How to Find Low Competition Keywords for SEO
Everyone wants to rank for competitive
keywords, but sometimes, it's just not possible in the short term. And that's why everyone loves
low competition keywords. They're easy to rank for. You don't need many and in some cases,
any backlinks to the page, and they send you a decent amount of consistent
search traffic month over month. So in this video, I'll show you how to find
low competition keywords and to confidently determine if they are indeed low competition. Stay tuned. [music] First, let's get on the same page and talk
about what a low competition keyword is. Simply put, it's a keyword that's
easy to rank for. Now, with so many different factors that go
into ranking on Google, people generally think of low competition keywords as topics that
don't require a lot of backlinks to rank high.
But the thing is ranking high on Google
isn't always just about backlinks. So for the rest of this tutorial, we'll go
through a 5-step process which will help you find low competition keywords and more
importantly, validate that these keywords are indeed easy to rank for. So the first step is to brainstorm
a list of topics. And when I say topics, I'm talking about broad
keywords that are related to your niche. These are called seed keywords. For example, if we have a site on parenting,
some broad keywords might include "parenting," "stroller," "pregnancy," "babies," and "car seat." Try to think of 5-10 broad topics within your
niche, but try to be specific enough that the keywords can't be interpreted
in too many different ways. Alright, step 2 is to expand your
topics with a keyword research tool. Keyword research tools give you information
about how often words and phrases are searched.
They're also the main way SEOs
generate keyword lists. And the one I'll be using is
Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer. So to get started, enter your list of seed
keywords you just brainstormed and then run the search. Next, go to the Phrase match report. Now, with well over 3 million keyword
ideas, we'll need to narrow this down. This brings us to step 3, which is to filter
keywords for low difficulty scores.
A lot of keyword research tools provide
some kind of ranking difficulty metric. At Ahrefs, we call ours Keyword
Difficulty or KD. Our KD scores run on a scale of 0-100 and
tries to determine how hard it'll be to rank in Google's top 10 results for
a given search query. And the way we calculate it is based on a
weighted average of the number of websites that link to the top 10 pages. This means that the top 10 pages for low
difficulty scores won't have many linking domains pointing at them.
So let's set a Keyword Difficulty filter with
a minimum value of 0 and a maximum value of 20. And now we have over 160,000 potential
low competition topics. The key word here is "potential." Again, ranking isn't just about backlinks. There are lots of other things
you need to consider. And we'll go deep into some examples
of "false positives" in a bit. For now, let's move on to the next step, which
is to check if you can match searcher intent. Search intent tells us the reason
behind a searcher's query. And if you can't match searcher intent, you
won't be able to rank – even if the query is so-called "low competition." For example, when someone searches for
"best baby strollers, are they looking for blog posts, product pages, or ecommerce
category pages? The easiest way to find out is to just Google
the query and look at the top-ranking pages for what we call, the 3 C's of search intent.
The first C is content type — so are the
top- ranking pages blog posts, product or category pages? In this case, they're all blog posts. The second C is content format. So are they listicle type pages, how-tos,
opinion pieces, or step-by-step tutorials? For this query, they're all
listicle-styled posts. And the third C is content angle. This is the dominant selling proposition
that the top-ranking pages are using. In this case, they've gone with the "freshness"
angle, seeing as the top pages are using the current year in their titles. Assuming you have a blog, you should
be able to match searcher intent. Now, what about a query like "baby strollers?" Looking at the top pages, you'll see that
they're mostly ecommerce category pages. So if you don't actually sell baby
strollers, it would be tough to rank. There's more to search intent than the 3 C's
but this should be enough to get you set on the right path. But I highly recommend watching the lesson on
search intent from our SEO course for beginners so I'll link that up in the description.
Alright, the final step is probably the most
important, and that's to assess whether the query is actually low difficulty. Metrics like Keyword Difficulty and Referring
Domains can only tell you so much. And while combining these metrics can be
helpful, they don't always paint a full picture. For example, the query, "compact flash card
reader" has a low keyword difficulty score. And if we scroll down to the SERP, you'll see
that the top 10 pages don't really have that many links pointing at them. But that doesn't mean if you can get more
links and match search intent that you'll be able to outrank these sites. Now, you might be thinking…well, it's because
all of these websites have high authority. Well, in my opinion, more than DR,
it's about brand equity. Sites like Amazon, Best Buy, and BH Photo
Video are places people trust and want to buy products from. They've built trust and topical authority in the
area of electronics and photo and video gear.
And I won't even get into on-page
considerations like facets. So is this a low competition topic? Definitely not unless you're an equal
to one of these brands. The big thing to take away from this is that
there's no tool that can accurately determine ranking difficulty with a 1 to 3 digit number. And this is one of the reasons why we've
made our Keyword Difficulty score based on just linking domains. Backlinks are generally a prominent
ranking signal. With that said, you need to manually assess
each individual SERP to understand whether the query is indeed a low competition topic. Now, we've looked at an example of
a "false positive," so let's look at an example of an actual low-competition
topic and how we come to that conclusion. So the keyword we'll be looking at is "best
convertible car seat for small cars." Looking at KD, you'll see that
it's relatively low. So what that tells us is that the top-ranking
pages, for the most part, don't have many referring domains pointing at them.
So that's a good sniff test, but nothing more. Let's scroll down to the SERP. Now, the first thing I'm going to look at is
whether I can match the dominant search intent because if I can't, then
there's no point in looking further. And you'll see that they're all listicle-styled
blog posts, which would be easy to match. Next, let's do a quick check of the DR column. And it looks like there's a mixture of both
low and high DR sites, which is promising because it tells us that the query probably
isn't going to be a matter of just brand. And the fact that very low authority websites
were able to penetrate the top 10 tells us that our hypothetical website
could probably compete too. So far so good. Now, let's look at the domains that are
ranking to get an idea of topical authority.
Meaning, do these sites likely have lots of
content related to babies, parenting, or baby products like car seats? And it looks like they all do. Now, assuming our site is related to babies,
baby products, parenting, or whatever closely related topics, then we'd likely
be on a similar playing field. The next thing I'd want to look at is
relevance of the top-ranking pages. Looking at the top page, the title specifically
says "best convertible car seats for small cars." It exactly matches the query.
Now, it's not to say that they're ranking
higher because of an exact-match keyword, but convertible car seats for small cars
actually serve a very specific need. And this is likely why some of these lower
authority websites with low page authority are ranking ahead of bigger players. For example, this page is targeting just
"the best convertible car seats" in general. And finally, let's look at the Referring
Domains column. As you can see, the top-ranking page
only has a handful of referring domains. In fact, if we click on the referring domains
number for the page, you'll see that all of the links come from relatively
low-authority sites.
And if I click the Link Type filter, you'll
see that only one of those links is followed. So assuming we can outdo these pages on
the content side of things, this to me looks like a low competition keyword. As a final tip, I want to show you one
super-cool trick to find low competition keywords with high traffic potential. Not just that, but it'll help you find totally
new groups of low competition keywords in virtually any niche. So to get started, go to Ahrefs Content
Explorer, which is a searchable database of over five billion pages. And since we're working on a hypothetical
parenting site, let's set our query to "parenting" and run the search. Now we need to set a few filters. First, I'll set a referring domains filter with
a maximum value of something low like 10. Meaning, the pages for our search
query won't have many links. Next, I'll set an organic traffic filter to
show pages with a minimum of at least 500 monthly organic visits. And right away, you'll see over 3,500 pages
that mention parenting, get at least 500 monthly organic visits and have 10
or fewer referring domains.
Now, it's just a matter of looking at
the titles for topic ideas that would be appropriate for your site. For example, this one on coconut oil
for diaper rash seems promising. So I'll click on the page traffic box to see
the top keywords the page ranks for. And judging by the KD values, it does
look like another low competition topic. But you still need to manually
assess the search results. Now, if you happen to be in a niche without
a ton of low competition keywords or you just have an unhealthy obsession with easy-to-rank-
for topics, then you can use these keywords as new seeds and go through the first
steps I showed you in the tutorial again.
So I'll go back to Keywords Explorer, but
this time, I'll search for "diaper rash" as my seed. Next, I'll go to the Phrase match report. And finally, I'll set the maximum
KD value to 20 again. And now we have even more great keyword
ideas where some will likely be very easy to rank for. Now, while low competition keywords are
great to target when your website is fairly new or has low authority, they shouldn't
be the only strategy you use. Higher competition topics generally lead
to more traffic and links, two things that all SEOs are after.
Plus competitive topics usually
have higher commercial value. So it's worth going after competitive topics but
you should set your time horizon realistically. Now, go and try this out for your site and
if you enjoyed this video, make sure to like, share and subscribe for more actionable
SEO and marketing tutorials. I'll see you in the next one..
