What is Keyword Difficulty?
Definition
Keyword difficulty (KD) is a metric (typically 0–100) that estimates how hard it would be to rank on the first page of Google for a given keyword. Higher scores indicate stronger competition — pages from high-authority sites that are hard to displace. It's calculated from the domain authority and backlink profiles of current first-page results.
Why Keyword Difficulty matters for Shopify stores
New and mid-authority Shopify stores waste effort targeting KD 70+ keywords where they'll never rank against established retailers. Targeting keywords with KD under 40 and meaningful search volume is far more productive — these are where a store can actually gain organic visibility.
Shopify example
A new skincare brand targets 'best moisturiser' (KD 85, 90,000 monthly searches) and gets no traction. After Sauron's keyword research, they pivot to 'best moisturiser for rosacea' (KD 32, 2,400 searches) — a long-tail term they rank 3rd for within 4 months.
How Sauron handles Keyword Difficulty
Sauron's keyword research pulls difficulty scores via DataForSEO for all candidate keywords, filtering to the highest-value, attainable opportunities for your store's current authority level.
See Product SEO on Autopilot feature →Common mistakes
- ✕ Targeting keywords with KD above your site's competitive ability
- ✕ Ignoring KD entirely and choosing keywords only by search volume
- ✕ Not reassessing keyword difficulty as your domain authority grows over time
- ✕ Using different tools and comparing KD scores — each tool's scale is different
Automate your Shopify SEO
Understanding Keyword Difficulty is step one. Sauron handles the implementation — automatically, for your entire Shopify store.