Article

Priya Kumari
Priya Kumari 2 March 2022

Decoding Keyword Difficulty in SEO

Keyword difficulty is expressed as the percentage of all online documents which contain your search term or its close variants. In technical terms, it is the percentage of websites with your target keyword in their title or body of the text. The higher the keyword difficulty, the harder it will be difficult to rank for that keyword.

Keyword difficulty is a metric that indicates how difficult it is to rank a website on the first page of search engines for particular keywords.

The difficulty level of a keyword determines how easy or hard it is to rank on search engines for your target keyword. Each keyword is assigned a score between 1 and 100 in Keyword Difficulty, where 1 means super easy and 100 means nearly impossible.

Why it is Important to Understand Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty is an SEO metric that anyone doing search engine optimization (SEO) should know and understand. If you don't understand what your target keywords are, you won't get any traffic to your website, leading to a poor return on investment (ROI).  

When you are trying to rank for popular keywords, it's important to know the level of competition so that your site can stand out from the crowd.

The difficulty level of a keyword is a good, yet not perfect indicator of how hard it will be to rank for that keyword in search engines. It can help you decide if competition is too high at the top and should be avoided or if competition is low enough to go after.

Not all keywords are created equal in SEO. To understand the difficulty level for a keyword, we need to rely on tools like SEMrush and other third-party tools.

Keyword difficulty is not the only ranking factor, but it is very important in determining whether you’ll be able to rank for a particular term or not. Is it possible or are you making up words as you go?

The number of people who are searching for a particular keyword, the strength of the websites already ranking for that keyword, and how much it would cost to buy traffic from paid search ads for that term all go into determining difficulty.

In SEMrush, the difficulty is calculated based on a multitude of factors and then shown as a number between 1 and 100. The higher the score, the more difficult it will be for your website to rank for that keyword.

Source: Semrush Blog

How Long Tail Keywords Cast an Impact on Keyword Difficulty

There are different levels of difficulty, competition, and search volumes while using a long-tail keyword. Level 1 is easy, level 2 is moderate and level 3 is hard.

Tail keywords are in demand these days because they usually carry better conversion rates. Marketers search for keywords that are more targeted and specific in order to get better results. Another benefit of tail keywords is that they’re relatively easier to rank for i.e. they have a low keyword difficulty level.

Keyword difficulty is the measure of how difficult it is to rank well for specific search terms in search engines. It combines multiple aspects of your competitors' search engine optimization strategies to determine how hard it would be to overlap them in ranking.

Keywords are the best way to start writing content with SEO, SEO beginners should always focus on using low-competition phrases in the first place. This way, you’re more likely to appear higher in Google results, drive more organic traffic and increase conversion rates.

If a keyword happens to be difficult for your competition, it may not be worth the effort to rank for it or invest resources in its optimization.

In Conclusion

A keyword percentage column is a simple, intuitive way of gauging the difficulty level and probability of ranking for a keyword. The keyword percentage column is one of the most valuable metrics in SEO and is often overlooked by businesses.

Although many people believe that keyword percentage is not important, this formula takes into account the increased accuracy of keyword percentages in the context of SEO.

In fact, most studies show that the most common reason for any error in a keyword percentage calculation is usually when a keyword is not used at all.

As you can see, it has been a common goal for every company and corporation to improve their search engine rankings, especially as more and more people are spending less time searching and more time browsing.

Hope this artcile helps you understand the importance of keyword difficulty for all kinds of businesses.

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