How To Find Low Competition, High Volume Keywords For Small Business Owners
Finding low competition, high volume keywords is one of the smartest strategies small business owners can use to grow their website traffic without a massive budget. These keywords give you a proper chance of ranking on the first page of Google, but how do you find these low competition, high volume keywords? In this article, I’ll explain it step-by-step.
If you’re interested in optimizing all the elements of your website, check out the complete on-page SEO guide.
What are low competition, high volume keywords?
Low competition, high volume keywords are search terms a lot of people are searching for, but only a few websites target.
These keywords offer opportunities for small businesses and websites to gain a bit of online visibility in search engines.
Understanding these kinds of keywords is important as they balance two things: first of all, high search volume, which means a lot of people are looking for answers on these topics, and then low competition, which means the chances of you ranking on the first page in search engines are much higher.
Why are they important?
Low competition, high volume keywords help small businesses and websites grow faster with less effort and help create some kind of momentum. Plus, you also build trust and visibility faster.
Each visitor who finds you through these strategic keywords increases your chance of converting them into real customers. Over time, you’ll have built a steady stream of organic traffic that costs nothing.
Key metrics you should know to find these keywords
There are two metrics you should know before we talk about how to find low competition, high volume keywords.
1. Search volume
Search volume tells you how often people search for a specific keyword each month. It tells you something about the popularity of a certain topic. The more people search for a keyword, the more potential visitors you can attract.
2. Keyword difficulty
Keyword difficulty or KD measures how hard it is to rank for a certain keyword based on competition. Most SEO tools use a score between 0-100, where 0 is not competitive and 100 is very competitive.
In the step-by-step part of this article, I’ll show you a little trick on how you can measure this with a free SEO tool using only the SERP.
Step-by-step guide to actually find these low competition, high volume keywords
Finding these low competition, high volume keywords isn’t as hard as you might think. You just need an effective strategy and you’ll find them every time.
1. Start with broad, general keywords
As with every start of keyword research, we’ll start with identifying the broad keywords and topics we want to write about. These should be common sense and are the terms your customer is looking for when they search for your product or service.
For example; if you own a small fitness studio, your broad keywords could be:
- “Workout”
- “Personal training”
- “Home exercises”
Always think from your customer’s perspective. Try to write down at least 5 broad keywords. A little tip is to write them down in an excel-sheet.
2. Add long-tail keywords for each broad keyword
Now that you have a foundation for your keyword research, we’ll add long-tail keywords for each broad keyword. Try to aim for at least 10 for each broad keyword.
Long-tail keywords contain three words or more. They’re the foundation of low competition, high volume keywords.
If we continue with the small fitness studio with broad keyword “personal training”, we could add long-tail keywords like:
- “Personal training for beginners”
- “Affordable personal trainers near me”
- “Home personal training sessions online”
Add them to your Excel-sheet.
To help you find these long-tail keywords, you can use these three free tools.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is beginner-friendly and free to use. It gives you insights into search volume, competition and provides you with keyword ideas.
Answer The Public
Answer The Public is an amazing tool to understand what people are searching for at this moment. It visualizes keyword questions and comparisons to help you find long-tail keywords.
Just type in your broad keyword and this tool will give you a lot of keyword ideas.
Google’s People Also Search For
This is a feature in Google itself. You should scroll down until you find ‘People also search for’. Google adds all the related questions to your search query.
3. Check the keyword difficulty & search volume
If you have a budget for your SEO, I recommend using SEMRush. It gives you all the necessary data and keyword ideas.
But if you don’t have a budget, we’re going to use Google Keyword Planner for this step.
With Google Keyword Planner, you can check competition and search volume.
You only need to create a Google Ads account, this is free to create. Then, you’ll find the Keyword Planner by clicking ‘Tools’ and then ‘Planner’.
4. Create a shortlist of the best keywords
After checking the search volume and competition for every keyword you have collected, it’s time to create a shortlist with the best options. This list represents the keywords you can actually use for your blog posts, product pages and your content in general.
Focus on the keywords with a good balance between competition and search volume and make sure they align with your business goals or the goals you have in mind for your content.
5. Check for opportunities in the SERP for each keyword on the shortlist
For the last step, we’re going to use a free Chrome extension called ‘SEOQuake’.
This extension shows a bar below each search result with ‘AS’ (Authority Score), this is connected to SEMRush, but is completely free.
If the AS is quite low, let’s say <20, your chances of ranking on the first page of Google increase.
Use it in the final part of your keyword research; this way, you have all the data you need:
- Search volume (Google Keyword Planner)
- Competition (Google Keyword Planner)
- AS from the top ranking pages (SEOQuake)
This way, you can make a thoughtful decision on which keywords you are going to target and built a steady organic traffic stream.
