seocrab
Elite Member
- May 2, 2013
- 1,579
- 1,991
In my opinion, keywords are the most important element of SEO. Bad keyword decisions can lead to the failure of your SEO campaign before you even bother to write content or build backlinks.
I see a lot of people making the mistake of chasing “big” keywords before they really know what they're doing. With longtail targeting, you can almost guarantee yourself a chance of ranking without spending too much time (or money on link building.
This is not a money-making guide or method – just a simple keyword research process (with free tools where necessary) that anyone can use to find low competition longtail keywords to drive traffic to their websites.
Free keyword research tools
The most powerful keyword research tool comes straight from the horse's mouth. No, not Keyword Planner. It's Google's Chrome browser.
Plus these free Chrome extensions:
Keywords Everywhere
MozBar (create free Moz account to use)
SEOQuake
Keyword research to find a niche
Before you can look for keywords, you need some seed ideas. These can be one-word ideas like “boats” or “iphones”, or more specific ideas like “homemade christmas decorations” or “coloring books for adults”.
Validate your ideas on Google Trends:
You want interest that is growing over time.
A peak can highlight seasonal interest, like with “boats”:
There's nothing wrong with seasonal niches, but you will get most of your traffic at a certain time of year.
Got no ideas? Borrow someone else's:
Keyword research for a new website
If your site is new, it will have low authority, otherwise known as no backlinks. How can you rank without authority? Target low competition keywords.
Go to Chrome (with the extensions I mentioned earlier installed).
Set the locale to your preferred country if it's not your own (e.g. US, UK, Spain etc)
Type in your main niche and scroll to the bottom of Page 1.
Google has identified a bunch of related search queries. KeywordsEverywhere is adding the estimated search volumes for you (nice, but don't get hung up on volumes at this stage).
Click keywords to get more related results.
Look at the Top 5 results for each search. With the Moz plugin active (log into a free account), look at the DA for each result. Keep clicking related keywords until you find a SERP with plenty of “low authority” (DA less than 30) sites in the Top 5.
SEOQuake will also overlay the number of Google indexed pages and first recorded Archive.org date for each result. Look for keywords where the Top 5 results have <200 indexed pages and/or Archive.org dates only dates back less than 1 year.
Having no luck? Use KeywordEverywhere's suggested terms on the right:
I found out that the boat niche is competitive!
If you find an anomaly in the SERP (a low authority site ranking among the big ones), you can mine it for keyword opportunities:
Go to the sitemap and look for keywords in the URLs. (note: the above site wasn't that useful for boat keywords, but it had some bait/fishing ones).
Well, at least there's 1 keyword on the above site...
This site is much more useful.
Keep on clicking and searching – it's going to take a while to find good keywords manually. Google might start serving you Captchas to slow you down.
Do not worry about keyword volumes. You're going to get most of your traffic from longtail variations that you haven't even thought of.
Need some more seed ideas? Go to AnswerThePublic.com
Type in your seed keyword or niche:
Click any question and Chrome will automatically search for it.
Need more help? Search for terms like:
Best X
X review
X vs X
After about 10 minutes, I found these longtail keywords in the boat niche:
With good content, any new site should be able to rank for these keywords with zero or very few backlinks.
It's good to have related keywords/articles to start your site off – you can interlink between articles.
Even if traffic is relatively low for your target longtail keywords, you're proving to Google that your site is an authority. It won't be long before you can level up and start ranking for more popular terms.
Happy hunting
I see a lot of people making the mistake of chasing “big” keywords before they really know what they're doing. With longtail targeting, you can almost guarantee yourself a chance of ranking without spending too much time (or money on link building.
This is not a money-making guide or method – just a simple keyword research process (with free tools where necessary) that anyone can use to find low competition longtail keywords to drive traffic to their websites.
Free keyword research tools
The most powerful keyword research tool comes straight from the horse's mouth. No, not Keyword Planner. It's Google's Chrome browser.
Plus these free Chrome extensions:
Keywords Everywhere
Code:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/keywords-everywhere-keywo/hbapdpeemoojbophdfndmlgdhppljgmp?hl=enMozBar (create free Moz account to use)
Code:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mozbar/eakacpaijcpapndcfffdgphdiccmpknp?hl=enSEOQuake
Code:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seoquake/akdgnmcogleenhbclghghlkkdndkjdjc?hl=enKeyword research to find a niche
Before you can look for keywords, you need some seed ideas. These can be one-word ideas like “boats” or “iphones”, or more specific ideas like “homemade christmas decorations” or “coloring books for adults”.
Validate your ideas on Google Trends:
Code:
https://trends.google.com/trends/You want interest that is growing over time.
A peak can highlight seasonal interest, like with “boats”:
There's nothing wrong with seasonal niches, but you will get most of your traffic at a certain time of year.
Got no ideas? Borrow someone else's:
Code:
https://nichehacks.com/1109-profitable-niche-markets/
https://incomeschool.com/niche-site-ideas/Keyword research for a new website
If your site is new, it will have low authority, otherwise known as no backlinks. How can you rank without authority? Target low competition keywords.
Go to Chrome (with the extensions I mentioned earlier installed).
Set the locale to your preferred country if it's not your own (e.g. US, UK, Spain etc)
Type in your main niche and scroll to the bottom of Page 1.
Google has identified a bunch of related search queries. KeywordsEverywhere is adding the estimated search volumes for you (nice, but don't get hung up on volumes at this stage).
Click keywords to get more related results.
Look at the Top 5 results for each search. With the Moz plugin active (log into a free account), look at the DA for each result. Keep clicking related keywords until you find a SERP with plenty of “low authority” (DA less than 30) sites in the Top 5.
SEOQuake will also overlay the number of Google indexed pages and first recorded Archive.org date for each result. Look for keywords where the Top 5 results have <200 indexed pages and/or Archive.org dates only dates back less than 1 year.
Having no luck? Use KeywordEverywhere's suggested terms on the right:
I found out that the boat niche is competitive!
If you find an anomaly in the SERP (a low authority site ranking among the big ones), you can mine it for keyword opportunities:
Go to the sitemap and look for keywords in the URLs. (note: the above site wasn't that useful for boat keywords, but it had some bait/fishing ones).
Well, at least there's 1 keyword on the above site...
This site is much more useful.
Keep on clicking and searching – it's going to take a while to find good keywords manually. Google might start serving you Captchas to slow you down.
Do not worry about keyword volumes. You're going to get most of your traffic from longtail variations that you haven't even thought of.
Need some more seed ideas? Go to AnswerThePublic.com
Type in your seed keyword or niche:
Click any question and Chrome will automatically search for it.
Need more help? Search for terms like:
Best X
X review
X vs X
After about 10 minutes, I found these longtail keywords in the boat niche:
Keep going to find more. Once you practice, you can spot “easy” keywords quicker.
With good content, any new site should be able to rank for these keywords with zero or very few backlinks.
It's good to have related keywords/articles to start your site off – you can interlink between articles.
Even if traffic is relatively low for your target longtail keywords, you're proving to Google that your site is an authority. It won't be long before you can level up and start ranking for more popular terms.
Happy hunting
