Targeting keywords with high search volume and very little competition is the bedrock of every successful SEO strategy.
However, this is easier said than done. You must follow a specific process to find keywords that’ll give you the best chance of ranking on Google.
Typically, this task is reserved for professional SEO services, so you don’t have to find them independently.
But if you want to learn how to find these keywords for any topic, you’ve come to the right place!
We’ll discuss two approaches: manual and automated (using a keyword research tool). When you know both, you can’t help but find the best keywords for your site.
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The Manual Process to Finding Keywords With Low Competition and High Search Volume: Using Google SERPs
Google is a great place to extract low-hanging fruit keywords.
To rank on Google, you can reverse-engineer it to show keywords you should be optimizing for based on seed keywords.
Keyword Surfer will help you perform the keyword research on Google SERPs.
This free Chrome extension shows you the monthly search volume of queries and other metrics to facilitate your keyword research.
Once you’ve downloaded the extension, type in your topic on Google search to show the results.
Then, click on the Keyword Surfer icon on your browser. If enabled, you should see something like this:
You will see keywords with the highest search volume.
Keyword Surfer is useful. But it lacks a keyword competition score by term, which would help you determine the easiest terms to rank.
The total domain traffic shown on each page shows how difficult it is to rank for the keyword.
The higher the total traffic of the domain is, the higher its domain authority. If most of the sites ranking for the keyword have high domain authority, it’s best to choose another keyword.
There are other factors when it comes to determining keyword difficulty. But domain traffic is one of the most significant variables to consider.
A correlation graph helps you view the estimated traffic received of the domains on organic search results each month. It’s on the right side of the page.
For the keyword “laptops,” 9 out of 10 pages generate at least a few million monthly visitors. Unless you’re attracting the same amount of monthly traffic, you may want to target another keyword to optimize for instead.
Refer to the keyword ideas section on SERPs to find keyword opportunities for your site.
Click on any of the search terms here to check their results with the help of Keyword Surfer.
Using An Automated Process To Find High Search Volume With Low Competition: SEMrush
SEMrush is an online marketing tool that lets you find low-hanging fruit keywords to optimize. You can apply them to your site, social media posting, link building outreach, etc.
Romain Berg is proud to be a SEMRush partner, meaning that our agency has completed the SEMRush Academy and has demonstrated an in-depth understanding of SEO and SEMRush.
Using SEMrush (or any other keyword tool) simplifies searching for these types of keywords. You no longer have to guess which keywords have the most searches and lowest competition.
Everything is presented to you on SEMrush – all you have to do is pick and choose the keywords you need!
There are three ways to extract these keywords using this tool:
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Keyword Magic Tool
This feature takes the traditional approach. You type in your seed keyword, and the tool spits out ideas and suggestions.
This helps you find related keywords you could optimize for. This is ideal if you have a brand-new site and have no idea which keywords to target.
Click on SEO > Keyword Research > Keyword Magic Tool and enter the topic on the search bar.
After clicking on “Search,” the tool will load all the keywords it finds in its database.
Next, click on the KD% (Keyword Difficulty %) drop-down menu and filter the results to only show easy keywords (from 0-39%).
The filter hides all high competition keywords from the list. Then you can pick from the easiest keywords with the highest search volume out there for your topic.
From here, you may also want to look for long-tail keywords. Although these don’t have high monthly searches, they have obvious search intent. That’s ideal if you require keywords that will help you convert visitors into leads or customers.
To view these keywords, click on the Questions tab.
You can adjust the KD% filter to show more results if the tool can’t find relevant ones for your topic.
2. Competitor Research
Searching for keyword ideas from your topics is beneficial. You can also extract keywords that your competitors are already ranking for.
The fact that your competitors appear on SERPs for these keywords means that you should, too! You just need to create better content than they are to increase your chances of outranking them on search engines.
To do this, go to Domain Overview and type in your competitor’s URL.
On the results page, click on the number of keywords the domain is ranking for under Organic Search Traffic.
You’ll be brought to the list of keywords that your competitor appears on SERPs along with other information.
From the filter, extract the long-tail keywords of competitors. Enter the 4 Ws (what, why, when, where) and 1 H (how) in the ‘Filter by keyword’ search bar. Then, reorder the keywords to appear in ascending order (from easiest to hardest KD% or most to least volume).
3. Content Gap
SEMrush lets you check out multiple competitor keywords at the same time using Keyword Gap.
This simplifies the process of finding low competition keywords from other sites. You no longer have to type in your competitors one by one to do this!
To do this, click on Keyword Gap under Competitive Research.
From here, enter your site and the competitor’s site. The tool can compare your keywords and see which ones you are and aren’t ranking for. You can enter four competitors max per analysis – that’s five sites in total, including yours.
The first entry is usually pre-filled with your site. Enter your competitor URLs in the following entries.
If you don’t know who your competitors are, that’s fine. By clicking on the entry, SEMrush will provide you with suggestions. You can do this on all entries before hitting “Compare.”
Next, Top Opportunities shows the list of “missing” and “weak” keywords by section. These are keywords your competitors are ranking for, but your site isn’t (missing), or your site is ranking lower (weak).
To reveal the complete list, click on “View Details.”
Choose which opportunity you want to view first. By default, the “missing” keywords are selected. If you wish to see “weak” keywords, click on the tab before hitting the “View details” button.
From here, you should be able to see what these keywords are. Filter the results so you can zero in on the type of keywords you’re looking for.
Conclusion
Once you have a list of high volume, low competition keywords, you can proceed with your SEO and content marketing campaign. Create content optimized for the keywords you found to satisfy your target audience. If done correctly, you can rank for each keyword on the top page of Google and maximize your site’s traffic.
If you need help on how to do this, shoot us an email, and we’ll get back to you shortly.
