What if I told you there is a way to rank easily for any content you create?
That’s pretty interesting, right? After all, when you sit down to create a piece of content, you want it to reach as many people as possible, and you can’t do this when your page is buried in the second or even third page of the search results—it needs to be on the first page.
Suppose you have been in the SEO industry for long enough. In that case, you know SEO is highly competitive, and every marketer is trying everything they can to get their pages to rank as high in the results pages as possible.
If you are a start-up, have a new website, have little to no domain rating, or you are in a super competitive industry, you can’t follow the same strategies that everyone else is using—you need a new plan, and this new plan is to go after low competition keywords.
What are low-competition keywords?
From their name, these are keywords that don’t have a lot of competition. This means that only a couple of companies and websites are creating content around them and trying to compete for high organic rankings with SEO.
Since they are low competition, you can rank for them without doing a lot of social promotions or link building. You also don’t need a high website authority to rank for them and start receiving organic traffic.
When done correctly, publishing a blog targeting a low-competition keyword is enough to give you long-tail rankings and organic traffic to stream in.
When you rank for these low-competition keywords, you also have a solid foundation to write more content around more competitive keywords that will bring higher volume and more valuable traffic.
How to Find Low-Competition Keywords
Finding low competition keywords is like finding a juicy peach in your favorite grocery store.
The peach might look appetizing and sumptuous, but you find it tough when you sink your teeth in.
A classic low-competition keyword is not too popular that it’s overly crowded with competitors, but it’s still common enough to send you website traffic.
Are you wondering how you can find these low-hanging fruits that haven’t been discovered yet? Well, there are plenty of ways to go about it. Some of these ways include:
Use the Google search bar
When people have a question, what is the first place they go to? Google. And Google has a database of these questions, which often have little to no competition, yet have people interested in them.
You only need to enter your target keyword in the search bar to find these keywords. For example, if you want to write about Toyota cars, you can type “Do Toyota cars…” and Google will show auto-filled questions that you can use for your next topic.
If you find an interesting question, click on it and analyze the top-ranking pages. If the search term has plenty of high domain authority websites targeting it, stay away from it. On the other hand, if there isn’t a site directly targeting the keyword, you can write a blog post on it.
A sure way to tell that you will rank for the keyword is if there are forums on the top pages. Remember that most forums aren’t competing for the keywords they are ranking for, and most don’t have exhaustive information on the topic.
When you write a well-researched article targeting the keyword, you have an incredible chance of getting the coveted top spot.
Use the people also Ask section
When you type any keyword in Google’s search bar, you will always have a People Also Ask section (usually after the first 1-3 results) with questions related to the keywords you have put in the search bar.
These questions are a way for Google to tell you that people are searching for the topics and you should consider them.
Click on a few of the questions and analyze the competition. Again, if there are questions with plenty of forums ranking in the top spots, these are easy to rank for keywords, and you should highly consider creating valuable content around them.
It’s normal for software programs such as Ahrefs, SemRush, and others to show that a certain keyword has little or no search intent, but this isn’t always the case.
We have written blog posts targeting keywords that the keyword research tools reported having less than 10 searches a month, and now they receive hundreds and even thousands of clicks every month.
So, don’t think that a particular keyword is useless just because a keyword research tool is telling you it doesn’t have search intent—go ahead and create a valuable blog post and the results will shock you.
Keep clicking on the last entry in the list to see more questions in the People Also Ask section. After some time, the questions will stop being relevant to the search topic, and this is your cue that you need to enter a new keyword in the search bar and start the process over again.
Use Google suggestions at the end of every search page
The same way there is a People Also Ask section on every page is the same way there is always a “Related searches” section at the end of every Google results page.
These related searches, also known as Google suggestions, are keywords related to your search keyword. After searching for a keyword or topic, go to the bottom of the search page and find the related searches.
You should click on the term that you feel will be best for your website and analyze it for competition.
Of course, you should only write a blog post after you have ascertained that there aren’t big and authoritative websites targeting the same term.
Use SEO keyword research tools
There are plenty of keyword research tools to find low-competition keywords.
While these tools are different, they work almost similarly. To find a low-competition keyword, you need to open the keyword research tool and then search for your keyword.
Most of these tools will show you the difficulty score on your keyword, then a list of other related keywords with their respective search volumes and difficulty score.
Filter the keywords based on how competitive they are, and only consider those with search volumes that aren’t challenging to rank.
How long does it take to rank for low-competition keywords?
An Ahrefs study analyzed over 2 million pages seen by the Ahrefs crawler for least a year showed that at least 5.7% of the best performing low competition keywords hit the top 10 within 61–182 days.
From the data, you see that it’s possible to rank at the top of the results pages within a short time, but you need to do the right things. Some of the things you can do to improve your SEO strategy, rank higher, and track ranking include:
Create amazing content: Everything begins here. Google is all about serving its users with the best quality content, so when you write terrific content in your blog post, you have won at least 80% of the battle, as it’s a matter of time before Google sees how well people are interacting with your content and it brings it to the top pages where it’s more visible to more people.
To write quality content, you need first to understand the search intent of your readers. Why are they searching for that keyword? Are they looking for general information, an answer to a question, a solution to a problem, or simply browsing for a product to buy?
Once you understand the intent, the next thing to do is to create the best content on the internet that aligns with the goals and purpose of the user.
Ensure the content is mobile-friendly: With over 63% of all organic searches coming from mobile and Google switching to mobile-first indexing, it’s a no-brainer that you should make your content as mobile-friendly as possible.
This calls for you to ensure that the headings, subheadings, and lists look good on mobile. You also should break up your content into small blocks that users can easily consume on mobile.
Properly optimize your content: As much as you are writing the best content possible for humans to read, you also should factor in the search engines, as they are the ones that will pick up the content and present it to people’s eyes.
So, besides the content being helpful and full of value, it should also have a few keywords that let the search engines know what the content is about so that they can serve it when users request it.
Unlike in the early 2000s, don’t fill your content with your target keywords, as you will most likely get your content banned, not to mention the content being unreadable.
The right way to go about it is to add your keywords to your content naturally, and you will be good to go.
Low competition keywords for YouTube
According to Business of Apps, as of 2021, there were over 2.3 billion YouTube monthly users. As you can tell, this is a huge audience you can target with your content.
People on YouTube search for the videos they want to watch the same way they use Google. They go to the YouTube search box and type in their keywords.
So, if you are looking for low-competition keywords for your YouTube channel, this is the first place to start your research.
Type your target word or phrase in the search bar, and Google will suggest the most popular results below. You should note these terms to add them to your videos later.
One of the primary reasons specific videos do well than others is because they have been optimized. One of the ways to optimize your content is by adding relevant keywords.
To see these keywords, check the video description and tags of videos ranking high in your niche, and you will most likely find keywords you can add to your video.
You can find more low-competition keywords using the keyword research tools we mentioned above.
Once you are inside your favorite tool, enter your seed keyword, and the tool will generate many other keywords that you can expand and create new content topics and ideas around.
Once you have done your research and created a video around a low competition keyword, add the keywords to your channel. Select settings in your YouTube studio and add the keywords in the “Basic Info” tab.
When you do this, any user searching for a video using a similar keyword you have added will see your video on the results pages.
Besides adding the keywords in the “Basic Info” tab, it’s also wise to add them to your video tags. As you are uploading your video, go to the “more options” button and add as many keywords here as possible.
Final thoughts
To increase your chances of getting traffic in the cutthroat SEO world, you have to be creative in how you go about it.
As mentioned, you should only go for low-competition keywords, as they are easier to rank for.
Since these keywords are like juicy peaches in a grocery store, don’t rush to create content around a keyword simply because you feel it’s low competition.
Take your time to thoroughly and manually analyze the top-ranking pages and ensure you stand a chance of ranking when you create content.
Remember that when you fail to do this, you risk spending time creating content around keywords that aren’t truly low competition, and all of your hard work gets buried deep in the results pages.
Once you have found low competition keywords, accompany them with good writing. As a rule of thumb, the content you create should meet the customer’s intent.
It also should be mobile-friendly and properly optimized for the search engine. After all, that’s how web spiders will find it and show it to your readers!
