Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty scores (usually on a 0-100 scale) help you assess whether a keyword is realistic to target given your site's current authority. Tools like Ahrefs calculate it primarily from the number and quality of backlinks to the top-ranking pages. A keyword difficulty of 80 means the top results have strong link profiles that would be difficult to match.

For growth teams building content strategies, keyword difficulty should be calibrated against your domain authority. Target keywords where your DA is competitive with the sites currently ranking. A common framework is to start with low-difficulty keywords (0-30) to build traffic and authority, then progressively target medium (30-60) and high-difficulty (60+) keywords as your domain strengthens. However, difficulty scores have limitations: they do not account for content quality, SERP feature opportunities, or fresh content bonuses. Sometimes high-difficulty keywords have weak content that a superior piece can outrank. Always supplement difficulty scores with manual SERP analysis to identify content quality gaps you can exploit.