Keyword research is a process.
But the problem is that some of the best keywords and topics can't be found through a conventional process.
So in this SEO tutorial, we're going to cover some advanced keyword research tips
to find topics worth going after.
Stay tuned.
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What's up SEOs?
Sam Oh here with Ahrefs, the SEO tool that helps you grow your search traffic,
research your competitors and dominate your niche.
If you've watched any of our videos on keyword research, I'm sure you've seen me talk about
entering a couple seed keywords in a tool, going to a keyword ideas report, applying some filters
and then picking topics to create content on.
This is how keyword research is normally done and it works no doubt.
But the thing is that if everyone is doing keyword research this way, then everyone's
finding the same keywords, so they're going to be more competitive.
Instead, you need to look into additional methods that your competitors might not be using.
With that said, let's start hunting for some keyword ideas.
The first thing you should do is find pages that are sending a lot of search traffic to your competitors.
And I'm going to touch on a couple of things to look for here.
So let's say that I have a yoga site.
I'd start off by looking for a competitor's website.
And by competitor, I'm talking about websites who are ranking for keywords
that you'd also want to rank for.
So they might not be your direct business competitors in this case.
So I'll start off on Google and search for a keyword that's likely popular like "yoga exercises."
Since this page is ranking high and you can clearly tell that the domain is relevant to yoga,
I'm going to run a competitive analysis on their domain.
So I'll head over to Ahrefs' Site Explorer, and enter in "doyouyoga.com."
And it looks like they're getting hundreds of thousands of search visits each month,
making them a good target for further analysis.
If you find the site you're analyzing doesn't get very much search traffic, so we'll say,
less than 30,000 search visits in a popular industry like yoga, then you may want to try a different site.
Since we found a competitor with a lot of search traffic, let's head over to the Top pages report,
where you can see the pages that generate the most search traffic for the site.
Now, because my yoga site doesn't discriminate against which part of the world you're from,
I'm going to switch this filter to show traffic estimations from all countries.
Now, there are two ways you can use this data.
First is to find low-competition topics that get search traffic.
Since we know that backlinks from unique websites help a page rank,
let's just look at the Referring domains column.
Now, for anything that has less than, let's say, 10 referring domains, these might be
low-hanging topics worth targeting.
So these ones look good for our first test.
Now, let's take a look at the page URL and top keyword for these pages.
This will help us evaluate whether these are relevant topics for your site.
To me, they all look relevant, so let's add the traffic number to our analysis.
This column will be a good indication of whether spending your time and money building those links
will be worth the estimated traffic you could get.
So these are all getting at least a few thousand search visits per month, so the traffic I can get from
ranking for these pages would probably be worth going after.
Finally, I'll look at the Position column.
Looking at these pages, you'll see that this page is ranking in position 6 for "yoga for weight loss,"
which isn't a very high position.
So that tells us that ranking ahead of them could produce much more traffic for us.
The second way is to look at the traffic distribution going to these pages.
I don't know about you, but I personally hate losing in anything I care about.
Beat me in a round of golf, and I'll challenge you to another round.
Outrank me in the SERP and I'll come back fighting.
Own a large percentage of traffic that's not even mine, and I'll come and compete.
Now, within the Top pages report, you can see the total percentage of traffic
each page accounts for across the website.
And you'll see that the topics "yoga poses" and "yoga for lower back pain" accumulate
to around 15% of this website's entire search traffic.
Assuming this was my direct business competitor, I'd personally go after these topics for the sole purpose
of owning as much relevant traffic and taking it away from them.
After you've depleted the list of this competitor's top pages, go to the Competing domains report
to find even more relevant websites to get new ideas from.
Rinse and repeat and we're on to the next tip,
which is to discover keywords your competitors aren't targeting.
In the words of Glen Allsopp:
If you can find the keywords your audience are searching for, but your competitors haven't found,
you can leverage a huge advantage to increase traffic and engagement on your content.
The good news is that you can find these keywords that your direct competitors aren't targeting.
The bad news is that there isn't a cookie-cutter formula to find these.
It requires a bit of creativity.
Here are a couple of ways you can find some out-of-the-box keyword ideas.
The first way is to look at Google Trends for stand-out keywords.
So let's say we're in the ultra-competitive weight loss niche.
I'll run that search in Trends and scroll down to the Related queries.
Looking at the results, you'll immediately see something interesting.
Celebrity names.
And if we go to the next page, you'll see even more.
So let's keep that in mind.
Now, let's go to Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer to dig deeper.
So I'll search for a couple of seed keywords like "weight loss" and "lose weight."
Next, I'll go to the Phrase match report.
Now, since we're looking for celebrity-related weight-loss queries, we need to try and identify
a pattern, also known as a footprint.
So based on our research from Google Trends, you'll see that these queries have exactly four words.
"First name," "last name," "weight," "loss."
So I'll set the Word count filter to show keywords with a min and max value of 4.
So this will show us queries with exactly four words.
And now we can easily spot names like Rebel Wilson,
Melissa McCarthy, Susan Boyle, and Mama June.
And if you look carefully, you'll see that all of these keywords have low Keyword Difficulty scores.
So to further narrow our list, let's set another filter to only show keywords with a maximum
Keyword Difficulty of 10.
And you now have a ton of low-competition celebrity weight-loss keywords, which may
be a good way to enter an ultra-competitive niche.
Now, this is just one example of following the rabbit hole to find keyword ideas.
But most niches aren't filled with celebrity names.
So the second thing you can do is look for related keywords using Google Correlate.
Let's search for "weight loss" again.
At this point, I just want to skim through the correlated keywords and look for interesting words.
So based on this list, I'd choose anything that looks remotely-relevant like "percentage,"
"average," "salad," "vacation," "peanut," and "vacations."
Now, let's go back to Keywords Explorer and go to the All keywords report with
"weight loss" and "lose weight" set as our seeds.
This time, I'm going to use the "Include" filter and paste in a comma-separated list of our related keywords.
And I'll make sure to show keywords where any of these words appear.
And we have yet another list of relevant keywords, where most are actually pretty low-competition.
But you should be a bit skeptical and ask why are these low-competition?
Well, in this case part of it has to do with search demand.
But a good chunk of these are because a lot of other sites don't know about these keywords
or at least they don't seem to be targeting it with much intention.
You just need to filter, analyze the SERP for search intent, and target the ones worth going after.
The next keyword research tip is to find low-competition topics with high search traffic potential.
And the way we're going to do it is using Ahrefs' Content Explorer, which has a database
of over a billion pre-vetted pages of content.
Just search for a query related to your niche.
And you should see a ton of relevant results.
Next, let's set a filter to only show pages that get at least 500 monthly search visits.
The final filter will be to only show pages that have a maximum of 5 referring domains,
or unique websites linking to the page.
And the reason why we're doing this is because we know that backlinks from unique websites
help a page rank higher in Google.
So looking for pages without a lot of backlinks, yet they're still generating a good amount of search traffic,
likely means there's an opportunity to be had.
Looking at the results, you'll see this one on a 1,200-calorie meal prep that gets around
3,000 monthly search visits!
Click on the organic traffic number, and you'll be able to see all of the keywords it ranks for
and their keyword metrics.
Next up is to find keywords that forums are ranking for.
From an ownership standpoint, forums are great because it's all user-generated content.
People are actively asking questions, providing answers, and the owner is able to reap the traffic as a result.
On the flip side, forum pages that are ranking high are generally easy topics to rank for
because they often contain low-quality user-generated content.
Now, this makes your chances of ranking with a well-crafted page high.
On top of that, since the content is usually subpar at best, it's unlikely they've generated a lot of links.
But because of the sheer amount of content they have, they're still going to manage
to rank for all sorts of random keywords.
For example, Quora gets around 90 million search visits each month.
Yahoo Answers gets around 17 million monthly search visits.
And StackOverflow's questions get around 22 million search visits!
And to prove my point, look at the Top pages report for Quora.com.
Some of their pages are generating over one hundred thousand search visits per month
without any or many links from unique websites.
Now, looking at the Top pages report for Quora is great if you're in a niche that
doesn't have any high-traffic forums.
But if you can find a niche-relevant forum with high search traffic, then you'll find
a ton of great keyword ideas to cover.
So let's say you have a site about golf.
Then you'll probably know about the GolfWRX forum.
First, I'll check how much search traffic they get by looking it up in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.
And it looks like they get a good amount of search traffic.
Next, I'll go to the Top pages report to see the pages or questions that are driving the
most search traffic for them.
Now, you might notice that the top keyword for a lot of these pages are branded queries.
So let's enter keywords like wrx, and golfwrx into the Exclude box.
Now, I'll click on the "Target" filter, and choose to exclude these from just the keywords.
Now, if we skim through the list, you'll see a pattern yet again.
They're ranking for a lot of keywords with a golfer's first and last name, and WITB,
which stands for "what's in the bag."
So let's take this over to Keywords Explorer and search for "witb" as our seed.
Next, I'll go to the Phrase match report to see all keyword ideas that contain this word.
And without even setting any filters, you can see a whole bunch of low-competition keywords
that might be worth going after.
I could go on and on about looking for footprints or patterns and then following the yellow
brick road to keyword heaven, but I'll leave you with these tips to try out for yourself.
Now, if you're relatively new to keyword research and you're looking for more of a process,
then I highly recommend watching some of our other keyword research tutorials
which are super-focused on process.
But before you go, make sure to like, share, and subscribe
for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials.
So go and try some of these tips out and I'll see you in the next tutorial.