Don't skip a keyword because the top results have higher DR. Check the SERP first

A lot of founders cross a keyword off the list the moment they see big domains on page one. When we checked 2,754 Google results pages (21,336 top-10 results), the picture was less one-sided than that. In 35.8% of SERPs a site with DR under 20 was in the top 3, and in 14.9% it was #1. The strongest domain on the page held #1 in only 15.6% of cases, and its median position was 4. The correlation between DR and position was close to zero (median Spearman -0.08), even though median DR does slide from 72 at #1 to 54 at #10.

So DR matters on average, but for a given query it often isn't what decides the order. A quick check before you give up on a keyword: open the results, note any low-DR site in the top 5, and look at its page. Usually it answers the exact question better, is more specific (one city, one use case, one tool), or is simply fresher. If you can make a page that is clearly better for that exact query, the big domains above you are less of a wall than they look.

Full method and charts: promopilot.link/en/blog/what-dr-do-you-need-to-rank-2026
Have you ranked above much bigger domains for a query that mattered? What do you think made the difference?