What Is Keyword Competition?
Keyword competition is a metric that indicates how difficult it might be for a website or search ad to appear when someone searches for a specific term in a search engine like Google.
It helps you assess whether a keyword is worth pursuing. So you can avoid wasting time or budget on terms that are unlikely to drive meaningful results like traffic, clicks, and conversions.
In today’s search engine results pages (SERPs), competition isn’t just about outranking other sites. You’re also competing with features like AI Overviews: AI-generated answers that often appear above organic results and can reduce visibility for your page.
Competition looks different depending on the channel:
- In paid search, it refers to the number of advertisers bidding on a keyword. More competition typically leads to higher costs for showing up on the SERPs.
- In organic search (SEO), it indicates how difficult it is to rank near the top of the unpaid results.
This SERP shows that keyword competition isn’t just about outranking similar businesses. You’re also up against paid ads, Google’s preference for established brands in AI Overviews, and even community platforms like Reddit that Google elevates in the results.
To have a chance with this keyword, you’d need content that’s not only high quality but also backed by strong backlinks and a site with enough authority to stand alongside these established names.
This example shows why keyword competition is so important: Choosing the wrong keyword could mean competing against players you have little chance of outranking.
So how do you know whether a keyword is realistically within reach? Let’s dig in.
Why Keyword Competition Matters
Keyword competition helps you understand your chances of appearing in paid or organic search results. And whether a keyword is worth your time, effort, or budget.
When you know the level of competition for a keyword, you can make smarter decisions by:
- Choosing the right keywords for your goals: Focus on easier keywords if you're just starting, or invest more to compete for tougher ones
- Setting realistic expectations: High-competition keywords usually require more time and resources to see results
- Avoiding wasted budget in paid search: You’ll know which keywords cost more and whether they’re likely to drive enough clicks or conversions to justify the spend
- Improving your strategy over time: Start with low-competition keywords to build momentum, then gradually target more competitive terms
How to Check Keyword Competition in SEO and PPC
You can find keyword competition using Semrush's Keyword Overview.
Open the tool, enter your keyword, select a location, and click "Search."
In the "Overview" report, you'll see two keyword competition metrics calculated by Semrush:
- Keyword Difficulty: Scored from 0 to 100 and expressed as a percentage. Lower numbers (e.g., 10%) indicate easier organic ranking. Higher numbers (e.g., 90%) mean tougher SEO competition.
- Competitive Density: Scored from 0 to 1. A lower number (like 0.1) means fewer advertisers. A 1 indicates heavy competition in Google Ads.
Semrush also shows competition metrics in other tools like Keyword Magic Tool, Keyword Gap, and Organic Research.
Let's say you're doing keyword research.
Open Keyword Magic Tool, enter your seed phrase (broad, related term), add your domain for personalized data, and choose a location. Click “Search.”
You’ll see “KD%” and “Com.” columns, which show keyword difficulty and competitive density for each keyword.
There’s also a Personalized Keyword Difficulty (PKD %) column, which estimates how hard it would be for your domain (specifically) to rank for that keyword.
How Keyword Competition Gets Measured
Semrush measures keyword competition by analyzing ranking difficulty for SEO and advertiser bidding activity for paid search.
For SEO, Keyword Difficulty (KD%) is calculated by evaluating the top 10 organic search results.
It considers key factors like:
- The number of backlinks pointing to those pages
- The overall authority of the domains that rank
For paid search, Competitive Density is calculated by tracking how many advertisers are bidding on a keyword in Google Ads.
Semrush collects this data from its advertising database and scales it from 0 to 1.
Why Are Some Keywords More Competitive Than Others?
Some keywords face more competition because more websites target them, and the pages already ranking are harder to beat.
Here’s why a keyword might be tougher to compete for:
- High search volume: Popular terms attract more websites trying to rank
- Commercial intent (reason behind the search): Keywords like “buy,” “best,” or “top” often lead to sales, increasing SEO and ad competition
- Trusted top results: If the first-page results are from well-known sites, they’re harder to outrank
- Revenue potential: Keywords tied to sales or leads often attract competition, even with low search volume
Your industry also affects keyword competition.
Some niches have plenty of low-difficulty keywords. Others are saturated—even long-tail terms can face serious competition from the start.
Keyword Difficulty by Industry: Our 2025 Study Findings
Keyword competition varies by industry. Our 2025 analysis shows just how significant those differences are.
We exported over 500,000 keywords from Semrush’s U.S. database. After removing duplicates and rows without a KD score, we analyzed over 188,000 valid keywords across five industries: SaaS, Ecommerce, Local Services, Finance, and Health & Wellness.
Each keyword was tagged as low (0–29), medium (30–69), or high (70–100) difficulty based on Semrush’s KD% score.
Key Findings
The difference in keyword competition between industries is striking:
- Local Services is the most accessible, with 93 easy keyword opportunities for every difficult one. This offers minimal barriers for small businesses to rank.
- Finance and SaaS are highly competitive, with nearly a 1:1 ratio of easy-to-hard keywords. This creates significant challenges for new market players.
We also found that Ecommerce offers abundant opportunities for niche players.
Nearly half (48%) of Ecommerce keywords are low-difficulty, and fewer than 2% are highly competitive. This shows that many specific product searches have little competition from major retailers.
Health & Wellness is surprisingly accessible. Around 44% of health-related keywords are low-difficulty. This makes it easier for newer sites to rank by targeting long-tail questions.
On the other hand, Finance almost always requires a big investment to rank. This industry has the highest share of medium-difficulty keywords (63%). This means that most terms need significant effort, authority, and quality content to compete.
In this study, we saw how much keyword search competition can vary by industry.
These differences help explain why some SEO strategies work faster in certain spaces. And why others take more time, content, or authority to succeed.
Because every industry has a different mix of easy, moderate, and hard keywords, which shapes how you need to approach ranking.
Industry Insights
- SaaS is the most saturated space. 23% of SaaS keywords sit in the high-difficulty band, resulting in a nearly 1:1 ratio of easy-to-hard keywords.
- Finance offers the fewest quick wins. Only 18% of finance keywords are low difficulty, so new players face a small pool of easy targets.
- Ecommerce terms are less competitive. The average difficulty is just 33%, which means many items can rank with solid on-page SEO without needing high authority.
How to Analyze Keyword Competition: Step-by-Step with Examples
Keyword Difficulty shows how competitive a keyword is, but you also need to check who’s ranking and the strength of those pages to determine if you can realistically compete.
Let’s say you’re evaluating the phrase “best backpack for travel.”
Its Keyword Difficulty is 57% and the Competitive Density is 1.00. This means you'll face strong competition in both organic and paid results.
To rank organically, Semrush recommends you need 26 referring domains and optimized content.
But what counts as optimized content? And who are you up against?
That’s where SERP analysis comes in.
Scroll down the Keyword Overview report to see who ranks on page one. In this example, it’s Pack Hacker, The New York Times, Reddit, and Amazon.
You’ll also see how many backlinks and referring domains each page has.
Click into those links manually and review:
- What their content covers
- How well it matches the keyword intent
- How detailed or structured the page is
- Whether they include product images, FAQs, internal links, etc.
This helps you understand what you need to create—or improve—to outrank them.
Next, check paid search competition.
In the same report, you’ll see that Amazon is running Google Ads for this keyword.
Click “View details” to explore their ad strategy.
When analyzing keyword competition, focus on these five factors:
- Who’s ranking and how strong their pages are
- How many backlinks and referring domains they have
- Whether the SERP includes ads, reviews, videos, or carousels
- What types of businesses are bidding on the term (if any)
- Whether your site or content can realistically compete
From there, decide whether to:
- Compete directly for the keyword
- Use a more specific variation or long-tail version
- Target it with paid search instead of organic (or both)
- Skip it and focus on easier opportunities first
When to Compete, Pivot, or Pass on a Keyword
After analyzing keyword competition, decide whether it’s worth targeting based on difficulty and available resources.
Here are common situations and what to do in each case:
| Compete | Pivot | Pass |
| The keyword is important to your product or service | The keyword is useful but too competitive right now | The keyword isn’t critical to your goals |
| You have strong content or authority—or the resources to build it | You can target a more specific or less crowded variation | It would take too much effort for too little return |
| It’s likely to bring in traffic that will convert into sales | You want to build topical authority before targeting the harder version later | You already have less competitive and still relevant keywords |
| It’s achievable in SEO or paid search (or both) | One channel is too competitive—try the other | It’s competitive in both SEO and ads |
Let’s revisit our example: “best travel backpack for men.”
It’s a competitive keyword in both SEO and paid search.
If it directly supports your product, you might still pursue it. But you’ll need standout content or a solid ad budget.
If it’s not critical, it’s smarter to target a more specific variation like “best business travel backpack for men.”
These more specific keywords usually face less competition.
Sometimes SEO is too competitive, but ads may still work. Or, in the case of “best business travel backpack for men,” SEO could be easier while ads might be tough.
Use your keyword analysis to choose the best path based on your resources.
Measuring Success: How to Track Competitive Keywords Over Time
Tracking your keywords helps you monitor ranking changes and shifts in competition. This lets you adjust your strategy early and protect your website traffic.
Google Search Console tracks keyword positions but doesn’t include keyword difficulty scores or paid search data.
Semrush’s Position Tracking tool gives you the complete picture for both organic and paid keywords. You can see your rankings, keyword difficulty, and daily position changes.
This helps you track which keywords are becoming harder to rank for and where you’re losing visibility.
You can also add competitors to compare your rankings side by side.
Set ranking drop alerts to catch early signs of rising competition. And react before traffic slips.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the Difference Between Keyword Competition and Keyword Difficulty?
Keyword competition refers to how hard it is to appear in search results, whether in SEO or paid search. It's often used interchangeably with keyword difficulty, especially in SEO.
In Semrush:
- Keyword Difficulty (“KD%”) estimates how hard it is to rank in the top 10 organic results
- Competitive Density (“Comp.”) signals how many advertisers are bidding on a keyword in Google Ads
How Often Should I Re-check Keyword Competition?
Check SEO keyword competition at least every 3-6 months or whenever traffic or rankings change. New competitors, updated content, or shifting search trends can make a keyword more or less competitive over time.
Can I Use High‑Competition Keywords with No Budget?
Using high-competition keywords without a budget is challenging because both SEO and paid ads require resources to compete.
- Paid search: High-competition keywords usually have higher costs per click
- SEO: Ranking takes time, quality content, link building, and tools like Semrush. You’ll still need to invest, even if it’s not direct ad spend.
Turn One Keyword into an Action Plan
Start simple: Pick one phrase you want a page to rank for.
Run the phrase through Keyword Overview to check its Keyword Difficulty and explore other ideas with lower competition.
Use that insight to create a plan for ranking higher.