The most accurate keyword difficulty tool

Find out how hard it is to rank on the 1^st SERP for hundreds of keywords with the most accurate keyword difficulty.

1. How is the Mangools Keyword Difficulty calculated?

Our main focus is providing proven data in a super user-friendly interface. When Peter, our founder and CEO, was working on the keyword difficulty formula, he was searching for a combination of factors that would correlate with the organic search results on the 1^st SERP.

In other words, the higher is the difficulty score, the harder it is to rank for the keyword on the 1^st SERP. Analogically, the lower difficulty should indicate an easier job to make it to the top organic search results.

The calculation is based on the selected metrics by Moz, Majestic and our know-how, namely:

• Domain Authority
• Page Authority
• Citation Flow
• Trust Flow

The calculation consists of the following steps:

1. We calculate the overall Link Profile Strength (LPS) for every website that ranks on the 1st Google SERP based on the selected Moz and Majestic metrics.
2. Each metric has a different weight to make sure the results estimate how the real rankings evolve as much as possible.
3. Finally, we take into account both high and low LPS values to calculate the overall Keyword SEO Difficulty.
4. The final value estimated how hard it is to start ranking on the 1st SERP so it takes more than ever into consideration websites with low LPS.
5. It’s absolutely alright when a low-authority website outranks high-authority websites and that’s exactly what Keyword Difficulty focuses on.

2. Pick keywords that you can really rank for

Since the Google algorithm is full of magic and pays attention to the relevance, which is not quantifiable at all, it can happen that websites with low authority can outrank the ones with high authority. Therefore, KWFinder evaluates each URL on the 1^st SERP by using the Link Profile Strength (LPS). The overall Keyword Difficulty is based on the LPS scores of all the URLs.

Keep in mind that increased LPS of some websites does not automatically mean that you will have a tougher job to rank on the 1^st SERP.

Once you find the right balance between the search volume and Keyword Difficulty, continue with the SERP analysis. Not only will you find out whether you are able to compete with the websites, but you will also double-check whether the intention behind the picked keyword is the one you want to target.

3. The most accurate keyword difficulty metric

Finding a tool with an accurate difficulty score is not that easy. There are many solid tools on the market. However, only a few of them managed to tweak the algorithms in a way they correlate with the real organic search results.

KWFinder keyword difficulty is (one of) the most accurate on the market. Many case studies prove the fact that by using it, your keyword research will be based on relevant data you can trust.

Research by Authority Website Income compared 8 tools and analyzed the correlation between keyword difficulty and the higher ranking in Google. KWFinder ended up to be the most accurate keyword difficulty tool.

4. Do I have to know the score of all keywords?

KWFinder calculates the difficulty for keywords upon your decision. You always get a real-time value for these keywords, so you don't spend all requests (lookups) on those you don’t plan to optimize for. That’s why the difficulty of some keywords is not calculated.

However, if someone enters a keyword or clicks on any from the suggestions list, the difficulty score is automatically cached for up to 30 days for all future users. If the value was fetched more than 30 days ago, it will have decreased opacity. To see the exact date when the metric was updated, just hover over the KD value. What’s more, you can refresh the SERP data on which the Keyword Difficulty is based.

Here’s a quick example from the video: When we take a look at the related keywords to “homemade coffee”, one of them is “coffee cake recipe”. As we want to write a blog post about how to make a homemade coffee, this term is rather irrelevant. So calculating the difficulty in advance wouldn’t make sense.

We decided to put the relevancy, accuracy and quality in front of the quantity.

Things to keep in mind

The Keyword Difficulty isn’t the only metric on which you should base the keyword research.

You're on the good track once you created a list of keywords relevant to your niche with low Keyword Difficulty. However, it doesn’t indicate your job is done.

You should take into consideration other metrics such as search trends, average monthly search volumes, CPC and PPC competition. You'll find them in the left panel of KWFinder.

If you want to find more information about keyword research, check out our keyword research guide for beginners.