Most people substitute a difficulty score for this. The score is a summary of the current top ten’s backlink profiles, which describes how strong they are — a different question from whether they can be displaced.
A well-linked page nobody has touched since 2019 is frequently easier to beat than a weaker page updated last month. No score can see that. Ten minutes of looking can.
What to look at, in order
| What you check | Encouraging | Discouraging |
|---|---|---|
| Page types ranking | Forums, old blog posts, thin pages | Purpose-built pages from serious publishers |
| Intent match | Results only partly answer the query | Every result answers it directly |
| Freshness | Top results are years old | Several updated in recent months |
| Authority spread | A low-DR site sitting in the top five | Everything above DR 60 |
| Recent entrants | A page published this year ranking well | Nothing new has broken in for years |
| Result features | Ten ordinary results | The answer is given on the page itself |
The two signals that matter most
If you check nothing else, check these.
A recent entrant ranking well. A page published this year sitting at position four is direct evidence that the result is still open. It is the single most informative thing on the page, and it is invisible in any difficulty score.
A low-authority site in the top five. Same logic from the other direction: whatever is being rewarded here, it is not link equity.
Two or three of either and the query is worth pursuing. Neither, and you are looking at a result page that has been settled for years.
Reading intent properly
The most common analysis failure is targeting a query whose results show a different intent from the page you intend to write.
If every result is a product listing and you plan a guide, you are not competing — you are proposing a different kind of page for a query Google has already decided is transactional. That is a much harder argument to win than simply writing well.
Look at what the ranking pages are before deciding what yours will be. The result page is Google telling you what it thinks the query means.
What a forum result is telling you
A forum thread or a question-and-answer page ranking on the first page is worth pausing on, because it carries two messages at once.
The encouraging reading is that no publisher has covered the query properly. A thread of scattered replies ranks because it is the best available answer, not because it is a good one.
The cautionary reading is that people may prefer it. For queries where the reader wants lived experience rather than an article — what went wrong, what it is really like — a forum can outrank a well-made page indefinitely, because it is genuinely the better result.
Tell them apart by reading the thread. Scattered, incomplete answers mean an opportunity. Detailed first-hand accounts mean the query wants something an article cannot supply.
Positions three to eight, not one
Position one is frequently an outlier — a brand, a very old page, something with unusual links. Judging a result page by its top result overstates the difficulty almost every time.
The realistic target is the middle of the first page. Read positions three through eight and ask what the weakest of them has. That is the bar you actually need to clear, and it is usually considerably lower than position one suggests.
What the page itself tells you
Where results carry answers, carousels or heavy commercial features, the available clicks shrink regardless of where you rank. Search Engine Watch and others have tracked how result page features have expanded over time, and the practical effect is that ranking third on a feature-heavy page can be worth less than ranking fifth on a plain one.
That is not a reason to avoid such queries. It is a reason to discount the traffic estimate attached to them before building a plan on it.
Ten minutes, not an afternoon
It is worth being clear how quick this should be, because treated as a research project it will not get done at all.
Open the result page. Look at what kind of pages rank, when they were published, and whether anything young or low-authority is among them. Read the weakest result on the first page properly. That is the whole exercise.
The discipline is in doing it before writing rather than after publishing and wondering why nothing moved. Ten minutes ahead of a week of work is a trade worth making every time.
Scaling it past one query
Reading a result page takes ten minutes. Twenty queries takes an afternoon, and the pattern across them is more informative than any single one.
If low-authority sites appear across most of your target results, the whole area is soft and worth entering properly — which is the niche-level version of this check, covered in finding high traffic, low competition niches and validating a niche in an afternoon.
Our explorer filters by DR ceiling, traffic floor and domain age together, which is what makes the authority half of this repeatable rather than a domain-by-domain lookup.
One caveat throughout: every authority and traffic figure here is a third-party estimate. Use them to compare the pages on one result page against each other, not as absolute measurements.
Done consistently, this changes what gets written rather than only what gets targeted. Queries whose results show a different intent get a different page; queries that are settled get skipped; and the ones with a young entrant near the top move to the front of the schedule, where they belong.
Frequently asked questions
What is SERP analysis?
Reading the result page for a specific query to judge whether a position is realistically available. It differs from a difficulty score by assessing whether the incumbents can be displaced, rather than only how strong their backlink profiles are.
How do I know if a keyword is winnable?
Look for a page published recently that already ranks well, or a low-authority site in the top five. Either is direct evidence the result is still open. If neither appears and every result is strong and recently updated, it is settled.
Should I look at position one?
Not as your benchmark. Position one is often an outlier held by a brand or an unusually old page. Positions three to eight describe the bar you actually need to clear, and it is usually lower than the top result suggests.
Is keyword difficulty enough on its own?
No. Difficulty is derived from the current top ten’s link profiles, so it measures incumbent strength rather than how well those pages are maintained. A strong but neglected page is frequently easier to displace than a weaker, actively updated one.
The takeaway Read the result page, not the score. A recent entrant ranking well or a low-authority site in the top five is direct evidence the position is available — and neither shows up in a difficulty number.
