How to find low competition keywords you can rank for

Low competition keywords are searches where the pages ranking on page one are weak enough that a smaller site can beat them. You find them three ways. Pull a keyword list and filter it by difficulty, open the actual Google results and look for signs of weak competition, and mine your own Search Console data for queries where you already rank between positions 8 and 20.

The difficulty score gets you a shortlist. The results page is where you decide. Skip that step and you end up writing for keywords that looked easy in a spreadsheet and turn out to be owned by Wikipedia and three national brands.

What makes a keyword low competition?

A keyword is low competition when the current top results fail the searcher in some way you can fix. Low search volume alone does not make a keyword easy. Huge sites lock up plenty of small keywords, and some mid-volume keywords have a page one full of stale, thin answers.

The real question is whether your page could beat what ranks now, and whether Google would believe it. Difficulty scores estimate the second half from links. Only you can judge the first.

Signs in the search results that a keyword is winnable

Search the keyword in a private window, in the country you target, and read the top ten. These are the signals I trust.

Forums and Q&A threads ranking. Reddit, Quora or a niche forum on page one means Google found no dedicated page that answers the query well. A focused article often displaces them.

Thin or off-topic pages. A 300-word post, a category page with no copy, or a page answering a neighboring question. Google ranks it because nothing better exists.

Outdated results. Look for a year in the title that has passed, screenshots of an old interface, or prices and rules that changed.

Mismatched intent. The searcher wants a comparison and the results are product pages, or wants a how-to and gets a glossary definition. If you match the real search intent better than everyone ranking, you have an edge no link count can measure.

Small sites on page one. If a personal blog or a five-page local business ranks in the top five, the authority bar is low.

If page one is ten strong, current, dedicated pages from well-known domains, move on. The score does not matter at that point.

Filtering keywords by difficulty

Keyword difficulty is a 0 to 100 estimate of how hard page one is to reach, and every tool calculates it differently. Use it to sort a list, never as a verdict. Our keyword data marks anything at 30 or less as easy to win, and that threshold works as a first cut.

A practical filter for a newer site:

1. Pull 50 to 100 related keywords for your topic.
2. Keep keywords with difficulty at or below 30.
3. Drop any keyword whose intent does not match a page you would actually write.
4. Check the results page for each survivor, using the signs above.

Expect step 4 to kill a third of your list or more. Our post on keyword difficulty covers what the score measures and where it misleads. Longer, more specific phrases pass more often, which is why long-tail keywords are where most newer sites start.

Low competition keywords you already rank for

Search Console holds the easiest wins, because Google already ranks you for these queries. Pages at positions 8 to 20 sit at the bottom of page one or on page two, where a modest improvement can move them into clicks.

To find them:

1. Open the Performance report and set the date range to the last three months.
2. Turn on Average position and Impressions.
3. Open the Queries tab and sort by position, or export the table and filter positions 8 to 20.
4. Sort what remains by impressions.

High impressions at position 12 mean real demand you are almost capturing. Find the page that ranks and check whether it actually answers that query. Often the fix is a section that addresses the exact phrasing or a better title. Google warns in its Performance report help that average position is one signal among several, so judge results by clicks and impressions after the change, not position alone.

The trap of zero-volume keywords

Keywords that show 0 or no search volume are not automatically worthless, and they are not automatically low competition either. Volume figures are estimates, and very small numbers get rounded down or left out.

The trap is building a content plan around them on faith. Write for a zero-volume keyword only when one of these holds:

• Customers use the phrase in sales calls, support tickets or reviews.
• It already shows impressions in your Search Console.
• It is a specific variant of a keyword with real volume, so the page can rank for both.

Otherwise you get pages that rank first for something nobody types. Our guide on how to do keyword research covers checking demand first.

Find easy keywords for your topic

Our Keyword Research tool takes one keyword and a country and returns up to 99 related Google searches, each with estimated monthly searches, difficulty from 0 to 100, search intent, cost per click and the change over the past year. It sorts them into keywords that are easiest to win (difficulty 30 or less with at least 10 monthly searches), blog topics and keywords worth bidding on.

It reads search data only. It does not open the results page for you, cannot see your Search Console, and does not track your rankings, so the results-page check and the striking-distance work above are still yours. A run costs 34 credits.