How do you decide if a keyword is actually worth targeting?

I’m launching SERPTool this Monday and wanted to start a discussion around something I think a lot of founders, marketers and indie hackers struggle with:

How do you decide whether a keyword is genuinely worth targeting?

Most keyword tools give you search volume, CPC and a difficulty score, but I’ve found that those numbers do not always tell the full story. Sometimes a keyword looks difficult, but the actual SERP is full of weak results: thin content, outdated pages, low-authority domains, poor search intent matching, or articles that clearly have not been improved in years.

Other times, a keyword looks easy, but the search results are dominated by huge brands or pages that are very hard to beat.

That is the problem I’m trying to solve with SERPTool. Instead of only looking at keyword difficulty, it helps analyse the actual search results and identify ranking opportunities based on what is already ranking.

I’d love to hear how others approach this.

When you are choosing keywords for your SaaS, blog, client work, niche site, or content strategy:

• Do you trust keyword difficulty scores?

• Do you manually inspect the SERP?

• What makes you think, “Yes, this is a keyword I can realistically rank for”?

Really interested to hear how people make that decision.