Finding Low Competition Keywords

In this series, we answer questions from members of our Facebook group, SEO Roundtable, with video responses in an effort to help them become stronger, more capable SEOs.

Introduction – How to Find Easy Keywords

You may already know how to do the basics of keyword research. When you want to find competitive keywords, you are simply discovering each particular keyword or keyword phrase that you want to search for for an article that targets specific Google SERPs or a target audience.

But what if you want to find keywords that are relatively easy to rank for? Specific keywords that don't have a lot of competition and for which you're more confident you can rank and drive traffic? We call these low competition keywords.

Today I'm going to show you how to find low-competition keywords (also known as long tail keywords). This is pretty much the only method I'm using to find low competition keywords to search for when I'm doing keyword research. This tutorial is a good foundation for keyword research as part of a broader SEO analysis (and before you start targeting high-competition keywords with higher keyword difficulty).

Nick already showed us a method for all in title keyword research. Everyone will have a slightly different method of finding keywords based on their goals. This is just my particular favorite method of finding low/high search volume, low competition keywords because it's so fast and cheap (it used to be free but not anymore!).

Let's go for long-tail keywords!

Keywords Everywhere Browser Extension

To perform this method of keyword research, you will need two search engine browser plugins.

The first one you need is called Keywords Everywhere. When you go to their website, you can see at the top that it says, "Keywords Everywhere is a paid tool." Until about two weeks ago, this was not the case. Before it was free! When I first heard this news, I was scared...as were many other people. But if you look at the price, you can see that $10 gets you 100,000 credits. You don't know what credits are right now, but 1 credit gives you information on 1 potential keyword.

Each search you perform uses about 30 keywords if you leave the setting that returns additional related keyword opportunities turned on. You can turn that off so it only does one keyword per search. I just leave it on.

So if you have 100,000 credits and 30 keywords per search, that $10 will get you over 3,000 searches. That's a lot of keyword targets! So yes, this tool is now a paid tool, but it is SUPER cheap.

For full transparency, we are not affiliated with this company in any way (and you can see that our link to them is not an affiliate link). This is just one tool that we really like to use, and it's extremely cheap. We pay $10, and that will probably give me months of keyword research.

So after you decide how many credits you are going to buy, go ahead and download it. It is a Google Chrome extension, which means that it is a program that connects to your Google Chrome browser. You can also use this extension in Firefox, but I think the second extension we are going to use is only for Chrome.

Mozbar Chrome Extension

The second Chrome extension you'll need to get is MozBar. This is completely free. You literally just hit the download button and install it.

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So after you’ve got both of the extensions installed, go up to the top right of your browser and turn them on.

You can see I have Keywords Everywhere turned on and I've only used 5,000 of my 100,000 credits so far. I still have a long way to go on that $10.

But since it's not completely free anymore, you'll probably want to disable it when you're not using it to avoid using your credits for every Google and YouTube search you do on the search engines.

Once you’ve got both plugins turned on and you’re logged in to your Moz account, you’re good to start looking for low competition keywords!

 Finding Low Competition Keywords

First, you need one or more seed keywords to start finding low-competition keywords. Once you've made sure your keyword research tool (Keywords Everywhere) is installed and activated, it's time to start searching. We'll start by entering just one main keyword into the Google search bar: "gaming chairs."

For those of you who don't know this about me, I really like video games... I probably waste too much time on these things. A lot of gamers promote gaming chairs, so I thought we'd look into it.

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There are a couple of things you will see right away. You can see the volume, cost per click, and competition next to the keyword. All this data is automatically updated by Keywords Everywhere.

The main thing I'm looking at here is monthly search volume (ie organic search traffic). Monthly traffic is one of the main indicators that tells you how competitive a search phrase will be to rank for.

For this particular phrase match ("gambling chairs"), the organic traffic volume is 74,000. This is one of the very high volume keywords that I consider to have "high keyword difficulty." .

Competitive keywords like "gaming chairs" will be difficult to rank for. Highly competitive keywords tend to fall into the category of fathead keywords, which are typically popular search phrases with 3 or fewer words (which can indicate buyer search intent).

In general, high search volume equates to high competition. This is simply because people flock to where they can make the most money. You can still make a lot of money with low search volume terms, and it will also be much easier to rank for them.

The other thing you'll notice is that we have these little black bars under each site, and they give us a quick PA and DA (Moz metrics for domain authority and page authority) of each of these URLs that are showing up in the SERP . The Mozbar DA is like a keyword difficulty metric when applied to keyword research.

We're not too big fans of Moz and its metrics (we usually just use Ahrefs). Ahrefs also has an extension, however, we're using Mozbar for this because it's free and because we just need to make quick, general judgments about the sites that show up in the SERP (the competition).

First, we saw that the search traffic for this keyword was 74,000. We're pretty much going to know that there's already a lot of competition, but when you scroll down and look at the metrics for these domains, you'll see DA of 96, 96, 89, 55.

These are all high domain authority sites, which means it will take more to top them. High authority domains tend to receive high quality backlinks from many referring domains.

I don't see a single low DA site on the front page. With Mozbar, you want to see that there is at least one low DA site on the top ranking pages.

Of course, it will mean even less competition if there is more than one. Having one or more sites with low DA on the first page will let you know that it will be easier to rank for that term.

When I say "low" DA, I mean something that's lower than 30. That number can change a bit depending on you, how good you are at SEO, what kind of budget you have, etc. For you, that number might only be 15 or 20.

So, in general, I look for sites on page 1 that have less than 30 or 40 DA. You can see that there are none like that on the top ranking pages of this Google SERP.

Moving on, you can see these related keywords on the side of the screen. These are also being included by Keywords Everywhere along with their search volumes.

You'll find all keywords of relative interest listed in these information boxes to the right. This is a very quick way to get some additional keyword ideas (since "gaming chairs" was a very competitive keyword).

Also, look at the URL titles (blue clickable text of pages ranked on page 1) that are already ranked on this page for even more keyword ideas. Here we can see “video game chairs”. We could look at that further if we wanted.

The last place we look for keyword ideas is at the bottom of the page. Keywords Everywhere used to provide the search volumes here as well, so you may need to change the settings to get them to show up again.

But this is another great place to look for other seed keywords to research. Here we can see "best gaming chairs" and "cheap gaming chairs".

Let's go ahead and look at "cheap gaming chairs" to see if it's one of the low competition keywords.

This one has a search volume of 60,000. Still too rich for our blood. Let's search for a keyword with a slightly lower search volume. This one will probably also be a big competition with high search volume like that. Maybe we find a high-volume, low-competition keyword.

Here we have "bucket seat gaming chairs". It only has a search volume of 210, and right away that tells me this is going to be a lot more accessible. This search phrase is starting to head in the direction of "long-tail rankings." Long tail keywords tend to be unique, low competition keywords with more than 3 words.

So now let's click on it to inspect the Google SERP with Mozbar. The first site has a high DA, but scrolling down we have one in the top 30 (relatively low keyword difficulty). 39 is not very low, but it is lower than 55, 89 or 96.

So this keyword has lower search volume, but there are still no front page sites with very low DA, which tells me the competition might still be a bit high for this keyword. Although relatively speaking this is one of the low competition keywords in the niche, it is still not as easy as I would like it to be for this guide on how to find low competition keywords.

Let’s go ahead and keep looking for other related search terms with keyword modifiers:

I found a keyword in the suggestions: "PewDiePie Gaming Chair." I know who he is because I like games; you might know who he is too. I think he is the biggest streamer on YouTube.

Anyway, the search volume for this keyword is 310 per month. By inspecting the SERP with Mozbar, you can see that there are no high DA sites right away. There are some 40's and 90's, and then we have one that's 17.

It sure is low DA, and the top of the page isn't littered with super high DA URLs like some of the searches above. This means that for this SERP, you don't necessarily need a lot of links (or high authority) to get to page one of the search results.

Let's go ahead and do one more.

Through Keyword Everywhere's related keyword suggestions, I found the keyword "reclining gaming chair with footrest" with a monthly search volume of 480. This one has a high "search intent."

Scrolling down, you can see that the first page of the search results has a really high DA. But then you get to number three, and we're already getting to these very low DA sites in the 40s and 30s.

This could be one of the low competition keywords you would potentially search for and shouldn't be too hard to rank for. You can definitely find keywords easier than this one, but this one also has a pretty hefty search volume. So we ended up finding one of the relatively high volume, low competition keywords (some of the best keywords you can find). A good combination!

All of the searches we did were for competitor keywords that had search volumes in the hundreds. You can see in the Keywords Everywhere suggestions that there are many keywords that return zero search volume, 20 search volume, or something very low.

Your first thought might be that these terms are worthless, but you couldn't be more wrong!

Just because they say zero search volume doesn't mean they actually have zero search volume. These search volume estimates aren't always accurate, even if you're searching Google Keyword Planner.

In fact, you can get good traffic and make a lot of money with zero search volume terms and low keyword competition (monthly traffic below 100). Not only can you get money and organic traffic from them, but it will usually take a lot less time and money to rank for them. You won't need to invest as much in link building efforts.

So, don't skip terms because they have low search volume - these may be some of your biggest low competition keyword winners! You can find related keywords that will also be fruitful.

Final Thoughts on Low Comp Keywords

If you want to dig into your keyword research and find low competition keywords, with a few clicks you can always go to Ahrefs and actually go to some of these low DA sites to see how many other sites are linking to them. , how relevant your links are, etc.

That will help you gauge the competition a bit more, but normally we don't do it out of laziness. Just browsing the search results with Mozbar's low DA sites, I know for a fact that I can get to page 1 for that potentially low competition keyword with no problem.

This is pretty much the only thing I'm currently doing to find low competition keywords. I do this very often, and have had a lot of success with it. They can have high search volume at times, but it's okay if they don't.

Everything you've learned from this guide is a good introduction to finding high-competition keywords, which I'm sure you'll eventually begin to do. I know that if you follow this method (and keep up your link building efforts), you will find and rank for low/high search volume, low competition keywords in no time. So all that's left is to make sure you're part of a good affiliate program to earn some money!