What is keyword difficulty?

Methods vary by provider.

As a rough guide, scores below about 20 to 30 are realistic for newer sites, 30 to 60 need solid authority and content, and above 60 typically need strong domains and many referring links. These bands differ between tools, so compare scores within one tool rather than across tools. For this site's planning, we preferred keywords with a DataForSEO difficulty of 45 or below unless the topic was strategic.

Difficulty scores do not measure how well the current pages answer the query, whether they match the intent, how outdated they are, or how many clicks SERP features absorb. A keyword with a high score can have weak, generic top pages; a low score can hide a results page dominated by official documentation. Brand-new topics can show low difficulty simply because few pages exist yet.

Open the results for each shortlisted keyword. Signs of real opportunity: forum threads, outdated posts, thin pages, or small sites ranking. Signs of real difficulty: the top results are all major brands, official documentation, or tools you cannot match. Combine the score with this review and with your own site's strength in the topic.

Difficulty is relative to your site. A domain with strong topical authority can rank for higher-difficulty terms in its subject than a general site could. Check which difficulty levels you already rank for in Search Console and your keyword tool, and target slightly above that level as your authority grows. SerionFlow weighs difficulty together with relevance, intent, and trend when ranking opportunities, rather than filtering by score alone. SerionFlow is the wrong tool for checking difficulty scores one keyword at a time; a keyword tool shows them directly.