Most keyword research guides hand you a vague checklist and wish you luck. Here’s the actual method I use to find low competition keywords - the specific filters, the order of operations, and why half the “easy” keywords your tool spits out aren’t easy at all.
Why keyword difficulty scores lie to you
Every SEO tool calculates keyword difficulty (KD) differently, and none of them agree. Ahrefs bases KD primarily on the number of referring domains pointing to top-ranking pages. SEMrush factors in authority, content quality signals, and search features. Moz uses its own domain authority metric. A keyword that scores 15 in Ahrefs might show up as 35 in SEMrush and 22 in Moz.
KD is a proxy, not a fact. It’s estimating how hard it will be for an average site to crack page one based on who’s currently ranking there. What it doesn’t account for: whether those top results actually satisfy the search intent well, whether the query is trending up or dying, or whether your specific domain has topical authority in that niche.
Treat KD as a filter, not a verdict. A keyword with KD 30 in a topic you’ve already published 20 articles about is easier for you than a KD 12 keyword in a space you’ve never touched.
The step-by-step method to find low competition keywords
This is the workflow that consistently surfaces rankable terms. It takes about two hours for a new topic area and gets faster as you build intuition.
Step one: start with broad seeds
Pick three to five seed keywords in your topic area. If you’re in project management software, your seeds might be “project management,” “task tracking,” “team collaboration,” “project planning,” and “workflow automation.”
Plug these into your keyword tool and export everything. You want the full expanded list - usually 5,000 to 20,000 terms per seed depending on the niche.
Step two: filter aggressively
Apply these filters in order:
- KD under 25. This eliminates roughly 60% to 70% of results right away. You can push this to 30 if your site has some authority, or drop it to 15 if you’re starting from zero.
- Volume above 100. Anything below that isn’t worth a dedicated page. You’ll capture those terms naturally through related content.
- Remove branded terms. Filter out competitor brand names unless you’re explicitly writing comparison content.
- Intent match. Scan the remaining list and remove anything that doesn’t match what your site can deliver. If you sell software and the keyword implies someone wants a free template, that’s a mismatch.
From a starting pool of 10,000 keywords, you’ll typically end up with 200 to 400 candidates after these filters.
Step three: check the SERPs manually
This is where most people skip and most people fail. For your top 30 to 50 candidates, actually Google them. You’re looking for:
- Weak pages ranking in the top five. Forum posts, thin affiliate pages, outdated articles from 2019. These are beatable.
- Reddit or Quora in the top three. Google is surfacing user-generated content because nothing better exists. That’s your opening.
- Mismatched intent. If the top results are all product pages but the query is informational, Google hasn’t found good informational content yet.
- Low word count in top results. Pages ranking with 400 words of generic advice are vulnerable to a thorough, well-structured piece.
I’ll give you a real example. The seed “project management” filtered to KD under 25 surfaces terms like “project management for freelancers” (KD 12, 480/mo), “construction project management checklist” (KD 18, 320/mo), and “project management without software” (KD 8, 210/mo). The first one has three Reddit threads in the top five. That’s a layup.
Step four: cluster before you write
Don’t treat each keyword as a standalone page. Group related terms together - you’ll often find five to eight variations that belong on the same page. “Find low competition keywords,” “how to find easy keywords to rank for,” and “low difficulty keyword research” are all the same article.
Clustering prevents cannibalisation and lets you target more total volume per page. A page targeting a cluster of related low-competition terms can pull in 2x to 3x the traffic of one targeting a single keyword.
This is where a tool like Absolute Cluster’s keyword research tool saves serious time. It groups semantically related keywords automatically so you’re not eyeballing a spreadsheet trying to decide which terms belong together.
Find low competition keywords in specific niches
The method above works everywhere, but some niches have more low-competition opportunities than others. B2B software, professional services, and technical fields tend to have large pockets of uncontested terms because fewer publishers are creating content there.
Consumer niches - health, finance, travel - are harder. The low-competition terms still exist, but they’re more specific. You’re looking at long-tail keywords with three to five words that address narrow use cases.
A few patterns that reliably surface easy wins:
- “[topic] for [specific audience]” - “email marketing for nonprofits,” “budgeting for contractors”
- “[topic] vs [topic]” comparison queries in emerging categories
- “How to [specific task] in [specific tool]” - these get low KD because they’re narrow, but they convert well
- Question-based queries - “what happens when,” “is it worth,” “should I” modifiers often have lower competition than their head term
Validating difficulty beyond the KD score
After you’ve shortlisted 15 to 20 keywords, run a quick manual check on each:
Domain authority of top results. If positions one through five are all DR 70+ sites (major publications, Wikipedia, government sites), a KD of 20 is misleading. If positions one through three include sites with DR under 30, the opportunity is real.
Content quality of top results. Read the first three results. Are they genuinely good? If they’re comprehensive, well-structured, and recent, you need a strong angle to displace them. If they’re generic fluff with stock photos and no original insight, you can win with substance alone.
Freshness. Check publication dates. If the top results are all from 2021 or earlier and the topic has evolved, fresh content has an advantage.
Search features. If Google is showing a featured snippet, People Also Ask boxes, or a knowledge panel, those eat into organic clicks. A 500-volume keyword with a featured snippet might deliver fewer clicks than a 200-volume keyword with ten blue links.
What to do with your high volume low competition keywords
Once you have your list, prioritise by a combination of volume, business relevance, and effort to create. I use a simple scoring system: multiply monthly volume by a relevance score from one to three (where three means directly tied to what you sell). Sort by that number. Write the top ones first.
Don’t try to publish them all at once. Five well-researched, thoroughly written articles will outperform 20 rushed ones every time. One piece per week, properly interlinked with your existing content, compounds faster than a content dump.
Build your keyword list and start clustering at absolutecluster.com.