Keyword Difficulty: The Secret Sauce That Stops You Wasting Months on Impossible SEO Battles

Keyword difficulty. Sounds like the kind of term an SEO consultant drops at a dinner party to sound clever, right? But here’s the thing: it’s basically a traffic light for your content plans. Ignore it, and you might as well be racing a Formula 1 car on a pushbike track.

A score of 10? Almost a walk in the park. A score in the 90s? Might as well try entering the Olympics with your local pub quiz team. Most tools even colour-code them so you can spot the easy wins (green), middling challenges (yellow) and SEO Everest climbs (red) at a glance.

Why should you care? Simple: it saves you from pouring your heart into an epic blog post about "best CRM software" (difficulty 80+) only for it to sink without a trace. Meanwhile, “best CRM software for freelancers on a budget” (difficulty 30–40) is more like a Sunday league match—you stand a chance of actually winning.

Keyword difficulty is your pitch inspection. It tells you who you’re really up against, so you don’t bring a butter knife to a swordfight.

How Do SEO Tools Work Out Keyword Difficulty?

Bet you didn’t realise: no SEO tool has a backdoor to Google’s secret ranking algorithm. Instead, they make educated guesses—like weather forecasters, but for SERPs. Still, they’re surprisingly accurate most of the time.

Here’s what most tools look at:

After crunching all that, you get a neat little score. KeywordNumbers and most other tools peg it from 0 (push over) to 100 (steel cage match with Google’s favourites). Every tool has its quirks, but they’re all roughly in the same ballpark.

Reading the Keyword Difficulty Score (0–100): What Those Numbers Actually Mean

Time for a field guide. Here’s how to read the score, with proper examples (not just theoretical nonsense):

0–20: Very Easy

These are the low-hanging fruit. New sites, tiny blogs, or startups can grab these with a bit of elbow grease.

21–40: Easy

Still very doable, especially if your site isn’t a digital newborn anymore.

41–60: Medium

Now it’s a proper contest. You’ll need decent content AND some SEO muscle (think: backlinks, a bit of domain clout).

61–80: Hard

You’re now in big brand territory. Ranking here is like trying to get a table at the fanciest restaurant in town—without a reservation.

81–100: Very Hard

This is Everest. The SERP is a Who’s Who of the internet. New sites need not apply—unless you’ve got a digital rocket ship stashed somewhere.

Keyword Difficulty vs. Search Volume: How to Find the Golden Zone

Here’s what most people miss: it’s not just about difficulty OR volume—it’s the combo that matters. Like chocolate and peanut butter, the magic is in the mix.

If you’re a powerhouse, this is a gold mine. For a new site? You’ll need more than hope and a prayer.

Now we’re talking—solid search volume, realistic competition. Much better odds for a smaller, scrappier site.

Here’s a cheat sheet to help you prioritise:

What Keyword Difficulty Should You Chase? (It Depends How Old Your Site Is)

Not all websites are built equal, and your age does matter here (at least online).

5 Rookie Mistakes with Keyword Difficulty (And How to Dodge Them)

1. Ignoring Difficulty Altogether

You pour your soul into a keyword with a difficulty score of 85, then wonder why it’s invisible. That’s like bringing a rubber dinghy to a yacht race.

2. Trusting the Tool, Never Checking the SERP

Sometimes the tool says “easy”, but the first page is all giants. Algorithms make mistakes too (shocking, I know).

3. Only Chasing Zero-Difficulty Keywords

Easy keywords might be a doddle, but if they only get 50 searches a month, you’ll struggle to get meaningful traffic—or to impress your boss.

4. Low Difficulty ≠ Easy Money

You might rank for an easy keyword… then realise nobody searching for it is actually looking to buy.

5. Forgetting Your Site’s Strength

A 2-month-old site going after difficulty 50+ keywords is a bit like a toddler challenging Mike Tyson.

How to Plug Keyword Difficulty into Your Content Plan

Here’s your playbook:

Stacking your content by difficulty is like building an SEO snowball. Early wins give you momentum, which lets you chase bigger, juicier keywords. Before long, you’re not just playing the game—you’re running it.

Free tools to put this into practice

Reading is one thing — testing your own pages is what moves the needle. Here are the free KeywordNumbers tools that pair best with this guide:

Every one of our free SEO tools is genuinely free to use, with no sign-up required.

Try the Keyword Difficulty

Good news — there's now a free tool for exactly this. Give our Keyword Difficulty a go and put this guide straight into practice.