing options. (“best running shoes for men,” “airpods pro vs sony wf-1000xm5”)
4. Navigational: The user wants to find a specific website. (“facebook login,” “youtube”)

A keyword difficulty score has zero idea what the intent is. It’s just counting links.

But Google knows. It has billions of data points showing what users click on for that query. Google’s entire job is to serve the type of content that matches the user’s intent.

If you write a 5,000-word informational blog post for the keyword “buy blue running shoes” (a transactional query), you will never, ever rank. Google knows the user wants to see product pages where they can click “add to cart.” You have an intent mismatch. No amount of backlinks or flowery prose will fix it. This is precisely why you must look at the SERP before you ever write a single word.

Forget the Score for a Minute. How Do You Really Know if You Can Rank?

Okay, so the score is a flawed, first-pass filter. How do we do the real work? How do we actually learn how to measure keyword difficulty?

You have to become a SERP detective. The SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is the battlefield. You must analyze it before you decide to jump into the fight. This is the single most important skill in keyword research.

Here’s my four-step manual process. This is what I do after I’ve used the tool to find a promising keyword.

Step 1: Look at the SERP. What Kinds of Content Do You See?

Open a new “Incognito” or “Private” browser window. This is critical. It ensures Google isn’t personalizing the results based on your search history.

Now, type in your keyword. Don’t click anything. Just look.

What types of content are in the top 10?

• Are they blog posts? (Informational)
• Are they e-commerce product pages? (Transactional)
• Are they e-commerce category pages? (Transactional)
• Are they “listicle” style review articles? (Commercial Investigation)
• Are they videos from YouTube?
• Are they forum discussions from Reddit or Quora?
• Are they homepages of specific brands? (Navigational)

This 10-second glance tells you the intent. If you plan to write a blog post and the top 10 results are all product pages, stop. You’ve found an intent mismatch. Move on. Your content must match the type of content Google is already rewarding.

Step 2: Now, Who Is Ranking? Analyze the Competitors Themselves

Okay, let’s say the intent matches. You want to write a blog post, and the top 10 results are all blog posts. Perfect.

Now, who wrote them? Look at the domain names.

• Are they giant, international media brands? (Forbes, The Guardian, Business Insider)
• Are they massive, niche-specific authority sites? (Healthline, WebMD, NerdWallet)
• Are they software companies or e-commerce brands? (HubSpot, Shopify)
• Or… are they other blogs? Sites that look just like yours?

This is your “strength-of-competitor” check. If the entire first page is locked down by DR 90+ mega-sites, you know you’re in for a brutal fight. But if you see one or two smaller blogs—sites with a similar authority to your own—that is a fantastic sign. It means Google is willing to let smaller players onto the field for this query.

Step 3: Okay, Now You Can Use Your Tools (But Smarter)

You’ve confirmed the intent matches and the competitors aren’t all giants.

Now, go back to your SEO tool (Ahrefs, Semrush, etc.). But instead of just looking at the keyword, plug the exact URLs of the top 3-5 ranking pages into the tool’s “Site Explorer” or “URL” analysis feature.

We’re digging deeper with two new metrics now:

1. Domain Authority (DA) / Domain Rating (DR): This is the overall strength of the entire website. Are you a DR 20 blog competing against other DR 20-40 sites? Or are you a DR 20 competing with DR 80s? This tells you all about their “brand” and “trust” authority.
2. Page-Level Backlinks (Referring Domains): Look at the number of “Referring Domains” (unique websites) linking to that specific article. Does the #1 result have 500 referring domains? Or does it have 5? This tells you how much link-building effort was probably required for them to get there.

If you find that the top-ranking pages have low domain authority and very few backlinks, you may have just found a true golden keyword.

Step 4: Finally, Analyze the Content Itself

This is the most important step, and it’s the one almost everyone skips.

Open the top 3-5 articles. Actually read them.

Put yourself in the searcher’s shoes. Ask yourself:

• Does this article fully answer my question?
• Is it well-written and easy to understand?
• Is the information up-to-date? Or are the examples from 2018?
• How comprehensive is it? What sub-topics do they cover? What did they miss?
• Does it have helpful images, videos, or infographics?
• Does it just feel… thin? Like it was written by an intern just for SEO?

You are hunting for a weakness. An “in.” If you read the top 3 articles and think, “Wow, these are incredible. They cover everything, they’re written by PhDs, and they were updated last week”… then that’s a very difficult keyword, no matter what the KD score says.

But if you read them and think, “Meh. This is okay, but it’s outdated. And they completely forgot to talk about [X, Y, and Z]…”

That’s your opportunity. You now have a clear roadmap to create something better.

So, Are High KD Keywords Just “Impossible”?

Absolutely not. In fact, some of my biggest wins have come from keywords with “Hard” or “Very Hard” difficulty scores.

This is where you stop thinking about “beating” the competition and start thinking about “serving a different audience.”

I had a client in the hyper-competitive personal finance space. They were a small blog, and they wanted to rank for “best retirement accounts.” My tool said the KD was 82 (basically “impossible”). The SERP was a murderer’s row of NerdWallet, Bankrate, and Investopedia. We were never, ever going to beat them at their own game.

So we changed the game.

As we analyzed the SERP, we noticed something. All the articles were written for 50-year-olds. They were crammed with complex jargon, assuming the reader already had a 401(k) and a portfolio.

Nobody was talking to a 22-year-old just starting their first job.

So, we didn’t target “best retirement accounts.” We targeted a longer, more specific query: “best retirement accounts for young adults.” But we wrote the article to be so good, so comprehensive, that it would also be a great resource for the broader term. We called it “The Ultimate Retirement Guide for Gen Z (and Anyone Who Feels Left Behind).”

We explained what a “Roth IRA” was in plain English. We talked about “matching” contributions. We used analogies young people would actually get.

It took time. It took building some links. But we eventually cracked the first page for both our long-tail keyword and the “impossible” high-KD head term. Why? Because we weren’t just “another” article. We were the only article serving a massive, un-served segment of the audience. We found an intent gap.

Are There “Weak Spots” on Page One?

This is my all-time favorite SEO tactic. When you’re scanning the SERP for a keyword (Step 1), hunt for “weak” results.

What’s a weak result?

• A forum thread (Reddit, Quora, etc.). This is a massive green light. It means Google cannot find a good, authoritative article to answer the query. It’s so desperate for an answer that it’s surfacing user-generated content. If you write a high-quality, comprehensive blog post, you can easily outrank a forum thread.
• A low-authority site. Do you see a DR 25 blog hanging out at #8, surrounded by DR 80+ giants? Open that page immediately. What are they doing right? They’ve clearly found a chink in the armor. Maybe their article is perfectly focused on a sub-niche. Maybe it’s just a fantastic piece of content. Whatever it is, it’s proof that you can rank without a massive domain.
• A “thin” or outdated article. You’ll see this all the time. A 500-word article from 2017 is clinging to the #9 spot. This page is vulnerable. Google is just waiting for someone to publish something better, more current, and more comprehensive.

How Can I Use “People Also Ask” and “Related Searches”?

Don’t ignore the other features on the SERP. The “People Also Ask” (PAA) box and the “Related Searches” at the bottom are Google literally handing you a content outline on a silver platter.

These are the next questions that users have right after their initial search.

If you’re writing an article on “how to measure keyword difficulty,” and the PAA box shows:

• “What is a good keyword difficulty score?”
• “How do I find low-competition keywords?”
• “Is Ahrefs keyword difficulty accurate?”

You must include sections in your article that answer these exact questions. This makes your content far more comprehensive. It satisfies the user’s entire journey, not just their first question. This signals to Google that your page is a one-stop-shop, a truly helpful resource.

Sometimes, these PAA questions or related searches are themselves fantastic, lower-competition keywords to target with a separate article.

What Does E-E-A-T Have to Do With Keyword Difficulty?

Everything. For some keywords, it’s the only thing that matters.

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This is a concept from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, the massive manual given to the human reviewers who grade Google’s algorithm.

This is especially critical for topics Google calls “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL). This includes:

• Financial advice
• Medical advice
• Legal advice
• News and current events
• Anything related to health, safety, or major life decisions.

For these topics, Google’s “difficulty” barrier is sky-high. Google will not rank content from an anonymous blog, no matter how well-written it is. It wants to see content written by qualified experts (Expertise) who have proven credentials (Authoritativeness) and real-world experience (Experience), published on a secure and reputable site (Trustworthiness).

How Does This Change My Approach to Measuring Difficulty?

When you analyze a keyword, you must identify if it falls under YMYL.

If the keyword is “how to invest $1000,” that’s YMYL. When you look at the SERP, you will (and should) see results from Investopedia, NerdWallet, Fidelity, and other established financial institutions. You won’t see “Joe’s Finance Blog.”

In this case, the “difficulty” for Joe’s blog is effectively 100. It doesn’t matter what the KD score says. Google’s E-E-A-T standards create a barrier to entry that backlinks and content quality alone cannot overcome. You can learn more about how Google views this directly from their Google Search Central blog post on E-E-A-T.

On the other hand, if your keyword is “best indoor plant for beginners,” that’s non-YMYL. Google is happy to rank a passionate blogger who has real, hands-on experience (the new “E”) growing plants. In this case, your personal story and helpful photos are a strength, not a weakness.

So, part of measuring difficulty is asking: “Am I, as an author, and is this, as a website, a credible source for this information in Google’s eyes?”

What’s a Realistic Step-by-Step Process for This?

Okay, let’s put it all together. Here is the realistic, repeatable workflow I use every day. This is how you combine the efficiency of tools with the intelligence of a human analyst.

Step 1: The Initial Filter (The Tools)

Start with your SEO tool. Do your brainstorming. Build a big list of potential keywords. Now, apply your filters:

1. Search Volume: Filter for terms that have some search volume. (The minimum depends on your niche, but let’s say 100+/month).
2. Keyword Difficulty: Apply a realistic KD filter. If your site is a DR 15, set the max KD to 20 or 30. Don’t waste time on a “KD 80” keyword yet.

This gives you your list of prospects. This is not your final list. This is just the list of keywords you will now manually investigate.

Step 2: The 30-Second SERP Analysis (The “Go/No-Go”)

For each keyword on your prospect list, open an incognito window and search for it. This is a rapid-fire check. You should spend no more than 30 seconds per keyword.

You are looking for two things:

1. Intent Mismatch? (e.g., you want to write a blog, SERP is all e-commerce). If yes, cross it off the list. No-Go.
2. “Wall of Giants?” (e.g., SERP is 10/10 results from DR 90+ mega-brands like WebMD, Forbes, Wikipedia). If yes, cross it off. No-Go (for now).

This process will probably eliminate 70% of your list. What’s left is your real shortlist of promising, possible keywords.

Step 3: The Deep-Dive Content Analysis (Your “Top 3”)

Now, take the best keywords from your shortlist. Pick one to focus on. Open the top 3-5 ranking articles.

Set a timer for 15 minutes and read.

Take notes. What’s their angle? How long is the content? What’s the publication date? What sub-topics do they cover?

Then, ask the killer question: “Can I realistically create something 10x better?“

“Better” does not just mean “longer.” “Better” means:

• More up-to-date, with current stats and examples.
• Better written, more engaging, easier to read.
• More comprehensive (answers the PAA questions).
• Includes unique insights, data, or personal experience (that E-E-A-T).
• Better design and user experience (e.g., clear headings, good images, no pop-ups).

If your answer is a confident “YES,” you have found your target.

Step 4: The Final Gut Check (Difficulty vs. Opportunity)

Now, you combine all the data points for a final decision.

• The KD Score: 25 (Challenging, but not impossible)
• The SERP Intent: Informational blog posts. (Matches my plan)
• The Competitors: Two DR 80+ sites, one DR 40 site, and one Reddit thread at #9. (The DR 40 and Reddit thread are great “weak spot” signals!)
• The Content Quality: The top 3 are all from 2021. They’re good, but they miss recent developments. (This is my “in”!)

My Gut Check: This is a fantastic opportunity. The KD score is scary, but the manual SERP analysis shows it’s vulnerable. The Reddit thread proves Google is hungry for a better answer, and the 2021 content gives me a clear path to create it. This is a “go.”

So, What’s the Real Answer to “How To Measure Keyword Difficulty”?

The real answer is that you don’t “measure” it. You analyze it.

It’s not a static number you find. It’s a complex, multi-faceted “difficulty rating” you assemble by looking at all the pieces.

Relying on a single KD score is like trying to navigate a new city with just a compass. Sure, you know which way is north, but you have no idea about the traffic, the roadblocks, the one-way streets, or the best route.

To truly understand keyword difficulty, you have to throw out the compass and open the live-traffic GPS. You have to look at the SERP. You have to analyze the intent. You have to read the competition. And you have to be brutally honest about your own site’s strengths.

This is the real work of SEO. It’s not about finding loopholes or “easy wins.” It’s about finding real opportunities to genuinely out-help and out-serve the competition. It’s part detective, part analyst, and part content strategist.

Now, go solve some cases.

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