How to Choose Low Competition Keywords
Oct 14
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 one of the methods I use for measuring competition. I also use Micro Niche Finder, it makes it really easy because all of these steps can be found on one screen. 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 there Jackie!
Hope you’re enjoying the summer-time weather like me and my family (getting ready to take the kids swimming!)
Quick question… How important is it to ‘not’ have any, or much competition with regards to other IM’ers and their Squidoo lenses who are marketing the same product? I’ve run across several Amazon products with great reviews, high keyword (product name) search volumes, LOW pageranks, but there were some other Squidoo lenses already created. Now, there weren’t a ton of lenses(a couple pages), and when I checked Google’s top 10, those lenses didn’t rank. Thanks in advance!
Hey Darryl, thinking about filling the pool ourselves today.
If the lenses aren’t ranking in the top couple pages of google I’d go ahead. You just have to make sure you build your links so you can get your lens ranked!
Have fun swimming.
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Just returned from the pool; kids and I had a blast!
Thanks for the advice, Jackie!
Make sure you use your keywords as the anchor text of your links whenever possible.
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I’d be glad to work with you on this: http://www.internetmarketingformommies.com/blogservices
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Thanks, I followed your words, please correct me if I am wrong,
“If the sum of 10 PR for frist page is less 30, then my kewword good to be used as my Domain ? Correct ?
I am trying to promote a product from this website http://www.MavericMoneyMakers.com, can you help me please to find a low comptition with high traffic keyword to be my domain in order to make Domain forwarding lator ?
I send you also on TWITTER the same letter but short one.
Best Regards
Raed
RaedMosa ~ you have to download the seo for firefox plugin to be able to see the numbers. If you don’t see the numbers and you’ve downloaded the plugin you’ll have to go into settings and have those numbers show up.
If you can’t get it to show up you can click through to each of the 10 sites on the front page and look at the page rank in the google toolbar and add them up that way.
All you are doing is finding out the page rank for each of the ten pages listed on page one. Then you add them up. If they add up to less than 30 you’re good.
Test it out, play around, taking some action to figure it out is the only way you’re going to learn it for yourself.
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Hi Jackie,
Many thanks for how you explained all the issues for Internet marketing Beginners, but please can you re-explain with more clear example how to choose keywords with high search volume and low competition keeping in mind that I follow your steps regarding PR and I test the same key word you used (Iron Man ) but i couldn’t understand and there were no numbers after the PR……Kindly give me another example with clear and simple steps………
Best Regards
Thanks again
I count those as 0.
Jackie´s last blog ..To Do: Get Finances In Order
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Usually the dash means the site doesn’t have a pr yet.
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Thanks, Jackie – that’s interesting. Not having a PR yet, is that a good or bad thing? Or is the page just so new still? what should I do in this situation? I was going to promote this product thru Clickbank and do an article on it.
Thanks!
Hi, Jackie – I’ve downloaded SEO for Firefox to check out the page ranks. This is a great tool! At first the PRs were question marks, and I went into Tools and chose “automatic” instead of On Demand for the PR. However, now I’m getting a dash after the PR instead of a question mark. no numbers have shown up yet.
Also, sometimes the PR and all the other info doesn’t even show up. Yes, I do have the toggle to “on.”
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
~AZ
Jackie,
You’re right on! Firefox Seo is Excellent!! I was using it when I found your website!!!
Gordon@shoeshelves´s last blog ..Shoe Shelf
The same thing happened to me. I actually started to cry! I told my husband about it thinking he would be really angry that I banned us from Google, but he just laughed. He said he did the same thing too. He said not to worry and next day it was alright! I have to admit that I didn’t sleep too well that night.
June@windowtreatments´s last blog ..10 Tips on How To Choose Window Blinds
ha ha I had the very same fear! Wondering how I was going to live without access to Google. Fortunately they let you back in relatively soon!
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Jackie,
Thanks for article. SEO for Firefox is really a neat little utility. At first I forgot to turn it off after doing initial keyword research and when Google “banned” me…I paniced! I thought I was now banned for Life! Luckily, I wasn’t
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.
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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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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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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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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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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Opps, that’s worKing on someone else’s computer. LOL Sorry! Chris
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