Keyword metrics

Every keyword in RankYak carries two metrics: search volume and keyword difficulty. Together they describe how much traffic a keyword may bring and how hard that traffic is to win, and they are the raw material RankYak uses to plan your content. This page explains what each number means and how the planner weighs them.

Search volume

Search volume is the number of times a keyword is searched per month. A higher volume means a larger potential audience, and a lower volume means a smaller one, though low-volume keywords are often the easier wins for a newer site. Very high volumes usually come with proportionally heavier competition.

Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty is a score from 0 to 100 that estimates how competitive a keyword is to rank for. It reflects the strength of the pages you would need to outperform.

How RankYak uses these metrics

You do not need to weigh these numbers yourself. When RankYak builds your monthly content plan, it uses volume and difficulty together to find high-opportunity keywords, to decide which topic cluster to build authority in first, and to balance quick wins against the long-term positions that take months to earn. Of course, you may always override the plan and schedule any keyword you like.

Keywords without a difficulty score

Sometimes a keyword shows no difficulty score. Typically this happens with very niche keywords, small or localized markets, or regions where difficulty data is incomplete. A missing score does not mean the keyword is low value; it means the data is unavailable. The keyword remains fully usable, RankYak may still plan content for it, and it still contributes to ranking its broader topic cluster.