What is Keyword Difficulty?
“Keyword difficulty” is a particular SEO metric that reflects the competitiveness of ranking for a specific keyword or phrase. It takes into consideration both on-page factors and backlink competition to assist a website in ranking in the search results. Usually, keyword difficulty is represented on a scale from 1 to 100 (or 0.01 – 1.00), with higher values representing greater difficulty competing.
“Home renovation tips,” with a difficulty score of 80, is far more challenging to rank for than “budget desk accessories,” which only has a score of 20. However, scoring 20 requires significantly less SEO and link building work.
Related terms: competition score, ranking difficulty, SERP analysis, SEO KPI