Keyword difficulty checker with search volume

How are the search numbers worked out?

They come from Google's own search suggestions: the fewer letters Google needs before it suggests a phrase in your chosen country, the more people search it. Google's search box suggests the most searched phrases first and soonest. This checker types your keyword into Google's suggestions for the country you choose, one piece at a time, and notes how early Google offers it. A phrase Google suggests after a few letters is searched a lot; one it only knows when typed in full is searched a little; one it never suggests is rare. That score is turned into a range of monthly searches, scaled to the size of the country's search market.

What does keyword difficulty mean?

Keyword difficulty is a score from 0 to 100 for how hard it is to reach the first page of Google for a phrase. Short, popular phrases are hard; longer phrases, local phrases (with a town or area) and questions are easier, because fewer strong pages aim at exactly that.

How should a business choose keywords?

Choose phrases that match what you sell and where you sell it, with steady searches and low to moderate difficulty, and give each one its own page. Google's own advice is to think about the words a user might search for to find your content.

• Start local and specific. "wedding cakes nairobi" brings customers you can serve; "cakes" brings the whole world.
• Match the searcher's intent. "birthday cake prices" is someone ready to buy; "how to bake a cake" is someone who will bake it themselves.
• One main keyword per page. Put it in the title, the main heading and the first paragraph, and give each service or product its own page. Use it naturally: keyword stuffing is against Google's spam policies.
• Use the related searches as sections of the page, questions in its FAQ, or topics for blog posts.

How accurate are the estimates?

They are estimates for comparing phrases with each other, not exact counts: no tool outside Google, paid or not, knows Google's exact numbers. The volume is a range worked out from how early Google suggests the phrase, so a rare phrase shows as "under 10" even when some people search it, and a new or seasonal phrase can read high or low. The difficulty score is a rule of thumb based on the phrase itself and how much it is searched; it does not study the pages that rank for it today. Each check covers one country, and Google's suggestions can change from day to day.

Use the estimates to pick the phrases worth a page. The AI Website SEO Checker goes further for your own site: it reads your main pages, finds the keyword each should win, and measures it the same way. Check how a page presents that keyword in the results with the SERP preview tool.