How to find Low Competition Keywords

Why find low competition keywords? What are low competition keywords anyway?

Let’s look first at a common scenario:

Andy has a website on fasting and keto diets. He has been interested in this topic for a while and since he has started fasting and changed to a keto diet he has lost weight and feels much better!

Given his experience and his enthusiasm on this topic he has been writing about keto diets and fasting for a while. He spends a lot of time on the articles, they are really well written, they look great too! Plenty of images and good formatting.

The problem is though, no-one is reading his content! It’s maddening, he has spent so much time and effort writing them, he knows they will help people just starting out. If only people would read them…

He sees competitor websites doing much better than his site even though his content is better! He’s really frustrated and, if he was being honest, a little depressed. What is he doing wrong? He has no idea…

Andy’s problem is he targets keywords he had no chance of ranking for. It doesn’t matter how good your content is you can’t outrank well established, well resourced rivals in highly competitive topics.

You need a different strategy…

That strategy is to use low competition keywords.

Table of Contents

What are low competition keywords?

Low competition keywords are keywords that are easy to rank for. That doesn’t mean you can get on the first page of Google with a low quality article though. You still have to write high quality content and practise good SEO techniques.

Low competition keywords are usually:

• 3-5 words in length
• low monthly search volumes (less than 100 queries per month, perhaps much less)
• low competition – which means easy to rank for

Below is a graph showing the search demand curve. The three sections of the graph are:

The Fat Head

A small number of keywords have very high search volumes, this is “The Fat Head” section in the graph below. Ranking on the first page of Google for these keywords is insanely difficult unless you have a very large website with enormous number of backlinks (links from other websites that link to your website).

The Chunky Middle

The next section, called “The Chunky Middle”, has good monthly search volume, it’s possible to rank for some of these keywords if you have an established site with plenty of content and a decent number of backlinks.

Long Tail

The third and final section is the “Long Tail”. This sections consists of billions and billions of keywords that have small, and sometimes very small, monthly search volumes. In fact, according to Google, 15% of queries have never been searched for before.

So we can consider long tail keywords to be, in general, low competition keywords. I use the phrases interchangeably in this article even though they are not technically the same.

Low competition keywords for SEO

Low competition keywords make up the majority of searches. Here is an analysis of 4 billion keywords:

The vast majority of searches (94.74%) have very low volume, 10 or fewer searches per month.

Keywords with low search volume

You may think why target keywords with a low search volume? I want keywords with a high search volume!

That’s understandable, but those keywords will be targeted by competitors. You can get the same traffic by targeting multiple low search volume keywords in the same article. Just ensure the keywords are related.

0 competition keywords

Some keywords can be so niche or obscure they have no competition – zero. Are they worth targeting?

Well, if they are relevant to your audience, yes!

Find a balance between competition, search volume and relevance. Don’t target keywords that are not relevant to your topic or audience.

Reasons to use low competition keywords

1. Long tail keywords are less competitive

Targeting competitive keywords seems like a great idea, you could get a lot of traffic to your site if you appeared on the first page of Google. But the reality is you are never going to appear on the first page because bigger, better resourced, more popular websites already have their content on the first page.

If your website is new it will be almost impossible to rank on the first page of Google for popular keywords.

Far better to rank on the first page for less popular terms, at least you will get some search traffic.

2. Less competition keywords are easier to write content for

Why? Because they are generally a longer phrase consisting of three or more words the intent of the visitor is clearer. To learn more about search intent read this: A guide to search intent for bloggers.

It is generally easier to answer a question or provide information to a very specific query than a more general query. For instance, take these search queries:

• Bitcoin
• What is Bitcoin?
• Can I buy Bitcoin with cash?

The more specific the question or search the easier it is to answer and the shorter your answer needs to be. Shorter answers mean you can write more content than you could for a more general search query.

Read more on short form content vs long form content.

3. There are huge numbers of keywords with low search volume

You can compound traffic to your site by writing lots of content targeting low search volume keywords. Each article will only bring in a small amount of traffic but will be easier to write. Eventually, your traffic will compound over time.

There is a huge volume of long tail keywords to address so, no matter your industry, you will not run out of content to write.

4. Writing countless pages to target low competition keywords means plenty of fresh content – good for SEO

To get a reasonable amount of traffic to your website you will need to write plenty of content since low competition keywords will have low monthly search volumes.

Writing a lot of content is good for SEO. Google likes fresh, original content which will boost your chance of ranking well for these keywords.

In addition, adding plenty of internal links between pages, will also boost your SEO and ranking potential.

5. Long tail keywords have high conversion rates

Longer keywords consisting of three or more words provide more context because the query is more specific as mentioned in the Bitcoin example above.

For instance, consider the following queries:

• weightlifting
• supplements for weightlifting
• best online supplements for weightlifting

As the keyword gets longer the further down the sales funnel the visitor is. That means the visitor is closer to making a decision, such as a purchase, than with shorter keywords which are more general.

What matters to you if you write content to sell a product or service is the conversion rate, the percentage of visitors that make a purchase from you.

Getting thousands of visitors to an article and zero sales isn’t helping you. So, by targeting low competition keywords that you can rank for you also get a higher conversion rate.

How to find high traffic low competition keywords

Reddit

You will find many people discussing many topics on Reddit. Discussions are organised around sub-communities. You can search for your niche or just google for the best Reddit community to join. Take a note of the questions users are asking, you can write blog posts answering those questions.

To find the best furniture community on Reddit for furniture do a google search and restrict results to site:reddit.com

Check competitor websites

Analyse websites from your competitors to check what keywords they are ranking for. You don’t need a keyword research tool for this, although if you have one it will be a lot quicker.

For each article check the title (H1) and subheadings (H2,H3) to see what keywords are being targeted. Perhaps your competitors are targeting keywords you haven’t thought about.

For a quick competition analysis you can use the competitor research tool from SE Ranking. Just type in the domain of a competitor website to see the results.

SEO plugins such as Yoast and AIOSEO

The paid version of SEO plugins usually provides help with finding keywords. Here is Yoast SEO plugin showing related keyphrases:

Low competition keywords – Software

Premium SEO tools

Some of the best know SEO tools that help with keyword research are:

• SEMRush
• Ahrefs

Premium SEO tools can cost over $100+ per month to use. They do provide a huge amount of information to help you find the right long tail keywords to target though.

If your budget doesn’t stretch that far don’t worry, I wrote some posts on more affordable SEO tools you can use.

Final Thoughts on Low Competition Keywords

Thanks for reading! The takeaway is that each article focused on a low competition keyword will bring in a small volume of traffic each month but with a higher conversion rate than more competitive keywords. Consistently writing content focusing on low competition keywords will gradually build up your traffic volumes.

Keep writing awesome content that people love to read. Make use of internal linking to get visitors to stay on your site and read other articles.

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