How to Choose Low Competition Keywords
The key to this strategy is choosing keywords with high search volume and low competition. This is often times called the “low hanging fruit”. These are keywords that will rank easily in Google because there are not a million other sites competing for them.
How do I find out how competitive my keyword is?
There are a million different ways to identify competition. Just about everyone has their own way of doing things. You can spend tons and tons of time trying to identify how competitive a word is going to be, but you DON’T have to. I use a really down and dirty way to identify competition. Here’s how it works.
You grab a firefox add on ~ there are a few but I use SEO for Firefox. (yes the others work the same way and you can use any one you like)
Once you install it you will see a small icon in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. You will need to click this icon to turn on the program
**BIG TIP:** do not run this program all the time. Only use it when you are doing keyord research ~ it gets google agitated if you run it all the time and they will think you are a robot and cut off your ability to search google (for a couple hours).
Once you have installed the add on you want to go to Google and put your keyword in the search box. (turn on SEO for firefox). Then when you click you will get a listing of information beneath each result on the page.
There will be a lot of information given, but you only need to look at the page rank ~ which is the first number after the PR.
What I’m looking for when I do this is a PR number below 30 for the first page. So I would go through all 10 listings and add up the page rank for each site listed. If the number is less than 30 I call it good. For this keyword the PR of the first page is 10 ~ so yes, I thought this was a good keyword to create a lens on.
Questions that have come up
1. What if Amazon is the top listing?
I don’t worry about it. The page is getting to the top based on the authority of the entire site, not the page itself. It can be outranked with good backlinks.
2. Why don’t you do …. (fill in the blank) to see if it’s competitive.
Because I could spend all day checking different measures of competition, and in the end it gets me nowhere. I like to have a good idea (which this method gives me) and then put my lens up. There’s no need to waste a ton of time looking at a million different measures. If you’re digging into Amazon you’ll find many products are not very competitive at all.
3. My PR number is just a question mark!
Go into your SEO for firefox settings (which can be found under tools at the top of your browser page) and choose to have it show the pr number automatically.
That’s the method I use for measuring competition ~ if you have any more questions about they hows feel free to ask them in the comment section and I’ll be glad to answer.
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Hey, Jackie, very interesting process. My problem is, I’m currently woring on someone else’s computer and cannot download something that is “obvious” or she’ll have a cat! My mother is very techno-untrained, but screw with her computer (even if I change the resolution and forget to put it back…) and she’s going to know the reason why! So, suggestions for until I can get a new computer of my own and online with it?
Thanks, Christi
Opps, that’s worKing on someone else’s computer. LOL Sorry! Chris
Does she have the google toolbar installed? You can go to each of the sites on the front page and check the PR using the google toolbar.
If she doesn’t have the google toolbar you can go to google and put your keyword in the search box in quotes ~ ****this is NOT a very accurate way to gauge competition*** but if it’s all you’ve got ~ it’s all you’ve got. Look for keywords with less than 30K competing pages ~ the lower the better ~ 10K is best. Find the # of competing pages by looking at how many other sites there are ~ it will say 10 out of ______ that’s the number you’re looking for. Just make sure you put your keywords in quotes when you do this.
Good luck and if you can finagle the other it’s a better gauge of competition.
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Jackie,
Just purchased Micro Niche Finder. I’m so excited to really get into it. I think this tool is going to be a huge time saver. Couple questions. I’m trying to do a search on an exact phrase but it isn’t coming up in the listings. It’s listed in the Google Adwords Keyword tool with searches so I think I missed a step. I just typed in the phrase and clicked search. Any suggestions.
Also, I was checking on a product and found that while the correct spelling of the product title had too much competition, the incorrect spelling had several searches and good SOC. What do you think about promoting a product using the incorrect spelling?
Thanks Jackie…You Rock!!!!
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Hey Jolene!
The default setting on Micro Niche Finder is exact. You can see it in the top right hand corner. Just above where the keywords are listed.
RE incorrect spelling I think it’s fine to do them, just don’t go overboard with the incorrect spelling. Use the correct spelling most of the time in your content or Google will know what you’re doing and will hit you for it.
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One last follow up then. If the exact search isn’t showing any results, but Google keyword tool does, how would you interpret that?
I know keyword research isn’t an exact science, but learning more about these variations should be beneficial to my marketing expertise. If I have MNF, would it be best to just target keyword with that software and forego the Google Keyword tool? If they go hand in hand, how does that work? Right now this thought applies specifically to the Christmas Blueprint.
Sorry, this question may need it’s own blog post. Thanks.
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The google keyword tool defaults to broad search, which means it looks for the query in any order all around the page. So for ex. you may search big red shoe ~ for a broad search you may end up with a page that is talking about a big dog, a red house and a great looking shoe ~ but since all the keywords are on the page it counts. Exact would bring up just the pages that have big red shoe.
MNF uses the google keyword tool ~ it just uses the exact search ~ and a bunch of other tools/pages get pulled in to find the rest of the information. If you’re going to use MNF there’s really no reason to use the google tool.
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Hi Jackie
Just wanted to say thank you for the informative internet marketing articles, I`ve some experience of keyword research but theres always room to learn more and I`m adding this one to my marketing toolkit. Thanks again.