keyword-difficulty

keyword-difficulty is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from ZensInk/zens-ink-seo-package. It costs 101 tokens per session (731 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A keyword difficulty estimator that examines the pages appearing in Google search results, called the SERP. It looks at the types of sites and pages ranking and suggests whether there may be room for a new page.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to judge whether to target a keyword and what kind of page might compete. It is suited to questions such as whether a comparison or guide can rank.
Why use it?
It avoids relying on a single paid difficulty number that may hide how competitive the results really are. The result focuses on whether a realistic entry point exists.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to judge whether to target a keyword and what kind of page might compete. It is suited to questions such as whether a comparison or guide can rank.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/zensink/zens-ink-seo-package/keyword-difficulty
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add ZensInk/zens-ink-seo-package --skill keyword-difficulty
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ZensInk/zens-ink-seo-package

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for keyword-difficulty

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zensink/zens-ink-seo-package/keyword-difficulty/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/zensink/zens-ink-seo-package/keyword-difficulty)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zensink/zens-ink-seo-package/keyword-difficulty"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zensink/zens-ink-seo-package/keyword-difficulty/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for keyword-difficulty

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zensink/zens-ink-seo-package/keyword-difficulty"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zensink/zens-ink-seo-package/keyword-difficulty.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 101 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 731 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00101 $0.00731
Opus 5.5 $0.00040 $0.00292
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00020 $0.00146
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00073

Measured 2d ago against content hash 1246a3597024, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

keyword-difficulty scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/keyword-difficulty/SKILL.md · 84 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 84 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Keyword difficulty from SERP structure

Most KD scores are paywalled link metrics. This reads the actual SERP and answers the only question that matters: are there winnable seats, and what type of page wins them?

When to use

  • "Can I rank for 'best crm for startups'?"
  • "How competitive is this keyword?"
  • "Should I write this article or skip it?"

When NOT to use

  • Head terms dominated by Wikipedia/major brands — the tool will tell you, but the answer is already no.
  • The user needs a DR-style number to put in a report — use domain_rating (rank-tracking skill) for DR lookups instead.

Setup

pip install zens-ink

Set SERPER_API_KEY in .env (free tier: 2,500 searches/month at serper.dev).

Commands

python3 -m zens_ink.kd "open source seo tools"
python3 -m zens_ink.kd "开源 seo 工具" --zh
python3 -m zens_ink.kd "best crm" --json          # machine-readable
python3 -m zens_ink.kd "best crm" --markdown       # self-contained report

How to read the results

The analysis is built on three fingerprints of a locked SERP:

  1. Same-name official domains in top 3 — navigational lock, hard to enter.
  2. One domain family holding 2+ seats — brand sitelinks, Google treats it as the canonical answer.
  3. Platform ecosystem density — Reddit/YouTube/GitHub stacking means Google wants UGC/forum content for this query.

2+ fingerprints = brand-locked keyword. The output also after removing official and platform-fixed seats — that is the number that decides go/no-go, not the raw top-10 strength.

Decision rule: if the winnable-seat difficulty is moderate and intent matches the user's page type, write it. If every seat is brand-locked, pivot to the long-tail variant (feed the seed back through the keyword-research skill with --expand).

Next steps

  • Verify what Google actually rewards: the search-intent skill runs the SERP page-type breakdown.
  • Batch-scored a list already? The competitor-gap skill finds what rivals rank for that the user does not.

Read the full file on GitHub · 84 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 84 lines · 101 tokens per session scan A 1246a3597024

Subscribe to this mod's changes

keyword-difficulty is a skill published in the GitHub repository ZensInk/zens-ink-seo-package (53 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 101 tokens to every session and 731 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-10-15.

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