Well begun is half done, but you have not begun SEO without keyword research.
There is no SEO without keyword research. It lays the groundwork for your SEO content strategy. However, though it is easy to find keywords, it is difficult to rank for them.
How do you predict whether a keyword is rankable?
SEO tools use a metric called keyword difficulty to check for the rankability of a keyword based on various factors like domain authority, content quality, page authority and the number of quality backlinks.
Is it accurate?
Not so much.
But it gives you a sufficient benchmark to identify keywords that help you rank and those that don’t.
Now, why is this vague metric so important? How is it gauged? Read more to find the best keywords using keyword difficulty.
What is meant by keyword difficulty?
Keyword difficulty refers to the keyword ranking difficulty. It is a metric used in SEO tools to measure the keyword difficulty level of ranking up in the search results for a specific keyword.
What is the effort it takes for your content to rank on the first page of Google for the chosen keyword?
The higher the keyword difficulty, the harder it is to rank for that keyword because of the high competition of the ranking websites
It is based on different factors like competitors, domain authority, content quality, search intent, page authority and the number of backlinks leading to the pages.
Keyword difficulty and keyword competition – same or different?
What is the ‘difficulty’ referring to here?
A keyword is rated on a scale of 0 to 100 for its difficulty in ranking organically.
Keyword ‘competition’ is another term used in Google Ads, and it refers to the paid competition of the keyword where keywords are bid on. This is often confused with keyword difficulty.
So if you want to differentiate between the two expressions, keyword difficulty refers to organic search and keyword competition is about paid search.
What does it mean for your keyword research in SEO? Do you only have to look for keywords with low keyword difficulty?
Let us find out.
Why does keyword difficulty matter in SEO?
Well, you first need to ask yourself, why do you do keyword research?
When you do keyword research, you basically check for demand and supply.
How many people are searching for the keyword? – the demand.
How many results are available for that particular search? – the supply.
There are two aspects to this – qualitative and quantitative. The results give the quantitative aspect while you need to know the keyword difficulty to determine the qualitative aspect of the results.
The keyword difficulty in turn tells you how hard it is to rank for the keyword considering the supply and demand. What are your chances here?
This helps you decide how much effort you need to invest in ranking, or whether it is worth any effort at all. You can choose the best possible keywords for SEO.
So by knowing the keyword difficulty:
- You can identify the “happening” keywords and the key players in your niche,
- You can identify alternative keywords that you have better chances of ranking for.
- You can channelize your efforts selectively by focusing on easier keywords to rank if you are still a new blogger.
The only issue here is every keyword research tool operates with this metric in its own way.
So rather than going blindly for the values, let us understand what factors are considered to calculate the keyword difficulty.
How is keyword difficulty gauged?
No one really knows how Google ranks web pages. There is no binding formula, though there are different factors considered for the ranking. But what does a keyword difficulty tell you?
1. Domain Authority
Google prefers pages belonging to big-shot websites. The ones with high domain authority (or PageRank to be precise) are those that have the higher ability to rank.
2. Backlinks
Google identifies the reliability of a website by the number of backlinks leading to the page. They count as votes to the webpage and translate to the expertise and authority of the website, its content and the content creator.
3. Content quality
High-quality content is a prerequisite for ranking. Then why am I mentioning it separately? Because if you are a new domain with barely any ratings or backlinks, then the content is all you can vouch for. Good content speaks for itself and potentially ranks too.
4. Search intent
Content quality alone does not help you rank, but also how relevant the content is to the search intent.
How do you check keyword difficulty?
Do not feel daunted by the different parameters involved. There are several tools available to check keyword difficulty and they can be used for free.
What are the tools to check keyword difficulty?
- Keyword Difficulty Checker by Ahrefs.
- SEMrush keyword difficulty tool
- Mangools KW Finder
- Keyword Difficulty Checker by Moz
Keyword Difficulty Scores from 0 to 20 are easy, 20 to 80 are moderately difficult and 80 to 100 are difficult to rank.
But all the tools don’t all analyse the same data. They have their own sources for data collection and different parameters for the calculation.
Considering the discrepancy between the results of various tools, you know they are not accurate. To circumvent this, it is always better to supplement the tools with your own manual research.
How to find the best keywords?
By best keywords, I am referring to the keywords that are rankable. When you do not know what is a good keyword difficulty score, how do you choose what is the best?
- Don’t use keyword difficulty scores alone to choose your keywords: You need to use this metric along with other metrics like search volume to select your keywords.
- Use it to filter out keywords from a given list. If you can segregate keywords into low-difficulty, medium-difficulty and high-difficulty keywords, you can then decide how you want to treat each category in your SEO strategy as discussed above.
- Find long-tail keywords in your niche. Long-tail keywords are longer phrases that have lower keyword difficulty and low search volume. This makes them easier to rank for. They also increase relevance to search intent because they are extremely specific.
- Number of search results: This is your best bet. You do not need any tool for this. Do an “Allintitle:keyword” search. This gives you the number of results aka your competition for that keyword. You can base your choice of keywords on this number.
- Apply KGR: the Keyword Golden ratio is the strategy to find those long-tail keywords which are under-utilised in Google search results. It is the number of Allintitle results divided by the number of monthly local search volume. If the resulting value is less than 0.25, it’s a great keyword and you should rank in the top 100 after your page is indexed by Google.
What is a good keyword difficulty?
Sorry to break this to you, but there is no such thing as a good keyword difficulty. At least there is no single answer to that question.
Like most things in SEO, it depends: on
- The authority of your website
- Your ability to build backlinks
- Your credibility as a content creator
- Whether your content caters to the search intent or not.
If you want to use the metric in your keyword research, you first need to understand what the score tells you. You now know what goes behind that score.
But for SEO purposes, you should not be sticking to any particular range of keyword difficulty. You should not be looking at just one keyword in the first place.
When to target low-difficulty keywords:
When you are a beginner with a new blog and no backlinks and domain authority whatsoever, you have a better chance of ranking for long-tailed low difficulty keywords. Create audience-relevant content that is informative and useful.
When to target high-difficulty keywords:
When the most difficult keywords are also foundational to your niche, you have no choice but to select them.
After you have gained momentum with traffic and started ranking for the low-difficulty keywords, you can direct your focus to high-difficulty keywords.
While creating content for low-difficulty keywords, pick a few keywords that have high difficulty and invest your SEO efforts to rank them. Create evergreen pillar content with these keywords and link your other content to this page. Research sufficiently to provide better content than your competitors and build backlinks to your web page.
When to target medium-difficulty keywords:
While you are at high and low, you might as well include the medium. Create high quality content with these keywords and focus on the search intent and building strong internal and external links. When you understand your audience and know what they are looking for, it is easier to create content around these keywords.
Conclusion
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could guess the rankability of a keyword?
But where is the fun in that!
Keyword research forms the foundation of your SEO strategy.
It is a common tendency to look at ONLY search volume to pick a keyword. If you are making that mistake, you should stop.
Do not stick to a single metric when it comes to SEO. In this case, use the keyword difficulty score as a reference point while you filter the keywords and analyse the related parameters. Take the time to balance between all the types of keywords with different difficulty levels and identify which needs the most effort and which would need the least.
If you use a combination of tools and manual research, you can have a fair play in the SEO game.
What is your opinion on keyword difficulty? Let me know in the comments.
