What is keyword difficulty and how do you measure it?
Keyword difficulty is a score, usually from 0 to 100, that estimates how hard it would be to rank for a given search term. The higher the score, the stronger the pages already occupying the top results, and the more work your site would need to overtake them. The score exists to stop you wasting months on terms you cannot win.
Why keyword difficulty matters
Search volume tells you how many people search for a term. Keyword difficulty tells you whether you can realistically appear for it. A phrase with 50,000 monthly searches is only valuable if you can reach the first page, and for competitive terms that can mean outranking national brands with years of authority and thousands of backlinks.
Scores are calculated by looking at the pages currently ranking for the term: how many backlinks they have, how strong those linking domains are, and how well each page matches what the searcher wants. When the top ten results are all established and well linked, the difficulty score climbs for good reason.
What the scores actually mean
- 0 to 30: low difficulty. Winnable with a well-written, well-optimised page, often within a few months.
- 30 to 60: moderate. Achievable for an established site with a real content and link-building effort.
- 60 to 100: high. Realistically out of reach for a small or new site until it has built serious authority.
Treat the bands as guidance, not guarantees. Difficulty scores are estimates produced by tools, and different tools disagree. What matters is the shape of the results: if the top ten for your term are all small local businesses, the keyword is winnable even when a score says otherwise.
How to measure keyword difficulty
Most keyword research tools, such as Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz, show a difficulty score next to every keyword. Google Keyword Planner is free and gives a competition level, though it is a coarser read. If you would rather start without paid tools, our free SEO report at https://victory.digital/run-a-seo-report scores your page against a target keyword and flags the fixes that would help it rank.
The piece people usually miss is tracking. A difficulty score is a snapshot: it shows where you start, not whether you are moving. Metrona, our in-house platform, tracks how your keywords perform in Google and in AI engines such as ChatGPT and Gemini, so you can see which terms are actually responding to the work. That is the difference between picking keywords and proving them.
How to pick winnable keywords
Start with long-tail phrases: specific, lower-volume searches that signal a user close to a decision. "SEO services Devon" is harder to win than "SEO for a plumbing business in Exeter", yet the second is more likely to convert. Add a location, a product type or a problem, and competition usually falls with it.
Check the current results before you commit. Search the term and look at who holds the top ten. If the ranking pages are thin, outdated or written for a different audience, that is an opening. If they are all national brands with heavy link profiles, move on. Our guide to keyword research covers the full process of finding and mapping these terms: https://victory.digital/how-to-do-keyword-research-for-seo
This is the discipline we apply in our own keyword research phase, and it is why our SEO packages, from GBP 980 a month for 15 hours to GBP 3,920 for 75, always start by agreeing a winnable target list before any content is written.
If you would like a list of keywords your site can realistically rank for, start with a free SEO report, then talk to us about the research phase.
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