How to Measure SEO Difficulty of Keywords

Keyword research is crucial for Search Engine Optimization, and every SEO specialist understands that. People have a misconception that the most challenging part of keyword research is getting the new keywords to rank for. We may have a better understanding of keyword research, and the most difficult and important part of keyword research is the keyword to be able to rank for easily. It’s also known as keyword difficulty in the concept of Search Engine Optimization. Let’s dive deep into this concept in this post and talk about how to find the relevant keywords and the definition of keyword difficulty.

What is Keyword Difficulty, and Why Is It Important?

Keyword difficulty, also known as competition, is a metric used to determine how difficult it is to rank for the keyword. Keyword difficulty can help you determine whether it is the best idea to:

• Bid on a certain keyword in the Google Ads campaign or
• To optimize an organic page for that particular keyword

When it comes to determining the competitiveness of a keyword and the number of suggestions that go into incorporating the keyword competition into the various market campaigns, you need to consider several factors. Note that the higher the keyword difficulty, the harder it becomes to rank on the 1st SERP due to the competition of the ranking websites. And the only way to tell is by using the best keyword checker for websites. At seobase, we let you take control of your web presence by managing the keywords, tracking your rankings, and continuously analyzing your everyday reports.

Why Is Keyword Difficulty Important?

Keyword difficulty is an important part of the keyword research process. With other factors and the monthly search volume, keyword difficulty will help you choose the best keywords for your Search Engine Optimization. The only issue you need to concern yourself with is that every keyword research tool measures keyword difficulty differently. Our recent analysis of the popular keywords found that their difficulty scores were all over, even for the same keywords.

What Is the Formula to Calculate Keyword Difficulty?

To calculate the keyword difficulty, we have the best API (Application programming interface) that will first collect the top 10 websites that rank organically for the keyword on the first page of Google. Second, it will calculate the ranking score for the first domain and the score for its page ranking for the keyword. The number of backlinks that point to the domain and its page will help you get the score. They can range from 0 to 1,000, with no backlinks detected to the highest backlink rank. After all that is done, it will use the formula, ((domain rank * 0.1) + (page rank * 0.9)) / 500 to calculate the difficulty. This means the domain rank is multiplied by 0.1, and the page rank is multiplied by 0.9. The result is then added and divided by 500. We will use the same formula to calculate each of the ten selected websites and find the median value. 0.2 is then subtracted from the median value, and the result is divided by 0.8. ((median value - 0.2) / 0.8)) The result is multiplied by 100, converting it to an integer. For instance, if the result is on5, we multiply it by 100, making it 50. If the result is greater than 1, you must truncate to 1. Please note that the keyword difficulty is a country’s specific metric. The SERPs may vary depending on the location of the search sessions. Therefore, to get accurate data for a specific country, we remember to specify the location code, language code, location name, or language name to the task.

Five Steps to Find Out Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty makes it hard to rank the first of SERP and to find out what the keyword difficulty is, you need to follow a step-by-step guide below.

1. Install the MozBar

This free toolbar browser will make evaluating the keyword difficulty easier and faster. After installing, whenever you do keyword research on Google, you will see its information in the SERPs.

2. Look at the page Authority

Google does not rank sites; it ranks pages. Although your site’s brand presence and domain authority play a crucial role, the most important factor that will make your page rank in Google is the page’s authority. The best way to measure the page’s authority is using Moz Page Authority.

3. Check out Referring Domains

Google is a vote collection engine. The more votes your page gets, the higher it will rank. If you think ranks do not matter anymore, our ranking factors research study shows that the number of referring domains correlates to higher rankings.

4. Look at Domain Authority

Google usually ranks pages from major authority sites. Some of the pages from these sites rank on quality of content and page authority. Please also note that most of these pages on authority sites get a big bump from simply being on an authoritative domain. When evaluating the keyword competition, keep in mind your competitor sites, not only pages.

5. Evaluate Link Profiles

If you have been familiar with SEO for some time, you will know that link metrics can be misleading. Some sites have high PA and DA due to spammy link profiles. Therefore, if you have a keyword that looks competitive but feels it has a lot of black SEO behind results, you can spot-check it in the top 10’s link profile.

Keyword Research Tools

The keyword research tools help you grow your online visibility while driving traffic to your website. At seobase, we have the best keyword research tools to help you achieve this goal. We can also help you track your search engine ranking in hundreds of countries.

Alexa

You need to look for succeeding keywords to rank higher than the competitors. Keyword research involves finding out what keywords give the competitors traffic and which sites are getting traffic from the keywords you are interested in. Alexa has a competitive analysis tool to help you look up a specific website and see which keywords give them traffic. The new keyword research tool recently released into the market, you can easily look up keywords and find the sites receiving traffic for that keyword. The tools are well-integrated, giving you an easy time to click back and forth between the site’s view.

Seobase Keyword Explorer

Seobase keyword explorer is also another way to outsmart your competition in the search engines. It allows you to find the keywords that will boost you to the top of the SERP results faster. Our keyword explorer tool makes keyword analysis easy for you to focus more on growing your rankings. With the best keywords research on Google, you will find keywords that will make it easy to rank without spending so much on managing your competitors. We also have the most accurate search volume data in the market that you can depend on. Our keyword explorer also has suggestion features and ideas to help you find the most relevant keywords. And all our ideas and suggestion modules are supported by 12 months of historical data.

Moz Keyword Explorer

Moz is another excellent keyword research tool that allows you to find keywords to generate traffic to your website. It is the best tool when it comes to finding lateral keyword ideas. It works smartly to give you outside-the-box keyword suggestions that you would not find with keyword research on Google. It also has organic CTR and Priority features that lets you know how many clicks to expect from the target keyword. Organic CTR is the number of clicks to expect if you reach the top 10, while priority considers the search volume and determines if you should target a certain keyword. Therefore, if you are overwhelmed, and don't know the right keyword to use, you can use this keyword research tool to help you out.

Bottomline

SEO tools are essential for your business, and the results can be amazing if you work with the best providers like Seobase. Our tools let you choose from various metrics, including all links. You will be able to tell how your website is performing against the competitors and also learn the kinds of SERP features that dominate the SERP results and how they can impact your organic engagement and rankings.