Keyword difficulty is a score from 0 to 100 that estimates how hard it is to rank on the first page of Google for a keyword. Lower is easier. It describes the results page itself, so it is the same for every site - unlike Weak spots, which measure your own site’s chances.
Where you’ll see it
- Keywords screen: the Keyword difficulty column, one colour-coded score per keyword.
- A page’s details: Difficulty for the page, and Keyword difficulty for each of its keywords.
- Pages screen: Page difficulty. Topic clusters screen: Difficulty on each card. Both are built from keyword difficulty, as explained below.
How to read it
Lower is easier. A low score means the pages ranking now are relatively easy to compete with. A high score means they are strong, and ranking will take more work. The colour follows the score, from green (easy) to red (hard).
It is the same number for every site. A brand-new site and a well-established one see the same score for the same keyword. It tells you how tough the field is, not whether you in particular can win.
Read it next to Weak spots. The two answer different questions, and the product shows both for that reason:
| Keyword difficulty | Weak spots | |
| The question | How strong is this results page? | How many of its top-10 positions could your site take with better content? |
| Form | A score from 0 to 100 | A count of positions |
| Same for every site? | Yes | No - it depends on your domain |
| Use it to | Gauge how tough the competition is | Find openings your site can take |
They can disagree, and that is useful. A keyword with a high score can still hold a weak spot or two for your site: the results are strong overall, but one or two positions are within your reach. A keyword with a low score can hold none, if your domain is not yet strong enough even for that field.
How we calculate it
Difficulty scores are usually built from signals such as page authority, domain authority, the number of backlinks pointing to each page, and content quality. RankDots evaluates keyword difficulty from the strength of the pages currently ranking for the keyword and the overall competitiveness of the search results.
Your own site plays no part in the score. Which top-10 positions your site may realistically take is a separate assessment, shown as Weak spots.
The score is calculated when your project is created and is not refreshed afterwards.
Scores then roll up the way your plan is built. A page’s Page difficulty is the average keyword difficulty of its keywords. A topic cluster’s Difficulty is the average Page difficulty of its pages, rounded to the nearest whole number. What is Topic difficulty? covers that level.
Keyword difficulty is an estimate, not a measurement. What is measured and what is estimated explains the difference.
What it doesn’t tell you
- Whether your site can win. Only Weak spots looks at your domain.
- How many visits a keyword could bring. Potential traffic estimates that.
- How hard the hardest keyword on a page is. Page and topic scores are averages, so one very hard keyword can hide among easy ones.
- How the results have changed since you created the project. The score shows the state at creation.
- How competitive the ads are. That is keyword competition [link is coming], an advertising measure - not ranking difficulty.