Keyword & Competitive Research

Keyword Research with the Magic Tool: Difficulty & Intent

The Keyword Magic Tool is a query language over search demand. Master two dials — difficulty and intent — and you find winnable, valuable terms instead of unrankable head terms.

Filters are a WHERE clause

Enter one seed term and the Keyword Magic Tool explodes it into millions of related keywords, clustered by topic, each tagged with volume, Keyword Difficulty, intent, cost-per-click, and SERP features. The filters combine like a WHERE clause over search demand — that is the whole skill.

Two dials do most of the work: difficulty and intent. Get them wrong and you write the perfect article that ranks for nothing, or ranks for something that never converts.

Keyword Difficulty: read the band, not the number

Keyword Difficulty (KD%) estimates how hard it is to rank on page one organically, driven mostly by how strong the pages already ranking are.

0-14 very easy · 15-29 easy · 30-49 possible · 50-69 difficult · 70-84 hard · 85-100 very hard

A KD of 34 versus 36 is not a meaningful difference; 20 versus 60 absolutely is. If your site is young, live below KD 30 for a while — you will rank, earn links, raise your Authority Score, and only then bring harder terms into range.

Search Intent decides the content type

Semrush classifies every query into four intents, and each can only be won by a matching content type:

Informational ("what is local seo") → a guide or blog post
Navigational ("brightlocal login") → one specific page, usually the brand's
Commercial ("best local seo software") → a comparison or listicle
Transactional ("buy local seo audit") → a product or service page

Match the intent or the best keyword in the world will not convert — or rank.

A practical filter recipe

For a newer site hunting first wins, filter Keyword Magic to KD under 30, volume above 100, and commercial or transactional intent. Group the results by cluster and you are planning a whole content hub, not a single page.

Key Takeaways

The Keyword Magic Tool's filters are a query language over demand — combine them deliberately.
KD% is a band, not a precise number; new sites should target under 30.
Intent dictates the content type that can rank; align content to intent every time.

Example

markdown

-- Finding winnable, on-intent keywords from a seed
seed = "email marketing"
WHERE keyword_difficulty < 30
  AND search_volume     > 200
  AND intent IN ('commercial', 'transactional')
  AND keyword LIKE '%software%'
GROUP BY topic_cluster;   -- plan a content hub, not one page

Try it yourself — MARKDOWN