So you just created your brand-new website and you're ready to take on the
market, but once you start doing keyword research you realize that the
competition is actually wild. So how can you find the best keywords for you that
are also the ones with the lowest competition? That's what we'll find out in this video.
Hey everyone! I'm Chiara from SEMrush and in this video I'll show you 4 steps
that will help you find the best keywords that also have the lowest
competition. Of course we all know that doing keyword research is essential for
a business, but you really need to be smart about the keywords you choose
because choosing enough low competition keywords will really help you boost your
website's rank. So let's start with the first step which is building your
initial keyword list. To do this, go to Organic Research, enter a competitor's
domain name in the search bar and click "search". What you will get as a result is
a list of keywords that your competitor's website is currently ranking for in
Google's top 100 organic search results. Keep in mind that you can also use
filters to find keywords that are most relevant to your website. You can see
here an example I made with the word "vegan". Of course if you repeat this
process with a long list of competitors' domains you will get a very big keyword
list, and you can export all these results in an XLS file so that you can keep
all the results together. In case this was not enough I'm going to show you an
alternative with the Keyword Gap Tool. Using the Keyword Gap Tool, in fact, you
can view unique keywords per domain and export your results just as you did for
the Organic Research report. All you have to do is enter your website
and four of your competitors.
Then, in the filters tab you set the filter from "shared" to "all keywords".
Exporting also these results will give you a very good bird eye view of what's
the situation in your market right now. Let's move on with the second step which
is expanding your keyword list. Now I know what you must be thinking: "Why in
the world am I expanding this list which is already huge?!" Well, the answer is
really simple: it will make it easier later when we'll get back to it to
filter it down to find the most accessible keywords for you. So just trust me :)
In order to do this, you can go to the
Keyword Magic Tool where you can find and create the best longtail keywords for
your project. You'll be able to find "phrase match" keywords, which is a list of
expanded keyword phrases that include your queried term, but also you can find
"related keywords", which are phrases that are semantically related to your queried
term and may not share the same phrasing but still give you back similar results.
And to top all of that, you'll be able to check also the section "questions" where we'll
show you all the keyword phrases that include a keyword question, like "who"
"what", "where", "when", "why" or "how". Just let me expand a little bit on this: to be able
to find exactly what are the customers pain and finding the questions
related to your queried term will make it so much easier to make great content
that you will know already answers to a search intent. Okay, we're done with
expanding lists now and we can move on to step three, which is discover
high volume keywords with less competition. So if you're watching this video you
probably know that the average monthly search volume for a keyword shows you
how much potential traffic you can get to your website. Of course, though, we all
know that the keywords with the highest volume are also the most difficult ones
to rank for because of the high competition. So the solution to this
pickle is to try and find a balance between a keyword search volume and its
competition level. To help you with that SEMrush can come in handy with two main
ways of filtering keywords: Keyword Difficulty and Competition Level. So what
are Keyword Difficulty and Competition Level? Keyword Difficulty is an
estimation of how hard it would be to outrank the current website that are
ranking for particular keywords in Google's top spots
While Competition Level is the density of advertisers that are using a
particular keyword for their ads. I understand that this metric is usually
referred to competition in paid search, but I still think it can be somewhat
representative of what is happening also in the organic search. So when you make
your reports always make sure that in your files you have two columns for
these specific metrics. And now that I've explained to you what they are you
probably must be asking yourself: "But how do I understand which are the best ones?"
Well, I'll give you a couple numbers that I hope will help you sort out that
question: so about Keyword Difficulty, as a general rule, I would suggest you that
a Keyword Difficulty which is above 80% is probably the most difficult to target
for and I wouldn't suggest pursuing that. Keywords from 60 to 80 percent are
average, which means that it won't be impossible to rank for them but it also
won't be exactly a piece of cake. Keywords below 60% are the easiest
ones to rank for but also the hardest to find. Same goes for the
Competition Level: if a keyword has a competition level of above 0.80
it means that probably a lot of advertisers are already using it or
trying to rank for this keyword, which probably means that the user has a
transaction intent when looking for that specific keyword. The keywords from 0.6 to
0.8 are average, which means that there is an average density of advertisers trying
to rank for these ones, and the ones below 0.60 are the ones with
the least competition. This could mean two things: either they are just not
profitable, or a lot of advertisers in your niche haven't exactly understood
the full potential of these keywords. So... might be a goldmine, might be not.
So now we're ready for the fourth step in our list which is filtering your master
keyword list and finding low competition keywords. Start with a filter for
Keyword Difficulty to only look at keywords with a KD score which is less
than 75, just as I'm showing in the screenshot. This will allow you to find
some very high volume target keywords that won't be impossible or extremely hard
to rank for. A quick way to estimate what are the best keywords, after you have
filtered what we have left just as I have shown you, is to put them inside of
the Keyword Manager. In the Keyword Manager you can enter up to a thousand keywords
at a time, and you can create multiple lists. You'll be able to refresh the data
on all your selected keywords in a simple click so that you will always
have the freshest results to create your best strategy. And also you can look
through advanced filters, this will help you understand specific metrics about
your keywords and you'll be able to see if they trigger a feature snippet.
Feature snippets are huge for SEO and you should always take note if one
keywords, or a lot of your keywords hopefully, can trigger one of these.
Because if you write your content in the right way you might be able to take
over the feature snippet with your link. So as we've seen keyword research is
essential for a business to thrive in the market but you really need to be
smart and choose carefully the keywords that you want to target. So always
remember to, first of all, believe in your SEO and, second, follow these steps: check
your competition and build your initial keyword list. Once you've done that,
enrich this list with related keywords, phrase match keywords, and question.
Then, check your competition and the keyword difficulty of your competitors.
After you've implemented, don't forget to keep doing the research of low competition
keywords regularly, and of course track your rankings to see if they're growing!
Have you ever done anything similar? What's your process for low competition
keywords research? Let me know in the comments below! And if you liked the
video don't forget to subscribe to the channel because more quality content
will come is your way :) Have a nice day, and I'll see you in the next one!