Keyword difficulty checker
Keyword difficulty for your whole list at once
Paste up to 1,000 keywords. Each gets a difficulty score from 0 to 100, from the links the pages in Google’s top 10 have, and the list is split into easy, medium and hard, with the average for the whole set. Save the winnable ones to a project in one click.
- Up to 1,000 keywords per check
- Easy, medium and hard at a glance
- Save to a project or export
$0.03 + $0.03 per 100 keywords, shown before it runs. What it costs
Open any keyword for the full picture
Click a keyword for its search volume and trend, traffic potential, the links the top 10 have and who ranks today, in the keyword analysis tool.
How it works
How to use the keyword difficulty checker
- 1
Search
A keyword, a domain or a page, with the country, city or state, and language next to it.
- 2
See the price
The cost of the whole search shows before anything runs. A repeat is free.
- 3
Get the whole picture
Everything loads together. The address holds the search, so you can share it.
Use it to
Keyword difficulty checker use cases
Sort a keyword list fast
Paste an export from any tool and see which keywords are easy, medium or hard.
Find quick wins
Filter to easy keywords and save them to a project to plan content.
Check a topic before you commit
The average difficulty of a topic’s keywords shows how much authority it takes.
Prioritise by authority
Match difficulty to your site’s Domain Rating: aim where you can rank.
What it costs
Keyword difficulty checker pricing
$0.03 + $0.03 per 100 keywords. You pay the data provider for the lookups a search runs, from your own key, and see the price before it runs. A repeat within a week is free. Difficulty is country-level.
| Part of the search | Price |
|---|---|
| Up to 100 keywords | $0.03 – $0.06 |
| 1,000 keywords | $0.33 |
Search data
Start with $5 of free search data
Keyword, ranking and backlink data in OpenSEO comes from YepAPI. Sign up there and new accounts get $5 in free credit, for a limited time. That is enough to try every tool before you spend anything.
- 1
Sign up at YepAPI
New accounts get $5 in free credit, for a limited time.
- 2
Copy your API key
It is on your YepAPI dashboard once you sign in.
- 3
Paste it into OpenSEO
During account setup, or later in Settings. Every tool works from there.
The free credit is YepAPI’s limited-time offer and may end. After it, you pay YepAPI per lookup, at the price OpenSEO shows before each one runs. See pricing
SEO glossary
What is keyword difficulty?
Keyword difficulty (KD) is a score, usually from 0 to 100, that estimates how hard it would be to rank in Google’s top 10 for a keyword. Higher means harder. SEO tools calculate it from the pages that currently rank, most often from how many and how strong their backlinks are. It is a third-party estimate, not a Google metric.
Related SEO terms
Keyword research is finding the search terms your audience uses, then judging which ones are worth targeting by demand, difficulty and intent.
Long-tail keywords are specific, lower-volume search terms. Each brings little traffic, but together they’re easier to rank for and often convert well.
Search volume is the estimated number of times a keyword is searched per month in a given location, usually averaged over the past 12 months.
Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs’ 0–100 score of the strength of a website’s backlink profile. It is a third-party metric, not used by Google.
Traffic potential estimates the total organic traffic you could get by ranking first for a topic, counting every related query the top page ranks for.
Keyword difficulty checker FAQ
How is keyword difficulty calculated?
From the backlink profiles of the pages ranking in Google’s top 10 for the keyword: the stronger their links, the higher the score. It estimates how hard the keyword is to rank for, from 0 (easy) to 100 (hard).
Why do some keywords have no score?
Keywords with too few searches have no difficulty data. They are usually long-tail terms that are easy to rank for.
Do I need a project?
No. The SEO tools work on their own, in any market you pick. Keywords you find can be saved to a project in one click when you want to track them.
Can I share a result?
Yes. The search, the market and the open tab are all in the page address, so a link or a bookmark opens the same view. Anyone opening it runs the search with their own key; a repeat of something already looked up is served from the cache for free.
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