Are you sick of trying to rank for keywords that are high-volume high-competition? Even if you get to the number one spot, you’ll constantly have to look over your shoulder because the competition isn’t sleeping and is always trying to outnumber and outword (is that a word?) you. If the answer is yes, I welcome you to the relaxed, stress-free world of long-tail keywords.
Niche keywords, or long-tail keywords, are finally getting their well-deserved spotlight as more and more bloggers, marketers, and sellers are swearing by them. They are industry-specific keywords that are often characterized by low volume and low competition.
That’s right, low volume – two of the most dreaded words in content publishing. But don’t click away yet. Low volume means that you won’t have to elbow your way into SERPs. By finding the right long-tail keywords, you’ll sail your way into the top 3 positions. In fact, the coveted featured snippet will be ripe for the taking.
How to Find the Right Niche Keywords?
There are many ways to find low competition keywords and all of them are valid and can be used in conjunction with each other. They range from free and using no tools to using expensive keyword research tools.
1) The Alphabet Soup
The so-called alphabet soup method is probably the easiest method to find niche keywords. You simply start by typing words like “how to”, “can”, “why”, “are”, “best”, and so on. We’ll use an example. We are a used car sales company and we want to attract new customers through organic search.
The way we’re going to find niche keywords is by typing “how to change a” for example. By that point, Google is going to start spewing its suggestions. The more to the top the suggestions are, the more searched they are in general. The first suggestion that pops-up for this keyword is “how to change a tire”.
Although this is a long-tail keyword, it is also a very competitive one. So, we’re going to move on. You just need to be persistent until you find a better match for your niche that has less competition from known brands and/or websites.
“Best 2008 cars” is a good fit for our niche and there’s not much competition. We can write about this keyword for every year, model, or type of car (think vans, SUVs, trucks, RVs…).
These keywords are also the so-called buyer intent keywords, meaning that the person searching for them is lower in the sales funnel and almost ready to buy.
2) Keywords Everywhere
This is an awesome and inexpensive Chrome plugin that I use on a daily basis. It does exactly what its name says – shows keywords with search volumes right in your Google, YouTube, or even Amazon search bar.
We’ll once again be using the “alphabet soup” method but now we’ll have the search volumes for all the suggestions right in front of us. Now, I need to warn you that these search volumes are not set in stone and can in fact vary greatly from actual search volume – ie. people coming to your site.
Even if the search volume says 0, the actual search volume could be in the hundreds (or even thousands). That’s why I use this tool more as a suggestion and I let common sense prevail.
3) Paid SEO Tools
You also have the option to use professional SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz, or Ubersuggest. All of these fine apps do similar work so it basically comes down to personal preference and money. They all have a free trial period or something similar in place so you can try them out before you commit to forking out a hundred bucks every month.
You can really dive deep into keyword research with these apps, and I’d suggest watching a few videos on how to fully utilize them.
Conclusion
The best way to find quality long-tail niche keywords for your blog, affiliate website, or e-commerce business is to dedicate 3-5 hours in one go at a time. That way your brain will get used to the concept and really start getting some good ideas. You’ll have an abundant Excel sheet with hundreds of low competition keywords ready to be made into buyer intent articles or informational ones.
Happy hunting!
