Keywords
Keyword Difficulty Checker
Estimate what ranking would take
Enter a keyword and get our difficulty estimate with the inputs it was built from: the authority of the ranking domains, how many referring domains the top pages carry, the page types holding those positions, and the features taking clicks off the page.
Get early accessWhat it returns
- A difficulty estimate for the keyword, with the range it sits in and the inputs that produced it listed rather than hidden behind the number.
- The link profile of the pages currently ranking: referring domains per page, and how wide the gap is between the strongest and the weakest of them.
- What kind of pages hold the top positions, because ten established category pages and a results page half filled with forum threads are different problems.
- The SERP features sitting above the organic block, since difficulty that ignores how few clicks reach position one describes the wrong contest.
When this matters
Two keywords both come back somewhere in the middle of a difficulty scale, so the plan picks the one with more volume. The pages ranking for it are all industry publications with thousands of referring domains each. The pages ranking for the other one include two forum threads and an abandoned blog. The single number said those were comparable; the pages said one was reachable this quarter and the other was not. The number is only useful when you can see what went into it.
How to answer this today
Keyword research treats difficulty as one column among several, next to volume, intent, the features on the page and the competitors already ranking, which is the only way the number gets used sensibly: as a filter on a list, not as a verdict on a keyword. Checking one keyword without starting a project is the version of that question this tool answers.
Keyword researchWhy this is harder than it looks
Difficulty is a model, not a measurement
Nothing about a keyword is inherently difficult, and no search engine publishes a difficulty value. Every score is a model's output, which is why two tools can look at the same keyword and return numbers far apart. Ours would weigh the link profiles of the ranking pages, the authority of the domains holding them, the page types in the top positions and the features taking clicks off the page, and it would show those inputs so the number can be argued with.
Scales are not comparable
A score on one vendor's scale does not convert to another's, because the inputs, the weighting and the curve all differ. Treating two vendors' numbers as the same unit, or carrying a threshold learned in one tool into another, produces decisions with no basis.
It is relative to you
The same keyword is easy for an established site in the topic and out of reach for a new one. A universal number cannot encode which of those you are, so difficulty is a sorting aid for a list rather than a prediction about your page.
The inputs are bought per keyword
Producing an estimate means fetching the live results page and pulling link data for the pages on it, both of which cost money per keyword. Checks are metered and rate limited per IP so that bulk scripting does not exhaust the data behind the free tool.