{"id":804,"date":"2022-02-10T18:20:25","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T23:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keyword.com\/?p=804"},"modified":"2025-02-26T09:55:44","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T14:55:44","slug":"keyword-difficulty-score-what-is-it-and-how-to-measure-it","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/keyword.com\/blog\/keyword-difficulty-score-what-is-it-and-how-to-measure-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Keyword Difficulty Score \u2013 What is it and How to Measure it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keyword research is a fundamental part of optimizing your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.<\/p>\n

The goal is to identify low-competition keywords that can help you rank higher in search results faster, ultimately driving more organic traffic to your site.<\/p>\n

But how do you find such keywords?<\/p>\n

Several factors influence the process of finding the right keywords, but one of the most commonly used metrics is the Keyword Difficulty score<\/strong>. This score helps determine which search queries are worth targeting in your campaign.<\/p>\n

To learn how this metric works and how to use it to uncover low-competition keywords, keep reading!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

First, What Does Keyword Difficulty Mean?<\/h2>\n

Keyword Difficulty (KD)<\/a> in SEO refers to the level of challenge or difficulty associated with ranking for a specific keyword in search engine results pages (SERPs). It quantifies how hard it is to achieve a high ranking for a particular keyword, taking into account various factors that influence a page’s ranking potential.<\/p>\n

What Is Keyword Difficulty Score?<\/h2>\n

The Keyword Difficulty (KD) score lets you know how easy or hard ranking for a search query is.<\/p>\n

Its purpose is to\u00a0help make finding easy-to-rank-for keywords more efficient<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Instead of relying solely on a keyword\u2019s search volume, Keyword Difficulty provides users with additional context about the keyword. It allows them to evaluate queries based on how likely you can rank for them on search engine results pages (SERPs).<\/p>\n

How Is Keyword Difficulty Calculated?<\/h2>\n

You can see the KD score of each search query using a keyword research tool. But it\u2019s safe to say that how they compute the score differs for all these tools.<\/p>\n

So, you can\u2019t expect to see identical scores for the exact keywords across all tools.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, what you can at least expect is for each tool to produce scores in the same ballpark figure for the exact keyword.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because the tools\u00a0use more or less the same\u00a0ranking factors<\/em> to calculate the keyword difficulty<\/span>\u00a0score.<\/p>\n

Content Quality<\/h3>\n

How the content is written matters in determining the Keyword Difficulty score.<\/p>\n

The more valuable the content is to users and search engines, the better its quality is.<\/p>\n

If all pages ranking for a keyword have quality content, you\u2019re better off finding another keyword to try and optimize for!<\/p>\n

But how does one measure content\u2019s usefulness? It seems like quality in this context lends itself to subjectivity, making things even trickier.<\/p>\n

For example, a piece of content can be helpful to most but not to others. Does that mean it shouldn\u2019t rank at all because it doesn\u2019t satisfy\u00a0everyone\u2019s<\/em> criteria for useful content?<\/p>\n

In this case, search engines use\u00a0machine learning<\/strong>\u00a0to understand the relationships of words in an article. It ultimately allows them to establish an\u00a0objective<\/em>\u00a0foundation for judging content quality properly.<\/p>\n

Here, they expect\u00a0query-relevant words<\/em>\u00a0and phrases to appear on the content to rank it for its target keyword.<\/p>\n

First, the content must align with the intent behind a search query.<\/p>\n

\"Different
Source: WordStream<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If a particular keyword is asking a question, the page’s ranking must provide an answer. For a query asking for a best-of list, search results should provide listicles of the most recommended items for readers to purchase.<\/p>\n

To determine which page search engines should rank on top, it refers to natural language processing<\/strong>\u00a0(NLP) to determine which words or topics must be included on the page.<\/p>\n

Using Google NLP, the search engine can categorize words and phrases (entities) and their importance (salience) for a topic.<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/p>\n

The goal is to rank pages for a topic that mentions entities with high salience in their content.<\/p>\n

Using the entities, search engines can determine which pages optimized for a keyword are discussing the topic in depth.<\/p>\n

Backlinks<\/h3>\n

There are two layers to backlinks regarding the KD score. The first is\u00a0quantity<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The more referring domains to a website, the higher the site can rank on Google search.<\/p>\n

Think of backlinks as a form of recommendation. More websites linking to a page naturally means that they\u00a0trust\u00a0<\/em>the content found here.<\/p>\n

And as more sites feel the same way and link to the page, Google will see its backlinks as proof that the site is viewed as an\u00a0authority\u00a0<\/em>by other people. This results in higher search rankings and more organic traffic!<\/p>\n

Quick note: Google only counts the number of referring domains to a website. Even if a site has many backlinks on a high-quality website, Google only looks at one (1) backlink from that domain.<\/p>\n

This means building lots of links from the same sites won\u2019t help a site rank higher than it already is. The site needs to find new domains to get links from to move up the rankings.<\/p>\n

Here comes the second and the most critical layer:\u00a0quality<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A single link from a popular site like Business Insider or TechCrunch is much more powerful than all links from unknown and mediocre sites combined.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because these popular sites have higher authority compared to the rest. The links one can acquire from these sites can positively affect the website\u2019s rankings.<\/p>\n

The quantity and quality of a site\u2019s link profile dictate its\u00a0domain authority<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

To help you determine a site\u2019s domain authority, Ahrefs shows you each site\u2019s Domain Rating (DR).<\/p>\n

\"Example<\/p>\n

Ahrefs measures DR based on a website\u2019s link profile. A website\u2019s DR is high if it has many backlinks from high-quality websites.<\/p>\n

Going back to the KD score, the domains ranking on SERPs for low difficulty keywords<\/a> will normally have low DR.<\/p>\n

On-Page SEO<\/h3>\n

Content quality is a crucial branch of on-page SEO on its own. But that doesn\u2019t make other on-page factors less important.<\/p>\n

These help search spiders crawl and index the pages to their appropriate keywords, resulting in higher search ranking and more organic traffic.<\/p>\n

From a user\u2019s perspective, you make your site much easier to navigate and understand.<\/p>\n

In fact, sites ranking at the top of Google search results have a well-refined on-page SEO strategy in place.<\/p>\n

Here are some more important on-page SEO factors that may contribute to the KD score:<\/p>\n