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Why You Should Ignore Keyword Difficulty

Why You Should Ignore Keyword Difficulty

Boris Mustapic
August 30, 2024

Hey there,

You should ignore keyword difficulty when it comes to creating SEO content.

Here’s why:

🚩 It’s an estimate

The keyword difficulty score you see in various SEO tools is simply an estimate based on whatever calculation a specific tool is using.

No one really knows how difficult it really is to rank for any given keyword.

🚩 It can vary wildly between different tools

If you’ve compared keyword difficulty scores across different tools, you’ve likely noticed that they can vary wildly.

A keyword that has a low difficulty score according to one tool might have a medium or even high difficulty score according to a different tool.

🚩 It doesn’t take your domain authority into account

The way most SEO tools calculate keyword difficulty score doesn’t take your domain authority or the strength of your backlink profile into account (note: Semrush’s new Personal Keyword Difficulty score is the exception here).

It’s obvious why this is a problem—the HubSpot blog will have a much easier time ranking for a marketing- or sales-related keyword compared to your newly created blog.

Instead of worrying about keyword difficulty, think about:

💡 Does the keyword have conversion potential?

When you think about the people searching for a specific keyword and the stage they’re in at that moment, how likely are they to convert?

Are they just learning about a problem or are they actively researching solutions?

Ideally, you’ll want to prioritize keywords that show a high conversion potential (also known as bottom-of-the-funnel keywords).

💡 How important is the topic to your target audience?

Is the keyword related to a topic that’s a big pain point for your audience?

Or does it just share some nice-to-have information that isn’t of major importance?

Focus on creating content on keywords related to major pain points before moving on to other topics.

Does the keyword reference a recent event or timely issue?

If that’s the case, it might be wise to prioritize it in order for your brand to potentially benefit from the increased interest in the topic.

💡 Has the topic been covered before?

First-mover advantage is a thing in SEO and content marketing, too.

By being the first (or among the first) to cover a topic or keyword, you stand a better chance of ranking and driving more traffic to your website.

Over to you

I hope this convinces you to completely ignore the keyword difficulty score in SEO tools—it’s mostly a useless metric.

Hey! I’m Boris.

I help B2B SaaS companies drive growth through strategic, product-led content marketing.