One of my main blogging strategies has been to find low competition long tail keywords. With a low competition keyword, you’ve much more chance of ranking your phrase on Google, and getting free traffic. Finding high traffic, low competition keywords is of course preferable. But it’s much more difficult. It’s also worth considering the intent behind the keywords you target too. Unless you have a good phrase, your chances of turning the traffic into sales is far less.
For example, there’s many low competition long tail keywords with the keyword “free” in them! Unfortunately this kind of search tends not to result in sales. So even if you rank your phrase well on Google, you’ve only build traffic from tyre kickers who don’t want to pay for anything! Of course you could potentially turn a search like this into a sale, but you’ll spend time and effort potentially attracting the wrong kind of visitor to your site.
Find Low Competition Long Tail Keywords – Keyword Research.
To find low competition long tail keywords, you can use search tools. The free one is Google’s keyword planner. You can also use tools available on SEM Rush, and other such platforms.
But Google’s free keyword tool is a good place to start. See my article on keyword research for niche sites. To find your long tail keywords, type in a main “seed” keyword of two words or more. Then click on your monthly search volume tab and scroll through the results.
See video below:
You can of course go for the keywords with a tonne of traffic. However, you’ll likely not rank your content due to the high volume of competition on Google. So going for the long tail keywords is a better options for bloggers who want to rank on the first page for the lesser searched for key terms.
With a low search volume of 10 searches a month, it’s going to be tough getting much traffic. Even if you rank highly on page 1 of Google, you’ll only get a trickle. But the key is to create many articles like this and build up your “trickles” of traffic. Free traffic is still free traffic and 1 hit a week on a long tail keyword is better than zero on a listing which is on page 10 of Google!
Find Low Competition Long Tail Keywords – Examples
One of my favourite examples of low competition long tail keywords are pdf’s and guides. Unfortunately pdf’s do attract an audience which doesn’t want to buy anything! But pdf’s can turn into leads and sales. Here’s an example of a piece of content I created several years ago which made a sale just today!
Check out the article affiliate marketing step by step guide pdf. Pdf’s are easy to create once you know how and you can create ebook covers easily using Fiverr.com (or create them yourself).
You can find keywords like this using Google’s keyword planner. Type in your main “seed” keyword and use the filter option to add keywords you want to include. Then use “guide”, “download”, “pdf”, “step by step”, “beginners” and “newbies”, “dummies” etc. to find low competition long tail keywords.
Obscure Words
You can also find low competition keywords by using obscure keywords in your filter. Think of as many obscure words which you can use in your keyword search. This site, for example, was built on the obscure search term “autopilot”. In the affiliate marketing niche, which is very competitive, long tail keywords which are low on competition are hard to find.
So depending on which niche you’re in, look for keywords which are seldom used. You’ll often find them popping up in the search tool if you type them into the keyword filter and use them in the main search.
For a competitive keyword, you are unlikely to rank your content using the main keyword. Instead, look for your main keyword appearing at the end of the phrase, rather than the beginning.
Use the 80:20 Rule
Pareto’s principle states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your actions. With an affiliate marketing website, much of the work you do will come to nothing! Especially if you’re a blogger. But some of it will have an impact. I’ve written thousands of articles on many topics. Most of my sites fell away over time.
Many of the articles I’ve written don’t generate any traffic at all. But some of them do and continue to bring free traffic and sales. Once you can identify the strategies which work, and those which don’t, you can concentrate on the best actions to pursue.
Look for your content and boost it by linking to it and improving it too. If some of your content begins to show some promise and starts ranking on the first or second page of Google, improve it!
You can read about linking tactics, plugins and content creation plugins in my article create free website and earn money.
See also my ebook on this strategy by clicking the image below:
Testing Google For Your Keywords
Once you find a long tail keyword which fits the bill for your website, check it on Google to see the relative competition. I like to use keyword chains which offer less than 10,000 competing sites when I do the Google “sniff” test. The lower this number the better.
Then once I’ve done that I look at the search term without quotes.
Unfortunately both of these keywords would be out for me. I would use the longer one if the search volume came back at less than 10,000,000! Again, the lower this number the better.
Ranking your content is also about creating an awesome piece of content too. Without great content, you’re less likely to rank. But with too much competition, you could do all the work for nothing.
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