How do you assess keyword difficulty, search intent, and ad competition?

When evaluating keywords, assess organic ranking difficulty, search intent, and ad competition separately: ranking difficulty measures how hard it is to achieve organic rankings, search intent describes what users want to accomplish, and ad competition reflects how intensely advertisers compete in bidding. All three can help you choose keywords, but they are not interchangeable. Low ad competition does not mean a keyword is easy to rank for organically, and high search volume does not necessarily mean it aligns with your business goals.

Keyword difficulty: first check what the score measures

According to Semrush’s metric definitions, KD% estimates the difficulty of reaching the top ten organic search results on a scale from 0 to 100; a higher score generally means greater difficulty. PKD% estimates ranking difficulty for a specific domain. A keyword that is highly competitive for websites in general may not be equally difficult for your website. (S6)

Different tools use different calculation methods. Difficulty scores are guides, not precise measurements, so the same score from different tools does not necessarily indicate the same difficulty. (S18) High-difficulty keywords need not be ruled out: if they are closely related to your business, they may still be worth considering, though you should expect to put in more work. No score, high or low, guarantees a ranking. (S11)

Search intent: check the results page after classifying intent

Semrush divides search intent into four categories that can help determine which needs your content should address: (S11)

• Informational: looking for answers, such as “what is a credit score.”
• Navigational: looking for a specific website or page, such as a bank login page.
• Commercial: comparing options, such as “best cash back credit cards.”
• Transactional: ready to take action, such as “apply for a credit card.”

Classification alone is not enough. Review the search results for relevant terms to see which content formats are common and how much depth they offer. Backlinko gives an example: if results for a tool-recommendation query mostly offer in-depth coverage, expert reviews, and screenshots of the tools in use, a basic list of features and prices may struggle to compete. This illustrates how to evaluate content, not a rule that every search result must include screenshots. (S10)

At Procrustes, we plan, write, and update articles around the questions customers genuinely care about.

Ad competition: assess competitive density and cost per click separately

Semrush’s Competitive Density indicates the level of Google Ads competition on a scale from 0 to 1; the closer it is to 1, the more intense the competition. CPC is the average advertising cost per click, primarily used by advertisers to assess campaign value. Neither metric measures organic ranking difficulty. (S6, S11)

Keyword Planner’s “Competition” likewise reflects competition among advertisers, not SEO difficulty. The referenced articles differ on whether it can indirectly indicate competition for organic rankings, so do not rely on this field alone to identify keywords that are easy to rank for. (S3, S8)

Record conditions and limitations when comparing keywords

When organizing candidate keywords, record the target location, the date of the data, the tool name, and whether you are using KD or domain-specific PKD. List search intent, search volume, ad competition, and CPC alongside them. CPC reflects costs at a particular point in time and changes with competition, so historical prices in an article should not be treated as current rates. (S6, S11)

This lets you compare each keyword’s opportunities and the work required, rather than using a single “low competition” label to draw conclusions about all three factors.