If you’re interested in getting started with affiliate marketing, and (hopefully) you want to be successful with it – then you need to understand the procedure of how to find low competition keywords to target and ranked for.
Obviously, this is not as easy as some would make it out to be. I have read blogs and guides that just tell you to “just find great keywords”, ok… but what does that mean?
- Is every keyword good to rank for?
- Is it good to target all the keywords you find?
- How do you determine if a keyword is good enough for you?
- How do you find low competition keywords?
- How low does it have to be?
- What amount of searches does it need to be considered to use?
These are all questions I had when I was first starting out with keywords so I am sure most newbie affiliate marketers out there are having the same issues.
This post today should help answer all your “keyword questions” above, and more.
This guide will hopefully serve you well and you’ll be able to find amazing keywords, untapped keywords and great low hanging fruit keywords to go after and make money from.
A Quick Intro On Keywords (& Why You Should Use Them)
I have talked a lot about keywords before but if you’re new to this blog, let me give you a quick introduction to keyword research.
Keywords are what people type into the search engines each and every day (approx 3.5 billion keywords get typed into Google alone).
Take a look at your previous 10 searches that you did on your preferred search engine and that is a perfect example of what a keyword is.
Now, for some of those keywords, there was a lot of competition for it which means that a lot of sites are trying to rank for that specific keyword, some of them may have been low competition keywords which means that not many blogs and websites are trying to rank for those keywords.
So does that mean that low competition keywords are not good to rank for?
Quick the contrary, low competition keywords are great to target and get ranked for. Finding them, on the other hand, is a bit more challenging, but that is what I will be showing you in this article today.
Is It Still Possible To Still Find Low Competition Keywords?
Yes it is very, very much possible to still find low competition keywords (in any niche). Those who say that it is impossible to find great keywords either;
- Do not know how to look for them
- They are just getting started with keyword research
- Do not know that millions of keywords are being created each and every day (and nobody is targeting them yet).
Keep in mind that the internet audience is an audience of multiple billions and thanks to our tech leaders (shout out Mark Zuckerberg), more and more people (billions) have the ability to go online as time goes forward.
Now obviously, all these new millions of people will be looking for something of course, and that is why low competition keywords are not only not a rarity, but there is more and more of them with every passing second.
Yes, it is possible to still find great keywords just as it is possible to still find good domains that are not registered – but that is another story.
Next, we’ll go through how to find low competition keywords for your affiliate marketing, blogging, SEO or whatever you need them for.
Finding “Low Competition” Keywords
Go For Long Tail Keywords
The keyword “blogging” is a great keyword but it’s not an easy keyword to rank for due to there being a lot of websites targeting that keyword.
That is why you need to try and find those “long-tail keywords” when you want to rank for a keyword, for example;
Instead of trying to rank for the keyword “blogging”, try going a bit deeper like so:
“How to get started with blogging”
Hmm, ok getting better here but I have been doing keyword research for blogging and I can tell you that “how to get started with blogging” also has a lot of competition in it, so we can try and find some that are even longer, like so;
“how to get started with blogging for free”
This is much better and it gives anybody that finds your content (hopefully on the first page of Google) a very precise title of what your post would be about.
If they like it, then they go and read the article (which obviously has to be around that keyword).
Are you starting to see now how keywords can be a bit longer and more specific?
I can also go deeper into the keyword example mentioned above but I won’t for the reason not to bore you here.
However, you should not go super long either. Keep in mind that this is what people are searching for while (most probably) on the go looking for quick info so nobody is going to type in a 20-word keyword in the search box.
Use your imagination here but try to keep in mind what your reader would likely be typing.
It’s good to mention also that with long tail keywords, you can still be ranking for the short “blogging” keyword, you’ll just be far back in the pages.
Now yes, you can get your content to rank for on page #1 for the shorter keyword, but then a lot of other factors come into play, especially the 200 ranking factors Google has to determine its search results.
Really Dig Deep Down In Your Niche
One way you can find more long tail keywords is to really dig down into your niche and continue digging down into the many branches your main keyword opens up.
For example, “blogging” is an “industry” more than it is a keyword so you will be able to branch out to different parts of it.
Let me use another “main keyword” as an example to show you how it’s done.
“Yoga”
How about?
- “how to do yoga”
- “how to do yoga when injured”
- “where to buy yoga mats from online”
- etc….
I can dive into every topic related to yoga and then dig down in each keyword for even more (obscure) low competition keywords, but believe me; this exercise is what you need to be doing to find those low competition keywords.
This won’t take you long either so don’t worry about it. Even though it seems like a huge job, with the right tools, in just 30 minutes you can find more keywords than you could ever write for.
Trust me on this as I will show you further down below how it is done.
Make Sure The Keyword Gets Some Searches
Now, I may find a keyword with 0 competition which is great, but another thing you should keep an eye on is also the monthly searches the keyword gets.
Obviously, you are going to need a keyword tool to do such a thing but it’s very important that you know what kind of traffic you should be expecting.
You can rank on #1 spot for multiple keywords but unless you are seeing traffic from that, might as well not have bothered in the first place.
In the next section below, I will tell you what “metrics” you need to look at exactly to determine what keywords are good to target due to low competition and a worthwhile number of searches.
One thing I would like to tell you beforehand is to keep this simple rule in mind;
It’s much better to rank for 10 keywords that get 10 searches a day than to try and rank for 1 keyword that gets 200 searches a day (and don’t).
Slow and steady is how you build a great blog with great content that ranks high in the search engines.
One thing to also keep in mind is that the longer your content is, the higher it will rank. Also, all of the content gets indexed so you might be targeting “keyword a” and then find out you are ranking for “keyword b”.
That is all ok so do not worry if you experience this (and trust me you will), it just goes to show you how rewarding (and confusing) search engines can be sometimes.
What Are The Metrics You Are Looking For?
Right, what qualifies a good “low competition keyword”?
It’s different for everybody and different niches require different metrics, i.e the more competitive the topic is, the more niched-down and long tail you have to go, however as a good rule of thumb;
- Searches of over 100 a month (doesn’t sound like a lot but remember the rule I shared with you earlier) and
- Competition less than 300 (if possible).
Again, do not worry about low searches.
If you manage to rank for a keyword that gets 100 searches, you are looking at around 30% of that traffic coming to your site, i.e 30 people, which means that if you publish 100 posts targeting keywords like this, you are looking at 3,000 organic monthly traffic; which trust me; is enough to make some serious money online.
Why Is It Important To Find Low Competition Keywords?
It is super important to find (and rank) for these keywords because as I have just explained, this will get you ranked high, and quickly. Sure 3000 people a month is not the best it can be, but as a beginner, it’s a great accomplishment.
An accomplishment that you wouldn’t’ve have had if you were targeting keywords at random with no research whatsoever.
Obviously, these are just random examples but you can see for yourself how important it is to take the time and find great keywords to rank for. It could really make the difference whether you succeed with affiliate marketing or fail, like so many do.
Keyword Tools That Can Help Automate The Whole Process
This is not a sales post so I won’t go into much detail about the keyword tools that I use. However, all the things I have explained to you can be done automatically with a keyword tool like Jaaxy.
I have to warn you, it’s a paid tool but the work it does is unlike any other keyword tool and it saves me a lot of time and energy.
What Are Some Low Competition Niches To Target?
Now, whenever I am mentoring my students over at the Wealthy Affiliate online university, once they realize that they need to pick a niche (a blog topic to write about), I get the question what niche has the “lowest competition” keywords.
My answer to that question is…
You’re missing the point!
As you have seen from this mini-guide you’ve just read; every niche can be dug down enough to find some great and amazing low competition keywords for you to use.
Every niche has millions upon millions of keywords that are ready to be tapped into and ranked for, you just have to know how to find them (which I hope this post showed you how) and then write great content for that keyword and watch as you start to rank slowly.
So does this mean you will get ranked every time when targeting low-hanging fruit keywords?
Of course not, it just increases your chances and when you are a newbie blogger, taking on industries with established blogs dominating it, you need every bit of advantage that you can get your hands on and that’s what low-competition keywords represent.
Here is a quick video on how to pick a niche and how to find the keywords that are buried deep within that niche. This video really helped me understand more about keywords and how to find low competition ones.
Closing Thoughts On Keyword Research
Thank you very much for reading, I hope this post has helped you with all your keyword needs.
Obviously, keyword research is a vast topic to understand and I couldn’t possibly teach you all about it in this guide.
If you’d like to find out more about keywords, then join me on my free training course so you can understand better the whole concept of affiliate marketing and how keywords can be leveraged to make an insane amount of money.
I look forward to helping you win!
