What Is Keyword Difficulty?
Keyword difficulty is the metric by which website owners can measure how much competition there is for a particular keyword, and in turn determine how difficult it is to rank for it in SERPs. It is scored from 0-100, and the lower the score the easier it is to rank for a keyword.
Why Is Keyword Difficulty Important?
Determining keyword difficulty is an essential component of quality keyword research.
This is because establishing keyword difficulty allows you to zone in on the keywords you are likely to rank for, and create content focused around these keywords.
Ranking highly in SERPs also means enhanced SEO visibility, more traffic, better engagement and higher conversions.
How To Calculate Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty can be calculated in a range of ways, however website’s like Mangools calculates it by taking a few different metrics into consideration. Those metrics being:
These metrics are noted to make up a website’s Link Profile Strength or LPS.
The LPS is calculated for each website that ranks on the first page of SERPs. High LPS scores and low LPS scores are evaluated, and keyword difficulty is determined through these comparisons.
Are There Tools to Help You Discover Keyword Difficulty?
The task of identifying keyword difficulty may seem a little bit daunting at first, but there are an array of tools on the web that can assist you with the task. Some of these tools include:
Tools like these can help websites find low competition long-tail keywords that are specifically relevant to their brand/industry.
It's always best to supplement these tools with your own manual research. While tools like this are incredibly helpful, they’re not 100% reliable as they don’t factor in your own website and its standing when they create a score.
Also, be mindful that different tools measure different types of difficulty.
While most tools measure how difficult it is to rank in organic searches, Google Ads Keyword Planner measures how difficult it is to rank highly with paid ads on SERPs, as an example.
How Can We Help?
Need a hand navigating the entire area of keyword research? You’re in the right place.
Plus, if you contact us today we could set you up with a free strategy session!
In the meantime, do check out our training courses. They’re full of SEO techniques that we don’t just recommend - we use them ourselves!
