There are normal keywords and then there are keywords with low competition.
If you’re wondering how to find top keywords to rank your blog with less competition, then you’ve come to the right place.
Despite the complex sound, Keywords are actually fun once you’ve gotten quite used to it and one can spend hours without end just looking for keywords to utilize to help grow their business.
So What is a Keyword Exactly?
A keyword as the name implies – is the ‘key’ word for a certain topic that is highly searched for.
It doesn’t just have to be a word though, it can be two words or three like “Lose weight” or even something as long as “How to find keywords in Google”, or even “How to find top keywords” which is what I’m writing about now.
And believe me, I also did a proper keyword research on this before writing, which is why it ended up on the first page of Google and it’s why you managed to find this very post.
Interested in learning more about what is a keyword research all about now? Glad you asked.
Simply put, keyword research is the practice of finding out which words or sentences are highly-searched for in Google.
Obviously, it’s meant for any other search engines out there such as Bing but Google tops all as it is the biggest and well-known search engine there is so you are going to hear a lot more of me saying Google rather than Bing or Safari.
Now that you know more about keywords, you might be curious to know whether or not…
Are Keywords Still Important?
Oh, most definitely.
I know exactly how you’re feeling – Oh, do I need to learn all of this? Is it really going to benefit me?
If you’re wondering as to why are keywords important for SEO, here are some points to ponder on…
- High traffic keywords – You want a ready audience that is looking for what you are going to write about.
- Lessen your competition – You want to be able to stand out, especially if you are just starting out. You want to win the business.
- Write great headlines – How do you know if people want to click on your title if nobody wants to look for it in the first place? Two words, keyword research.
- Rank of the first page of Google – Did you know that 60% of all organic clicks go to the top 3 of search results? Like it or not, you need to rank your website on top if you want a continuous business.
- Without keywords, you will never succeed online – Keywords are something every Internet Marketer needs to know because each and every one of your posts NEED to be properly researched before publishing in order to reach the top page.
See the significance? Before we delve into the steps on how to research keywords, you need to first know…
What to Look for in Keywords? – Understanding the Game.
The rules for a good keyword research is simple – Find keywords which have good traffic but low competition.
Before we delve into what to look for when doing keyword research, it’s important to learn some of the terms and lingos…
- Average Monthly searches – This is the first thing we would want to look at in a keyword research. No matter what people say about search engines, a good number to go for is at least 100 a month. We need to be realistic, there’s no way you can get 100,000 visitors off one keyword, and 100-500 is the cold hard truth of the exact numbers you can actually score in terms of people who are actually going to click on your website,
- QSR – The Quoted Search Results actually stands for the number of websites targeting that exact keyword you’re looking for. In other words, they are your competitors and a good number to always bear in mind is to never exceed 300 QSR in a keyword if you want to rank with ease.
- KQI – Keyword research too complicated and tedious? Never fear! The Key Quality Index is an automated keyword strength indicator which gives you signals in traffic light colors green, yellow and red. If you’re too lazy to look at numbers, just look at the colors!
These are all terms that you will come across when you use a keyword research tool which is a software to help you find out all you need to know on a particular keyword’s viability before going after it.
There is much more jargon out there but for now, these three are the only ones you need to know of.
But enough of that, it’s high time you learn the…
3 Simple Steps to Rocking Your Keyword Research Process
Finding keywords for SEO is a relatively simple process – All you need to do is get a raw idea of what you want and from there, we refine, refine and refine until you reach the best and highly optimized keyword that you can use for your website.
Step #1 – Find Out What to Write About
We look for keywords because we want to write about it, no?
The first step to getting a keyword is finding inspiration on how to write about them.
But the most common obstacle of all that we all tend to face is writing topics related to our niche.
We can come up with ideas of what to write about but when it comes to finding blog topics to initiate, we have no clue on how to create endless topics.
The solution for this is simple – listen to what everyone is talking about!
There are a ton of places for you to get questions like from social media and from forums but the best place I usually go to for ideas is Quora.
Quora is great a helping you find ideas based on what people are asking.
There are tons of questions being asked there every day, every hour and possibly every minute on a multiple array of topics.
You just need to type in a topic and there you have it, a ton of topics just for your own personal use which you can write your content on.
Besides Quora, there are other forums you can go to such as…
- Wiki Answers
- Warrior Forum (For Internet marketing niche)
- IGN (For gaming niche)
- Yahoo Answers
..And many more! There are forums for almost any niche imaginable because people want answers so don’t be afraid to explore.
After getting an idea on what to write about from those questions, you need to…
Step #2 – Refine your idea with Keyword research
The idea for this one is to find the right keywords to make sure that people are actually looking for them in the first place.
This is because even with your raw initial idea, you won’t know if whether or not there is demand for it – You don’t want to spend hours writing the perfect post without people visiting your website would you?
So how do we start researching keywords?
For that, we need a keyword research tool and the best one I can recommend you is Jaaxy as I find it really affordable compared to other keyword tools such as Market Samurai which costs $149.
Jaaxy is perfect for beginners – It’s slick, simple to use, and has amazing up-to-date features.
I’ve been personally using it for over a year and I love the related keyword search terms it comes up with as it gives you endless ideas on what to write about.
Let’s do a keyword search on “Totally Free Stock Photos”…
Jaaxy search results for “totally free stock photos”
As you can see, I now know that if I target this keyword, I will get 483 average monthly traffic and there are only 75 competitors!
Now is this a good keyword?
Far from good, it is actually a low-hanging fruit, a gold nugget!
A good rule of thumb to always bear in mind is to not have more than 300 competitors so having a keyword of 75 is something you should never pass out on because it’s an opportunity for you to rank high on Google’s first page with ease as there is very low competition.
Not only that, because of the keyword search I made, I also found out other related searches and their average traffic as well as the competitor search which I could totally make use of.
Now let’s have another keyword search at “Affiliate Marketing niches”…
Jaaxy search results for “Affiliate marketing niches”
And there you go, I managed to find that it is the perfect keyword for me to use instead of others as it is also a low-hanging fruit which is very valuable.
If I were to choose, “Affiliate Marketing Niche ideas” which is the second choice after, it would still be a very good keyword because just by adding one word, I can manage to eliminate 73 competitors!
This is exactly you should be taking advantage of this powerful tool and why every successful Internet marketer relies on keywords.
Have a keyword in mind you’re just dying to have a look at? Have a free keyword search here…
Step #3 – Making up a sentence
Once you’ve gotten the keyword that you wanted, you can’t just use it just like that.
I mean you can of course use it, but it won’t sound nice and ‘human’.
How does “affiliate marketing niches” sound to you as compared to “Affiliate Marketing niches that can rock 2016”?
Definitely the latter right?
There is a trick to making your keyword sound nice though – Basically, you can add any words before or after the keyword.
However, you CANNOT break the keyword sentence.
For example, you cannot make “affiliate marketing guides and niches” because it’s breaking the keyword sentences already.
Always remember that when people type that in Google search, they will type the keyword only so you’re a rule of thumb to always bear in mind when making sentences out of your keyword is that you can add words before and after as long as you keep the keyword intact.
Wondering on how to make your titles awesome and catchy? I’ve got you covered.
Twelveskip actually has a wonderful blog post title template that you could literally use for any of your posts here…
When it comes to making your website and posts clickable, you actually have to make it very interesting and eye-catching at the same time.
Sure, you can make your page appear on the first page of Google, but how sure are you that people are going to click on that?
Making your post readable and casual is also a crucial step to successful online venture.
Does this work with any other niche? – Time for Case Studies!
I get this question a lot – Do keywords work on a website with different niche?
The answer is most definitely yes!
As long as the words are in English, people basically are typing that in Google search which is why we as Internet Marketers can detect them with the right keyword research tool.
I have several friends who use Jaaxy as well for their websites and they too managed to rank their websites on the first page of Google with ease and believe it or not, most of them have websites on different niches.
To show you how it works, I’m going to conduct case studies by researching their posts with my keyword tool…
Case Study #1 – The Hiking niche
A website in the hiking niche.
Jovo own Mountains for Everybody, a website that is in the mountain climbing/hiking niche.
His latest post was on “Great Practical Tips On How To Prevent Tent Condensation”. Let’s have a look in Google on how it’s doing…
Google search results on tips on “how to prevent tent condensation”
As you can see, Jovo’s post managed to rank on the first page of Google search.
His blog is quite new so I’m quite surprised that he managed to beat Hub Pages because that is a very established website.
He is definitely using a keyword research tool, let’s have a closer look on his keyword on Jaaxy…
Jaaxy search results for “how to prevent tent condensation”
As you can see, there are 64 monthly searches that he’s getting with only 30 competitors, no wonder he was able to rank easily!
And here’s a unique niche entirely, hiking!
Plus from the Jaaxy search results I just did, there are obviously more keywords for him to take advantage which all have low competition which is amazing.
Still not convinced? Well, how about…
Case Study #2 – Archery niche
A website in the archery niche.
Moritz owns My Archery Corner, an archery website which is also in a niche not preferred by many because people who do sports seldom blog about it.
I’ll take his first post on “Choose your correct bow draw weight” and look for it in Google…
Google search results for “Choose Your Correct Bow Draw Weight”
Voilà! Although it’s way at the bottom, it’s still ranking fairly well on the first page – It’s only a matter of time before it rises up through ranks.
Now let’s do some keyword research on his post, shall we?
It’s time to look it up at Jaaxy!
From the search, we know that the keyword is actually “Correct bow draw weight” Instead of the longer “Choose Your Correct Bow Draw Weight” which is the sweeter sentence he created to make it sound more interesting.
And we also found out that the keyword has super low competition of only 5 websites which is pretty cool though the traffic is also low.
Still, this is a great step for him to take to build confidence in ranking because when it comes to the Online Business world, its either you get your website on the first page, or you don’t do anything at all because really, the only real traffic you can get is when you hit the top.
I would say that Moritz is on the right path and I would do the same if my website is very new so that I can build my confidence in targeting tougher keywords in the future.
Still not convinced that keyword research is for any niche imaginable? Here’s one you would never have thought of…
Case Study #3 – Beer Blog!
A website in the beer niche.
I love beer, don’t you?
Let’s try something else for a change and look at how beer blogs fare when doing keyword research.
Nathaniel is a friend of mine who founded XBrewX and he also uses Jaaxy so I know that if he’s ranking well, he’s definitely doing his fair share of research.
I’ll take one of his posts on “How to Reuse Yeast in Your Homebrew” and look it up on Google…
Google search results for “how to reuse yeast”
Boom! It’s on the first page! Now let’s do a keyword research on his post and see…
Let’s see what Jaaxy tells us…
What did I tell you? Keyword research rocks and I found out that Nathaniel used the keyword “How to reuse yeast” which has 56 traffic with only 13 competitors. Not bad!
So you see, keyword research can in fact be used with any niche at all.
As long as people are looking for answers in Google search, keyword tools can detect how many of them are there and how many competition you’ll be facing which is essential in any Online Business success.
Now that you know the power of keywords, aren’t you curious on…
What do I do with my keywords?
I noticed that a lot of articles on the web tells of how important keywords are but they never tell you how to actually use them.
Keywords provide valuable info based on the demand of people, it’s like having the ability to read people’s minds and opinions without having to do any of those tedious surveys that we used to do in college which is very time-consuming and costly.
They can be used for many things which require you to give an edge to catch your listener or reader’s attention – research, presentations, headline writing, news or dissertations.
However, the most beneficial way to use keywords in my opinion, is by writing content to grow your website because that way, you can earn income by writing content and grow your website.
Did you know that 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine?
The real money comes when your website reaches the top page whereby you get clicks continuously without having to throw away money on ads and when you have an offer for your readers, they will have a better tendency to spend as people believe content more than plain ads.
In fact, I managed rank many of my pages on the first page as well through keyword research. Take a look at this…
Google search results for “totally free stock photos google search”
Remember the Jaaxy keyword research we did together initially?
I actually used that keyword and wrote “30 Websites with Totally Free Stock Photos” and ranked on the first page.
And even this one we did on the “affiliate Marketing niches”…
Google search results for “affiliate marketing niches”
I took that keyword we researched about, made it into a cool sentence of “Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Niches of 2015”, wrote awesome content on it and look at where it is now, on the first page!
Speaking of which, it’s high time I write another one for 2016, don’t you think?
You may have a website and you may be able to research awesome keywords with low competition but at the end of the day, people want to see your content because honestly, that’s what the whole internet is all about.
If you want to grow your Online Business, then you need to…
Enter the School of Online Business – Become an Online Entrepreneur!
Researching keywords is important to attract people but in order to make your readers loyal, good content always prevails.
I learned everything there is to know about keyword research, content writing, and traffic generation from Wealthy Affiliate and I highly recommend you to check it out if you want to really boost your website.
I wrote a review about it here.
Wealthy Affiliate is an Online Business Platform which teaches you all there is to know about building an Online Business from any niche imaginable and monetizing it.
There’s a wonderful community of people there, free website builder, live video lessons every week, and very immersing lessons which are regularly updated to help keep you up to date on Google’s algorithms.
I spend most of my time there at WA so if you’re interested in giving it a try, do let me know as I’ll be more than happy to guide you.
Conclusion
Golly, that was around 3,200 words!
Keywords are very powerful if you know how to use them but because of that, everyone is using them to get the upper hand on their website which makes it very difficult for you to rank.
However it is not impossible for you to get a chunk of that treasure – As long as you know how to target keywords with low competition and avoid the more saturated markets.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to grow your Online Business with keywords, check out my top ranked program here.
What about you, have keywords changed your life for the better?
Hey Riaz, this is a great post. I really needed clarity on keyword research and you nailed it for me. I am building out a new site and I’m feeling like there’s an easy way and a hard way, and up until now, I think I was trying to do it the hard way. I think I need to up my game and invest in a keyword research tool. That being said, Jaaxy has two different membership levels and to be honest, $100 per month is not in my budget at the moment and before I jump in my question is: When you search a keyword in Jaaxy, does the QSR of all keywords listed show up if you have the pro membership of Jaaxy or do you need to be an Enterprise member? In other words do you need to click on the QSR of each keyword to see the actual QSR?
Pro is definitely enough Jim,
there’s no need to go for enterprise unless your site is over one year old or if you’re churning content every single day. Investing in a keyword research will definitely boost up your site, until now I still have contents ranking well on Google and it’s over 3 years old!
Definitely worth giving it a try, if you are ever in need of clarifications do hit me up 🙂
Hey there, Riaz. I took me two years and two failed websites to finally understand the concept of a well research keyword. Rapid, consistent, and well targeted content creation and great keywords that are “low hanging fruit” are the essential things that help beginners really get the hang of the whole online thing quicker and with less failures. Nice Article.
-Dan
Glad you liked it, Dan. The low hanging fruit is what brought me up fast when I was still starting up. After a few months, I finally got my page up on the first page. Good stuff!
Very good post Riaz! It was very helpful. Keywords are the key to success with your site, that’s for sure. I’m still learning it though. I think It’s not so complicated when you start to get deeper into the game. Maybe I’m starting to use more of my imagination on this one.
It’s not complicated at all Toni, that’s all there to lean basically because at the end of the day, it’s only a tool to help you succeed faster. Thanks for dropping by, hope you have a great day!
Hi Riaz. This training of yours is totally helpful. I really like the real life examples. But how does your two keywords rank today? I’m guessing it should have been among the top 2 since it’s been a year right? Surely older content ranks better, our am I mistaken in this?
Thanks for introducing that 74 templates for blog post titles. Those do sound generic but those are just the articles I ended up clicking on fb lol!
Hey Isaac, what do you mean by the 2 keywords? If you mean this very blog post, its on the first page of Google already. Just type in How to Find Top Keywords and you’ll see my site.
Hey Riaz, thanks for posting this one up. I especially enjoyed the ideas that you provided about finding quality keywords by first looking for what people are asking questions about on sites like Quora and Yahoo Answers.
In the past, I’ve had very good results by finding keywords in a similar manor. I look forward to trying out some of your strategies in the future.
Do you think that it’s best to just focus on individual long-tail keyword research, or do you think it’s better to try to find clusters of keywords on the same topic and then create posts about each one?
Thanks again for the great information, and I look forward to your answer!
Hey Tony,
Its actually good to go for both, in keywords the lesser the competition the better especially if your website is new. If you create a cluster of keywords on one topic only, it will be really dull as there’s no variety but if you mix on your posts a little, things will definitely get more interesting. Hope that helps, great question by the way!
Hey Riaz,
What a great post, I have been blogging for a while now and you taught me a few things!
Good to see you are using Jaxxy it is by far the best keyword research tool that I have found too
I think I need to go and do some more research for a few of my articles now!
Great to hear that Anthony, cheers!
Thanks for yet another excellent post Riaz…
I am making my own website and i have used your resources a few times now in order to cement my knowledge and get things moving along.
There is a lot I do not know about keywords, and I realized there was a lot more i did not know until passing over your information here.
I know keywords are important, but sometimes finding that perfect keyword can be difficult. I can see from your text there are certainly things to bear in mind in order to get a good one, and not any old keyword will do.
I really love what you are doing here, keep it going, as i am always learning something from your site.
Thanks so much!
Chris
p.s, I see you do case studies too as you have done here. How can I apply to do that with you? Is it possible?
Even old keywords work just as well Chris, as long as people are finding it, we can rank it!
Hi there Riaz,
This was one of the most informative articles I’ve ever seen on keyword research! I think I’m going to take some notes because your instructions on how to add words onto an existing keyword to reduce competition or which blog titles attract the most traffic. I’m surprised by the types of niches like archery and beer brewing that could make onto the first page of Google search even if they don’t necessarily appeal to a broad audience.
Glad you liked the article Chu, implement keywords research and you’re well on your way to reaching those levels too!
Riaz, a very enlightening post on low competition keywords. I too are targeting low competition keywords, my website is 2 months old, and at the start used qsr of under 300. But last week decided, like you, that with a new website, i will target even lower qsr.
I now use qsr of under 100, and will keep on as long as i can. I want to get up the rankings too, and agree with you, that low competition keywords are the way to go, especially at the start.
Cheers
They are also quite fun to write about Greg, knowing that you’ve just uncovered a golden nugget. You’ll be among the first to write about that topic and its awesome to know that everything you write will mean that people will have more chance of believing, Appreciate the feedback man, cheers!
Hello Riaz,
First of all I say congratulations on ending up on the first page of Google.
I liked your writing style and it helped me a lot to understand about keywords, what to look when searching a keyword, how to incorporate the keyword of our choice into our articles and e.t.c
Your article was very informative.
I wish you good luck with everything you do in future. 🙂
I try to be as personal as I can Anjali, I’m glad you found the article helpful. You can rank top page too if you utilise keywords. Appreciate the feedback, hope you have a great Thursday!
Hi Riaz,
You say keywords are fun and I so much agree with you. It’s my favourite part of blogging, choosing a popular Search term phase for your title and cherry picking the high traffic keywords that not many other websites are using. It’s like looking into the future to where your blog posts will stand in the Search Engines.
You are right regarding doing your keyword research before publishing a post. When I first started blogging I just gave my post a title from my head. Once I learnt about the keyword tool I went back to my first posts to see where I stood. All of them were either far too competitive or were receiving minute searches per month. Now I understand the importance, I never write a post without using it.
I always look for average monthly figures around the 100 level and QSR under 50. Sometimes you do find such low QSR numbers which put a right spring in your step.
How do you compare Wealthy Affiliate’s keyword tool with Jaaxy?
I haven’t got started with Jaaxy yet as the WA one is free for members. I’d be interested in knowing your thoughts.
All the best,
Simon.
Hello again Simon,
Both WA’s keyword tool and Jaaxy are great but WA’s capability is only up to researching number of competitors and how good the keyword is. Jaaxy goes way further with the related search terms, the suggestions, the domain power, the management of your keyword, and even how good your keyword is ranking right now.
I started out with WA’s keyword tool to get a feel of the water and now that I love it, I’m surfing on Jaaxy and it helps my business a lot. Always a pleasure seeing you here again, hope you’ve having a great Wednesday and thank you for the awesome feedback my friend, you rock!
This was a great article on Keywords and how to do keyword research. I have been using my 30 free searches on Jaaxy. It is very powerful and effective.
I had never heard of quora before reading your article, now I am definitely going to go check it out for some ideas. Thanks for the great read!
Anytime John.
This a very nice read! I love how you explained how to find the keywords. This is very helpful to newcomers, If your not sure where to start. Keywords are key to getting your site ranked and you hit it on point. Your use of visuals pictures also helps as well. Please keep up the good work.
Glad you liked the article, thanks for dropping by!
Great article on keyword research Riaz, very informative so I’ve bookmarked it so I can comeback to it later. I’ve just started using Jaaxy and it’s great but I have to be careful because I spent a lot of time researching when I probably should have started writing. After you’ve written an article how do you know if you are ranking for that keyword?
Hey Diego,
You can check your ranking through Jaaxy as well and you’re quite right on the research part, its quite immersing that you tend to have fun for hours without even realising that you’ve collected about a hundred keywords already! Just set a time and put in all your focus to work with time. Good luck!
Hi Riaz,
Quality information here. I am so happy I read this because I have been wondering about adding onto the keywords without breaking the chain. I normally tag onto the end because I didn’t realize that you could add to the front, effectively a prefix instead of a suffix.
After reading this I now know I can add it at the front too!
Cheers for that.
Glad I could be of help Craig, knowing where to add without breaking the keychain was one of the questions I asked myself too back then. Thanks for dropping by, hope you have a great day!
This is one great article for newbies to understand the concept of keywords. I’ve learned a ton today thanks to your great post. It was lengthy but it was worth every sentence that I read. The examples shown were great for illustration purposes as well as comprehension. It may take some time for newbies to absorb all this and may have to go through it again but it’s worth it.
Hey there Snow White (Love the name),
Glad my write-up helped give you insight, I made it in such as way for even newbies to understand because back when I first started online, finding good blog posts to help me out was a challenge. Thanks for the kind words, I hope you have an awesome Thursday!
I use Wealthy Affiliate Keyword Tool at present hoping to move onto Jaaxy in the near future.
I always try to find keyword phrases that have around the 100 monthly traffic searches with a competition of somewhere in the teens and it really is surprising how many you find.
I have managed one post to the top of the Search Engines so far when you type in my title to perform a search so I know I’m heading in the right direction.
Can I ask: How do you rate Jaaxy when compared to Wealthy Affiliates Keyword Tool?
I have heard it’s more advanced as you can find dot coms that are available too but I would like to know your view.
Thanks for your time,
Simon.
Hey there Simon,
Wealthy Affiliate tool is great tool and I’m doing exactly what you’re thinking but the only important features are finding competitors and search traffic. Jaaxy is a lot more versatile with loads more feature for you to manage your keywords efficiently. You can check your ranking, save your keywords, get more related keywords from semantic searches, get other relevant keywords that other people would usually go afterwards and so on.
Its very powerful and the keywords work. The only challenge I have is to find out how am I going to find the time to write lol, so many interesting topics and so little time. Great question my friend, hope that helps!
Thanks for this article. lots of useful information here. I’m going to try jaaxy out. Thanks for clarifying a few things for me. I didnt know you could use the keyword phrase in a sentence and still have it be relevant. that opens the door for a lot more creativity with my page and post titles. thanks
It certainly does Derek, now you can be quite flexible in your keyword title creation. Good luck!
This post on “How to Find Top Keywords with Low Competition†is the best I have seen and I have looked at quite a few. You give a really good step by step guide in easy to understand language on what is a very topical subject.
It looks like you believe most people struggle with Keywords and I think you are right. Perhaps one big reason is that they don’t attach enough importance to them – therefore they don’t fully apply themselves to the process.
Just reading down through your post and in particular the case studies, everything is clear and it just makes sense.
How about you, did you struggle with keywords at the beginning or did it come fairly easy?
Hey Michael,
Definitely, I think I’m one of those slow learners because back then, the internet world was still new to me. I knew how to surf, but have no idea what the other things meant in Google. But over time, its actually pretty easy to manage.
I’ve learned a few stuff so I decided to share them all here for others to understand. I’m glad you found my guide helpful, do let me know if you need help with anything. Good question by the way!
This was great information on keywords, I always wanted to focus on getting some organic traffic and this post really helps me in understanding how keywords can help me in my page rankings within google.
I always wanted to target the high competition keywords but after reading the information here, I’m clear on how to get started with using the right keywords for my post.
Starting form below is always a good option Shrey, it helps you gauge your potential so you may take bigger risks with more confidence. Glad you liked my article, enjoy your weekends!
Great article and having gone through WA training still found it very informative. You have clearly highlighted the important parts of kew words. I had no idea about yahoo answers or wiki answers so I’m going to implement them in to my work when using keywords.
I totally agree with everything you said about Jaaxy, the programme is incredible and essential when searching for new key words.
Thanks for all the Information
Lee
Awesome to know that Jaaxy has a positive effect on your work Lee, appreciate your feedback. Cheers!
You have done an awesome some of showing that low competition keywords are the key to ranking in Google. Persistence in digging down deep will reveal low competition keywords and you have demonstrated that they don’t necessarily have high traffic. I like your approach to consistently write for these low competition search terms and they will eventually add up to a lot of highly ranked pages in Google. The result will be visits from your the audience you have targeted. When they find the information at your site, you are halfway towards gaining financial success.
I will certainly bookmark your site for reminders.
Keep up the great work!
Miles
Thanks Miles, its true that some people especially beginners tend to go for the big keywords that they often miss the smaller ones which can be just as good given time. Appreciate your kind words, hope you enjoy your weekend!
A very good post, Riaz. It’s very informative and gives us may examples and ways to find top keywords with low competition that really matter for us in this area! I’ll keep it in mind and try to use it as an example anytime that i look for keywords in jaaxy!
Thanks for sharing!
Best wishes, Rebecca!
Glad you liked my page Rebecca! Thanks for dropping by 🙂
Great information, I must admit that I always hate looking for keywords. I find the whole thing a tedious pain in the bottom but Jaaxy makes it look easy. I am about to head over to quora as well. I had not thought of this, what a great idea to write about things people are obviously wanting to know. Hopefully following your direction can help make keyword research less of a chore for me.
I know exactly how you feel Jodes,
I used to feel that way everytime I look for keywords but now, I love looking for keywords. Because after many searches, you’ll know exactly the words to look for and how strong they are competition-wise as well as the growth potential in the long run.
You’ll definitely get used to it eventually and when that happens, you’ll actually start loving keyword search more than the actual writing! Best of luck on your online journey!
Great article about how to find the low-hanging fruit with keywords. It takes a while to figure this out and you are absolutely right about not just using the right keyword but also the importance of crafting a catchy headline that people want to read. You gave some really good examples of how to use keywords most effectively too which is much appreciated. We can all get better with practice.
Awesome to hear that Lynn, thanks!
Hi, Riaz. That was a great post and you have put in a lot of work and time ( and 3200+ words..wow!) on it.
I totally agree with you that using keyword research tool will help you find the right keyword within seconds. So no time wasted.
I got a question here. Should we aim for keywords with low competition even if the traffic and search volume is low, say around 20 or below? That has always been bugging me, whether to spend time writing content when traffic is low (but competition is low).
Definitely my friend. keywords with low competition are much easier to rank and when they have low competition, it doesn’t mean its a bad keyword – its the direct opposite actually. It will be a lot easier to rank as well and those keywords are going to increase in volume in due time. Great question, thanks for the feedback!
That’s some great information for bloggers, I’ve bookmarked this post for future reference. I like the idea of getting keyword ideas from Quora, seems like a very nifty trick!
This is hands down one of the best articles on the topic of keyword research. Nicely written and you’ve provided a ton of useful information. Great Job Riaz.
I will try out some of the ideas you have here when it comes to finding keyword ideas. Will definitely apply some of those ideas.
For Jaaxy, are you using the Pro or the Enterprise package? Is the Pro package good enough? It’s the most affordable keyword tool in the market today. Just wondering if the Pro package is good enough.
Thanks.
The Pro is definitely enough if you’re a casual writer Andrew. Once you’ve picked up the pace and blog just about everyday, then its time to upgrade to Enterprise. Trust me, you’ll know when its time 😉
Thank you for your informative article. I had knowledge of keywords but I also had a few questions and your in depth post has cleared this up for me. Thank you for the great job you have done of explaining keyword research and how to do it well, I also like the look of Jaaxy and i think I am going to give it a try.
You should definitely give it a try Jodes, you won’t regret it! Good luck, do let me know if you need help with anything. Cheers!
Your site is nicely organized and easy to use in navigating. I will take a lesson in how you use your site. KW’s as we call them are very important to our businesses. Yes as business, without them we basically have no business. Advertisements may be a thing of the past soon as social ways of sharing on googling continue to be on the rise.
I think advertising will still be alive Andrew, just that it will evolve into something more specific as broad advertising is not going to work anymore. Guerrilla marketing will be the next big thing besides content marketing. Appreciate the feedback, thanks for dropping by!
Hey Riaz, I did not take this keyword thing seriously until I read your website, I am going to use Jaaxy from now on to target my keywords in order to get good keywords so that i may have them ranked by Google because that is the ultimate goal after all and the subscription is not expensive at all and we need this tool for better rankings.
Hey there Floyd,
Good thing you come across my article I guess, keyword is really important and your site will definitely get a boost if you implement it right. Good luck in your ranking, thanks for dropping by!
Riaz, great post. Beyond Jaaxy, which is a tremendous tool, I especially like your idea about using Quora for ideas – what people are talking about.
Also, great discussion on how to build out keywords and headlines from them.
I’ve bookmarked this, and I’ll be coming back.
Continued great success with your blog.
Glad you found my article useful Larry, guess I’ll be seeing you around eh. Thanks for dropping by!
I am so glad that I read this post on keywords!. I am just starting out with internet marketing and trying to figure out what makes a good and a great keyword has been a challenge for me. One question that I still have is how often do I use my keyword in a post? Do I use it in the title and every paragraph or in the title and in my conclusion? I am concerned that I may use my keyword too much since I have read that Google frowns on that.
You are right to ask that question Erin,
Google actually frowns upon the use of keywords as many people are abusing the power of it by spamming. The trick is to be as natural as focus more on your content by minimising your keyword efforts. One on your title and on your body and you’re good to go! No need to do it on ever paragraph though, just one or two should be fine, you should focus more on your content instead. Hope that helps!
Informative review on keyword tool, Jaaxy. That’s what I can say about this review of yours.
Although, the first time you see Jaaxy it may look complicated, but if you will compared it with Google Keyword Planner, it’s actually easier to use. Easier to understand.
I’m already using Jaaxy Keyword Tool myself, and I can say it’s great. Perhaps, I should hone my keyword researching skill even better.
Jaaxy is definitely much easier to understand compared to Google keyword planner Gomer. Glad you liked the article, thanks a bunch!
Wow, I really liked the way you used longer keywords just to eliminate competition.Do you think it is easier to rank even when you have like a competition of 100?
I always thought it is difficult to rank among so many websites having huge content on them, isn’t that true?
Its definitely easier to rank when you have lesser competition Shrey, but another thing you should watch out for is how many big websites are there ranking for that particular keyword as well. For example, even if there is only 20 competitors, if those competitors are all top notch websites like Forbes or the Huff Post, you’ll have a hard time ranking on page one. Hope that helps, great question!
Your explanation of keywords, their use and importance is very good. I really have not gotten into keyword research very deeply, but your comments have convinced me that I need to start doing the proper research.
I thank you also for the suggested resources to find the latest topics and questions being asked. That should sharpen my ability to prepare content for my sites which is always a tedious job. I just bookmarked your site since it has so many great tips. So I will be back! Keep up the great work!
Hey there Joe,
So awesome to know how much you liked my article, I appreciate you bookmarking it. They are a bit tedious but believe me, they are well worth it in the long run. I guess I’ll be seeing you here again soon, do let me know if there’s anything I can help you out with. Hope you enjoy your weekend!
First of all wow! that is a lot of content. I try to use some of these techniques and steps sometimes but i am still new to this. I will probably come back here for my next web post. I like the case studies as the examples you used. I think I’ll go back now to check that I have not broken some of these rules.
You do Ryan, and I can assure you that your blog’s going to have a steady growth. Always remember perseverance is the key to a healthy blog growth. Good luck! Do let me know if there’s anything I can help you out with. Hope you enjoy your weekend!
Excellent article about how to find top keywords. I really love doing keyword research myself and I use Jaaxy very often to do that. Like you said, without keyword research it is unlikely that anyone will succeed. I really like how you listed of what to look for in keyword research such as QSR, KQI, and Average Monthly Searches. With proper keyword research, anyone can succeed.
Glad you agreed with me Brian, they are called keywords for a reason right? Thanks for dropping by, hope you have a good Friday!
AWESOME!..This is a great informative post!
I was thinking about make a research with this topic and just by reading your post I can understand better the idea of Keywords.
Your post is so complete and easy to read, it’s simple and effective, now I can do better keywords selection.
Thank you so much Riaz.
Glad you see it that way Giancarlos, it took me a few days to write it out with complete research and everything. Thanks for dropping by, hope you have a great Thursday!
I think that I’ve been failing with the keywords department when it comes to writing my own blog post. I think it’s because I naturally think about the quality of the content first, so it think about the information I’m giving out and thus I spend more time researching my subject than I do researching the keywords surrounding the subject.
Sometimes I make post with no keywords at all, because I totally forget about them. If they do have any keywords it wasn’t put there on purpose. I’m still brand new mind you so my traffic is zero at the moment, but I’d imagine that not following your advice probably won’t help me rank in popularity on google any time soon. Thanks for your help.
You’re welcome Jaylin but if it makes you feel any better, I too write based on what I feel like writing, not based on the keywords I am presented with. The better way of ranking your content is actually by writing it first,, then put in keywords as you go. And after you finish everything, only hen should you look for the right keyword to add in your title, simple as that. Good luck in ranking your blog!
I am just starting out with my website. I am also just finding my feet with writing quality posts and realise that keywords are important.
You have written a very very informative post, and I will have to bookmark this for future reference. There is just so much information here.
In my niche I think of topics and use a keyword tool to come up with low competition keywords. Your first step is quite interesting. I have never taken that approach, so I I’ll have to try it and see what it comes up with. That would come up with some plenty more and interesting topics for me to write about. I guess also what is trending at the moment, which can help my site even more.
Thank you again. I will have to check out the rest of your site for more tips that I can use.
Wow thanks Owain, I didn’t think those tips are bookmark-worthy. I’m glad you find it interesting, I’m always here if you need me. Cheers!
Riaz,
With all of the examples that you have here and the step by step instructions, this is the best example of finding top keywords for your blogs. The Jaxxy tool works well for me and I get my blogs to page one quite often and if I follow some other SEO practices I can keep them there. Finding good quality keywords is very important to any online business.
John
Keywords are definitely important John, to any online business or just about any businesses there are. Glad to know your pages are ranking well on page one, more of that to come i hope! Cheers!
Indeed, finding a keyword before blogging is very important. That’s the first step of the SEO trick to get rank in Google. I made this mistake before when I started my first post even though I know about the keyword is important. A great article guide me to the online success. Thanks so much.
Chun
Your welcome Chun, that was a mistake I did too, and many more who are new to the industry. Glad you liked the article, good luck on your blog growth!
Great article! Easy to read and very informative. I really like the point you made about adding words to the start or end of the keyword. It really allows you to make the keywords readable and more attractive. I’ve only just started out with blogging myself and have realised the value in keywords. I have achieved page 1 of Google for one of my posts, and the rest are usually at the top of page 2. With further learning, I hope to improve my rankings in the future. Thanks for the great information!
Glad I could help Andrew, yup its a trick many people often mislook, even myself. Congrats on reaching page one! The rest of the pages will usually get up a bit slower but don’t worry, they will! You just need time and the more pages you publish, the faster the rest will rise up too. Good luck on your blog!
I really liked your work here and it is indeed an informative post. If I ever get stuck on keywords or anything related to it, I’m surely going to comeback to this page and give ti a quick read.
This would help all the newbies out there and thanks for creating an easy to understand post on keywords for all of us.
Thanks
Shrey
Glad you find my article helpful Shrey, hope you have a great Friday!
Hi Riaz,
Thank you for this detailed article about keywords. It is very informative and helpful too.
I like the way you wrote it. It’s very organized. It helps me a lot because did not know about Twelveskip.
Also, I would like to ask you a question? I heard a term, “Long tail keywords”. Could you please explain to me what does it mean?
Thanks again,
Bora
Hey Borislav,
Long tail keyword are simply keywords which are long. For example, instead of lose weight which is short and super competitive, using a longer keyword such as lose weight through meditation, that would give you a higher conversion as there is less competition. If you read my article, I have explained it to you in detail.
As I am building my very first website this post was very interesting and informative to read. I know that keywords are important for SEO but I do struggle at times trying to come up with them.
I like the way how you put words into Google and it comes up with keywords for you. I also like how you come up with sentences. That is so true as I believe so many people do this when searching on Google. I will have to try these methods. Thanks very much.
Glad you liked my article Owain, I’m sure you’ll boost your SEO rankings in no time if you pit in effort and be consistent in your content creation. Good luck!
Hey Riaz,
Im glad I found your website because I am having problems with this and your post really helped me! Recently I targeted a keyword with 0 competition and when I posted my article and waited a week, I found that it wasn’t ranked on google? Also, I’m in the news niche and I have trouble writing a headline that makes people click my links.
Hey there Moussa,
The news niche is a very fast and robust niche which requires you to always be on the ready and on the lookout for any huge things happening around the world, or locally. You can go very far but in the first few months, nobody knows who you are which is why you need to persevere and not stop writing, even if your blog has zero people commenting. Be consistent and in a few month’s time,you’ll get pretty used to the niche, to the headline writing, and before you know it, the audience start coming in. Hope that helps!
This is a great and in depth talk about keywords Riaz. I learned a lot.
Have a few questions though. I’m in a pretty competitive niche which is gold investing. I keep on writing my posts like this as well. Look for low QSR and high monthly searches.
Don’t you think that you have to do some SERP analysis? Meaning that you will look at the first 10 results on google on your keyword and say “Can I outrank these sites”.
Because maybe it’s only like wikipedia, cnn, washington post and other authority sites.
Does you ranking keep improving over time? I’ve had my site for 4 months now. But do they keep going up all the time the longer I’ve had my site?
Great question Marcus,
Yes, they do keep getting going up the longer you have that post because you’ll have more authority the longer you keep blogging. You’ll even get higher faster if you continue creating new content for your blog as well. And yes, any of my posts are rising too.
You’re right about the SERP analysis but I would advise you to not worry much about it because even if your blog couldn’t beat those 10 google sites, you can still rank on the 2nd page. People would still click on your post, and you will still get traffic. Bit by bit, it will rise if you work hard and continue updating it or making it as good as those other posts.Hope that helps, cheers!
This this a great site, waww one gets access to alot of onlinbe resources. Thanks and great for this job
You’re welcome jschicanha, glad you find my site helpful. Have a great weekend!
hey there! great article on keyword research. It really demonstrates the fact that without keywords and without using them properly your really just pointlessly writing. I definitely agree with you on how good jaaxy is. Have you ever used any other keyword research tool other than jaazy to compare them?
Yes I did Brandon, like Samurai and Keywordtool.io but Jaaxy is still the best of all.
I just want to say Riaz, thank you so much for sharing this. Downloaded the 74 tips template and re-learnt some important keyword stuff like not settling up with monthly traffic, 100 or more or look for another one. I wish you huge success in your internet quest and blessings!
Thanks Mike, wishing you great success ahead as well!
Wow Im very impressed with your website. has a lot of info that i am into so i could relate to your web content. everything looks on point on your website. don’t have any negative feedback really love your content. i appreciate your quality content. keep up the great work
Much appreciated Eddie, there are some negative points though. As they say, nothing is perfect. Cheers!
Hi Riaz
Wow your reviews. Certainly very informative and will benefit anyone looking to make legitimate income . I too thought that to make money online was for the gurus and those with own products to sell. I stumbled across Wealthy Affiliate while researching into joining another entity and the review helped make my choice and I am forever grateful. How did you find out about Wealth Affiliate?
Harriet
Hey Harriet,
I found WA while I was being scammed by a program called Dot Com Secrets X. Prior to that I was actually scammed as well but after DCSX, I had the last straw and searched online to know if the program is a scam or not.
It obviously was and from that moment on, I stumbled upon Wealthy Affiliate from someone’s review. I decided to give it a try and my life changed and today, it has been 2 years since I’ve joined. I love the community here but I think you already know that don’t you? Thanks for the feedback, I hope you have a great weekend ahead.
Hey there it’s Alexey!
Keywords are THE MOST IMPORTANT part of our business. I understood that only now, because I was searching for keywords the wrong way…
Thank you for the share, you really helped me to change my way of picking keywords. I understand how important they are – It looks like you are a real pro at this ! My honor to read your article 🙂
Well hello there Alexey,
Its nice to have you here, you bright fellow you! I won’t say that I’m a pro, just that I had over a year of experience and you can too. Keyword research isn’t all that hard, its pretty straightforward and after a try or two, you’ll get used to it pretty quick. Do let me know if I can help you out with anything yeah, cheers!
Hello Riaz,
I found this to be a fantastic article on keywords. It was easy to understand and very comprehensive. I have a currency trading blog and after reading this I think keywords are a weakness of mine. I write a lot but I must admit I don’t do anywhere near enough research on keywords for my articles. I am sure if I applied your techniques, it would improve my ranking g in Google.
How do you define “low hanging fruit” as it applies to keywords? I believe you said under 70 QSR, how many searches?
You have inspired me to look at keywords in more depth. Thanks for writing.
Sincerely,
Xin
Hello Xin Zhang,
Thanks so much for the kind words, low hanging fruit is actually the case when your keyword have less than 300 competitors but under 70 is also a lot better since there will be even lesser competitors there. Glad I could help give you a better insight on keywords, do let me know if you have any more questions. Hope you have a great Wednesday!
Hey Riaz,
Great post by the way, I really learn a lot from it! I can tell you really put in a lot of effort writing content, that’s why your website rank in first page of google in many cases. Before finding a topic to write about, Keyword research must be done or else your efforts will be put to the waste!
Samuel
You got that right Samuel, I always do my keyword research before writing my content. Its important to know how heavy the competition is before delving in, I guess that coupled with my content helps me get to the top faster.
Hi Riaz,
Every time I visit your blog, I learned something new. This is a great article to refresh my understanding on keyword research.
Question – Provided that you have a low competition keyphrase and do all your SEOs, how soon would you find yourself on Page 1 after publishing the article? I know every blog is different but I am just curious to know from your experience.
Thank you Riaz. Another article worth bookmarking and sharing.
Hey Cathy,
So glad my article helped you out on keywords, I visit your site often too. Provided there is low competition and good SEO, one can rank within a day to a week depending on how saturated the market is. Sometimes even with low competition, if you are up against huge companies like HubSpot or Quicksprout you will take longer to rank.
My best record is one day, my worst is a month lol. Good question by the way, hope that helps. Do let me know if there’s anything else you wish to know of. Cheers!
Hi Riaz,
I am relatively new to the world of blogging and I have about the importance of keywords. Thanks for sharing this great post.
I have never heard about Jaaxy keyword research toolbox but it does seem to be a good one. The free membership does give me some great insights about the wonderful tool. It is easy to read the results. However, you mentioned the results are based on quoted keywords, do you think the results are accurate since not many people use quoted keywords on search engines anymore.
Hey Alex,
I would say that the quoted search results are really accurate as they do help me get rankings much better than that of Google Keyword tool. The numbers are pretty helpful in helping you gauge the potential to rank. Glad my post helped give you insight. Thanks for dropping by.
You break down what a keyword is and how to use it very nicely.
It took me awhile to understand keyword use due to so much conflicting information. I’ll refer friends to this article to help get my point across.
I first started looking at highly competitive keywords. Seeing the competition almost made me turn my back on starting a website.
Then I learned about low competition keywords like you speak of in the article and how to use them effectively.
Most importantly, it worked!
Hey Curt,
So glad you liked the article, I was exactly where you were last time and had the same thought too – Its so competitive on Google, how was I able to rank? Eventually with Jaaxy I was able to pinpoint keywords with good traffic and very few competition and that was how I was able to rank. Good luck on your website and thanks for dropping by! Hope you have a great Tuesday.
Wow! What an extensive post on finding keywords. I am coming back to your website for further reading. Your website is a good resource site for keyword research.
You helped me to understand the importance of using keywords, and how to find the top keywords with low competition. Thank you for sharing! 🙂
Glad you liked my article Zoey, its actually meant for people like me and you – Bloggers and Online Entrepreneurs who are just started up and on a budget. Best of luck on your site, thanks for dropping by!
Hello again, Riaz.
The first blog post I’m reading today and it was an excellent one. I’m still experiencing some difficulties coming up with low hanging fruit keywords. The steps are easy to follow and making a sentence (long tail keywords) is the best strategy to get more targeted traffic.
This is the kind of method that will work with almost any niche. Dig deeper and niche down you interests is the best and easiest way to get traffic.
Thanks for sharing this.
Regards.
Hey Imad,
You’re absolutely right on that one. Coming up with these keywords get easier the deeper you get and the longer the time spent. I never knew there was anything such as a low hanging fruit or top keywords if I didn’t dig in the word keyword first. Thanks for the kind words and the feedback man, always a pleasure to have you here 😀
Keywords are the lifeblood of nay business online. Natural searches though the search engine is everyone goal. Getting ranked is what people strive to do, thanks for giving me insight on looking for the right keyword combinations.
You’re right on that one William, getting ranked is the most effective and sustainable way for your website to survive and thrive in the online world. Glad you liked my guide. do let me know if there’s anything I could help you out with. Cheers!
WOW Riaz, this article is chock full of information on keywords! You taught me a lot here. I have shied away from this for a long time, but recently put my first Bing Ad out. I have a lot to learn, and need to check out Jaaxy and start learning the niche site techniques you mentioned. Can’t wait to check out Quora; never even know that type of site existed! Piecing these things together on a good Wealthy Affiliate site sounds like a sound plan. Thanks for the useful information!
Hey there Nathan,
that’s great news on the BING thing. A word of advise is to prepare your website with great content before blasting the ad though. that way you’d get a higher conversion rate. If you notice that your sales from SEO is good, than that’s an almost surefire way you’ll get that high conversion rate when it comes to ads. Great hearing from you man, thanks for dropping by!
Wow this is a very good website! The minute I clicked on the website I already saw many things that caught my eye. I like how there is an option to put in your name and email for the option to make 1500$! This is a very well thought out website, I can tell that you put a lot of time in to it. I love the simplicity of the website.
Thanks Malik, I certainly did. I spent almost everyday on my site replying emails and writing content trying to grow my online business. Glad you liked it, do let me know if you need help with anything, cheers!
This is priceless information on a topic that is very misunderstood. Many people just underestimate the importance of keywords and have the ‘hope’ mentality that the content they create will get ranked and viewed. My personal priority when writing content is directly for viewers but you also have to take the search engines into consideration because they rank your content so ultimately you could write only for the viewer but if it doesn’t get ranked then what is the point?
Exactly Ben,
You can have great content but if you don’t target that to what people are searching for, its practically useless as people are never going to find it on Google. However with proper keyword research, you can rank even a short article on top. Imagine how powerful your traffic can be if you mix that, with your great content.
Great information! I will have to consider using Quara and the template from Twelveskip is also a great tool.
I currently am a member of WA and love the platform I also had a free trial for Jaxxy and used my searches so I am strongly considering paying for the premium version because I like the Quality Index of the keywords and the KPI that it provides. This makes it so easy to decide right away if the keyword is worthwhile.
Hey Annelise,
So glad my article gave you tips, you will definitely love the Jaaxy premium, its very efficient and the unlimited searches are totally worth it if you’re planning to blog full time. Appreciate the lovely feedback, hope you have a great Wednesday!
Wow. Very comprehensive information. Well structured and neat too. So much I learn from your website. Keep up the good work. I sure to bookmark your website. Great for reading and references and product reviews. Your article broaden my knowledge what keywords, all about. And understand scams that available in the net. Well researched article.
Thank you Riaz.
Salam Nazmi,
So nice to meet a fellow Malaysian here, I don’t get local visitors on my site much. I’m glad you liked my article and I hope to see you here again soon. Good luck on your site and if you need help with anything, you need to only ask!
Hi RIaz,
Really informative article. I’ve actually used Jaaxy quite a bit and I absolutely love it. You’ve done a great job of outlining all the important facts about keywords and keyword research but I wanted to tell you a couple of my favorite things about Jaaxy.
First of all I love the rank checker. I’ve used quite a few different rank checkers but Jaaxy is by far my favorite. I like that it saves all the previously checked keywords and so it’s quick to check them again.
I also love that Jaaxy had a referral program. If you can refer it to a couple friend then that alone will pay for your membership. Which makes it free. So cool. Thanks again.
Robert
Thanks for sharing your experiences on Jaaxy Robert, glad you love those features! The rank checker is really something and the affiliate marketing opportunity helps me cover my own monthly as well so now I’m using Jaaxy without worries on the monthly thing. Appreciate the feedback, hope you have a great Wednesday!
Hi There Riaz,
Dude, you rock. I loved reading this and I did nt even notice the 3,200 words. I normally scan longer blog articles over 1,500 words for example and cut straight to the juice, this was well written and broken up with some excellent case studies.
Thanks for the excellent tutorial on keyword research
Hello again Derek, so good to see you here again. I love case studies as they show proof and transparency so I figured I’d do my own when I started my own blog and here we are. Thanks for dropping by, hope you have a lovely day.
Excellent article on how to find top keywords with low competition. I love how easy this is to follow and understand.
I am new to the online business world so terms like QSR and KQI are still new to me but you have done an excellent job of explaining them.
I had never heard of Quora before reading this, I can’t wait to go check it out!
Thanks for sharing!
Jess
Glad you liked my article Jess, you’ll definitely have fun keyword researching. Good luck!
Thanks Riaz for a great post. I think Keywords sis till something that we all struggle with no matter how long we’ve been doing this. I like the fact that you put some case studies in there. I am definitely going to come back to this as you gave us some really good reference point such as Quora and Twelveskip. These are extremely useful. Lots of success!
Glad you liked my review Brendan, I hope I cleared up some doubts on keywords through this article of mine. Guess I’ll be seeing you around!
This article clarified a lot of things for me. Though I’ve been attempting to use keywords smartly for some time now, I still get stuck finding the right ones – the good ones that fit what I want to write about.
I’m going to take a look at Quora too. It sounds like a useful resource.
Robin
Good luck on Quora Robin, they are very useful – A lot of business talks and ideas are there! Cheers
Thanks for this awesome informative post Riaz! This is definitely everything I need to know about keyword research.
I always have a tough time trying to find the perfect keywords to maximize exposure for my article headings. Do you recommend that I start new keyword phrases and use them in search engines? Keep us updated Riaz.
Using new keyword phrases is always good but remember, you have to bear in mind the demand to make sure your efforts weren’t in vain. Once you know that people are searching for it, look for how big your competition is and if not, you’re golden.
Hi Riaz,
Another great post on keyword research. This is another article that I’m bookmarking for future reference if I get stuck. So far I’ve been able to generate content relevant to my niche without any problems but I will definitely check out Quora anyway. It sounds like a great tool for keyword and post ideas.
Thanks Ian, great to know you’re doing well with content creation.
Great tips. I wish I could have seen this when I first got into affiliate marketing. Finding good keywords used to be my biggest struggle. Luckily I did eventually get the hang of it, but it did take me a while to figure out.
Awesome post. You’re doing a real good job on your site!
Hannah.
Thanks Hannah, glad you liked my post. Keywords are indeed very important and its awesome hearing you got the hang of it. I’m always here if you need help with anything. Cheers!
Great information, keywords were always hard for me to understand. Thanks for clearing that up, used to think in one word terms and use words in my post. Now I realize my entire title can be a key word. I do like Jaaxy and appreciate showing how to use the tool effectively, it saves so much time and makes it much easier to rank at the search engines. Thanks again
Hey Bob, I’m glad my guide helped you out, those pictures do help visualize better and the tool helps saves you a lot of time too. Let me know if there’s anything I can help you out with, wishing you a great Sunday!
Hi Riaz,
Love your site. Its very easy to navigate and great information on Keywords which we are all learning is so important.
I also love the pop up for joining you newsletter.Hoping I can learn hot to do that.
Just by going through your site I have learned some tips of how to use the Keyword finder correctly. You seem to know a lot about marketing and gaining big traffic.
Keep up the good work Riaz.
Cheers David.
Hey there David, thanks for the kind words and yeah the Newsletter pop-up isn’t a big deal though. It’s from a plugin called SumoMe which you can get if you’re using WordPress and it’s free too. Appreciate the feedback, thanks for dropping by!
What a great article. Key words can be such a difficult concept for so many of us and you covered, in great detail, how they work and why they are so important. I have always struggled with adding to a key word for my headline to make sense. When you add words to your key words, do you do an addtional Jaaxy search? Like so many of your other readers, I will bookmark this page. The simplicity of your article shows that you are a natural at teaching and I look forward to fututre training. Can I suggest meta tags as your first topic??
Hey Erin,
Wow definitely, I’ll bear Meta-Tags as a topic for sure. It’s one of the mysteries of keyword ranking until now, people are still getting confused on how the really work. So glad you liked my article, hope you have a great Sunday!
Wow, this is great.
I have to say, this post has really cleared a few things up for me and I thank you for that, although I do have a quick question if you don’t mind?
I see the keyword competition metrics that you use to differ from others that I’ve seen elsewhere.
Stuff like, Pagerank, Page authority, backlinks ….that tuff makes my head hurt!
The metrics you use seem a lot more newbie friendly but are they effective, have you seen good rankings using keywords that fit your criteria?
Thanks in advance.
By the way, I’ve bookmarked your site and will definitely be coming back soon.
As a matter of fact, I have Lee. I research all of my posts and pages before publishing it. “Totally Free Stock Photos” if you Google that, will have my website on the first page. Hope that helps, great question by the way!
Thanks for this article. You’ve made me realise that I need to pay much more attention to the words I’m using in my titles and in my blogs. I have signed up with Jaxxy and will now be much more vigilant in ensuring I’m including keywords effectively on my site.
Great to hear that Helen, do let me know i can help you out with anything. Good luck in your keyword optimization!
Great information! You have made the concept of finding keywords in my niche much more easy! I signed up to Jaaxy and I now have 100s and 100s of keywords which I can write posts about. Now I have to find time to get writing!
I also found that there is an affiliate section on Jaaxy so my research in finding suitable affiliate programs is cut in half.
Great to hear that Richard,
Jaaxy also provides an affiliate marketing platform for anyone in the keyword niche to take advantage of. Although it is not my main program of choice, I still promote Jaaxy as I love their service and affordable price and I’d love to help out more people by sharing it. Awesome to know you’ve had great experience finding keywords there as well man, best of luck on your site!
Hi Riaz,
I love reading your blogs about Jaaxy; it is very well documented and supporting by few case studies. Well done! How do you think Jaaxy compared to other free tool like Market Samurai, or the free one like Wealthy Affiliate keyword tool? At the end, they point out to the same thing, isn’t it?
Thanks Patsy,
I think Jaaxy is the best keyword tool especially for beginners comapred to other keyword tools out there as it has a lot of cool features not to mention the most competitive price of all. Well worth the investment, highly recommended for beginners who want to be serious in the Online Marketing world.
Thanks for this Riaz! I bookmarked it so I can come back and review what I might have missed. When I started my niche, my target keyword only has less than 10 monthly searches. I was hesitant to use it, but there is no other way for me to put that keywords so I sticked with it. One thing I realised is that when your website matures, you get more visitors as you add content. The last time I checked, that keyword now has an average of 100 months searches. 🙂 So maybe, just maybe…If you can don’t focus on the monthly searches and just look at the number of competition, that would probably be a good start? Then market your article like crazy! What do you think?
Pitin
Hey Pitin,
That is wonderful news indeed, thanks for sharing! You’re totally right on the keyword search part, just go for the lesser competitive keywords even with very few monthly searches because eventually, the demand will increase and you’ll be on the top page already by then. Opportunity is best taken regardless of how lucrative it may be.
You included so much information within this page, but still kept it interesting with the images and the in depth facts. Key words tend to be a massive struggle for me, and I never seem to use them correctly. However, this page is incredibly useful and I’ll most certainly be bookmarking it for future reference, for I’ll without a doubt need to be aware of the tips and things mentioned.
I love to try and be as in-depth as possible Tempest, and judging from your comment, I’m guessing that its a good thing that I did :D. Thanks for the feedback, hope you have a lovely Thursday!
Hello here, thanks for comprehensive article about importance of keywords. Here in this article you cover tools, which make easy to us find a good ranking keyword, which lets to outperform competitors and reside in the first page of Google.
Nowadays, when people look for items online, it is vitally important to pick right keywords.
Why?
Because if we use them in the title of our blog or article, which offers information or finds solutions to customers problems, visitors will came right away to our websites.
It means what websites will have great exposure and after it, real customers will show up. They will get what they looked for and everybody is happy.
All the best, great review, Nemira.
Hey Nemira,
You’re totally right on that one, keywords are indeed very powerful and its something every website owner should take advantage of. People react better when they see words that they type exactly on the Google search engine come out as one of the results as they feel like that website relates better to them. Thanks for sharing with us your feedback Nemira, hope you have a lovely Thursday!
Hey!, Great post extremely detailed and the quality of the content is great. I my self struggle a lot with finding top keywords for my own website with low competition and this is giving me a lot of information that I desperately needed and could of used a few weeks earlier ahaha. Thanks for this 🙂
Hey!, Great post extremely detailed and the quality of the content is great. I my self struggle a lot with finding top keywords for my own website with low competition and this is giving me a lot of information that I desperately needed and could of used a few weeks earlier ahaha. Thanks for this 🙂
Hey Dezenn, glad my articled helped you out. I totally get that feeling, if you need any help at all with keywords, you know where to find me!
Hey!, Great post extremely detailed and the quality of the content is great. I my self struggle a lot with finding top keywords for my own website with low competition and this is giving me a lot of information that I desperately needed and could of used a few weeks earlier ahaha. Thanks for this 🙂
Hi Riaz,
Wow, this is an awesome article, I really really enjoyed reading it! I never heard about Quora until now and I am glad to discover this place to find topics ideas. Thank you for this:) I use Jaaxy not only to research keywords but also to see my position in Google. I love this tool because it so easy to use and fun as well:) I can stay for a long time and just play around with Jaaxy:)
Thank you very much for this wonderful review!
Thanks Daniella,
Quora is splendid when it comes to giving ideas on what to look for, you should definitely have a go at it. Glad you have a great experience with Jaaxy, thanks for sharing your feedback with us, really appreciate that. Cheers!
Hi Riaz,
Wow, this is an awesome article, I really really enjoyed reading it! I never heard about Quora until now and I am glad to discover this place to find topics ideas. Thank you for this:) I use Jaaxy not only to research keywords but also to see my position in Google. I love this tool because it so easy to use and fun as well:) I can stay for a long time and just play around with Jaaxy:)
Thank you very much for this wonderful review!
Riaz,
Just what I am looking for, as I become more accustomed to blogging, I realize how important keywords can be. This post is not only easy to diggest but a fun read as well. I always love your dedication in researching and writing top-notched posts.
Also those case studies are gold. Just wow, I always take a lot of time to put together my researches. I’d love to hear how to write blog posts from you.
Also it’d be great to have a complimentary post to this one that talks about HOW to rank on search engines – because even if they are low competition keywords, you still have to have certain criteria to be on top, right?
Hey there Anh,
Thank you for the kind words, I do take a bit of time to do my fare share of research before writing a post too. Your blog is actually one of my inspirations to write!
You’re definitely right on the ranking part, keywords alone are not enough to rank your page on top because even if it does appear in Google, how confident are we that people are going to click on our post if its not attractive enough?
Content is very important and I’m glad you brought that up, thanks for the suggestion! I would definitely cover another post on how to write content sometime this week and share what I do to make my posts look attractive.
Great to hear from you again Anh, hope you’re doing alright. Thanks for dropping by, wishing you a great Tuesday!
Hi Riaz,
That’s a nice post and one that is quite informative and thus very helpful to us readers when seeking quality information about keywords and how to get the best, least competitive yet highest in traffic. Jaaxy does the trick!
Thanks again for your informative post and all the best in your online endeavors for 2016.
Your welcome Boniface, glad you liked my guide. Thanks for dropping by!
I like this website. Seems to have been around for quite a while. Very finely organized. I myself am using as many keywords as possible to boost the traffic of my website. Making sure to find as many low competition keywords, getting lower than 300 QSR, all that jazz. Very good advice for people like us.
Thanks Graham, I do hope I can help many people grow their blogs with much ease through my posts.
Oh my goodness. This is so helpful. I am definitely bookmarking it!
Keywords, like you stated, are so very important. Sometimes, however, I find it difficult to narrow down which keyword to use. I appreciate your step-by-step guide and great resources! This is truly a guide for online success. Very well done and thank you!
So glad I was able to interest you Brandy, my guide is meant to help out people to understand how to utilise keywords better. Thanks for the kind words, I wish you all the best in your site and you’re always welcome to ask away if you need help with anything!
Hi Riaz,
Man you write some great and well covered content. I personally use Jaaxy and have found it to be very useful in finding low competition keywords.
I also like your thought on finding ideas on Quora, I might give that a try moving forward.
I think you’ve really given people a comprehensive guide to researching and implementing profitable keywords into their Internet marketing SEO strategy.
Thanks for sharing another great article dude!
Glad I could help Tim, Quora and Jaaxy works awesome and its thrilling to know how easy it is to rank your pages on the first page. Hope its working well for you, cheers!
Great guide to finding low competition keywords. I’m pretty familiar with the process, but you went into great detail and I really enjoyed all the steps and case studies you showed proving your methods work.
I saw that you talk about QSR and average monthly traffic.
I’ve been told to and not to worry about average traffic. Would you recommend writing about something that has like less then 20 average monthly traffic?
Seems like a bit of a waste, but would love to get your opinion?
Great question Brok,
I would definitely recommend taking that keyword and write about it even with that 20 traffic. You’re definitely right though, that we shouldn’t look at that traffic estimation. Because after you reach first page, you will bound to be ranking for other keywords as well which are in your content which means you will get that extra traffic regardless which is pretty cool. Hope I was able to shed some light, cheers!
Keywords in the context of SEO are quite intriguing. Does a keyword gain more value and increase in search rankings if more people type that keyword into the search engines search text box? I think that is what you are explaining in this article, so perhaps you’ve already answered my question. 🙂 I know Google has the lion’s share of the market and that Bing is holding it’s own, however, I wonder about yahoo. Yahoo was the first search engine I can remember using. I actually did a search using yahoo yesterday and I was pleased with the results. It would interesting to figure out why they are not getting the market share they once had.
I’m glad you mentioned IGN. I used to go to IGN quite frequently. I didn’t know that they were still around.
This post is quite comprehensive. I like your advice. The images enhance the probability of retention. Thanks for your time.
Hey there Bio,
You’re absolutely right on the keywords part, the amount of people searching for answers on Google affects the search engine results. Bing and Yahoo actually work almost as similar as Google so don’t worry much about the traffic part because people are people and we still look for the same thing regardless of search engines. Hope that helps!
This post is great! You should really develop a training, if you haven’t already, because I learned so much from the information that you provided in this post! You really helped me to better understand a lot of things. And you make things so clear with your examples. The tools that you are willing to share with all of us is very generous. Thank you for taking the time to write this article!
Hey Envlizard,
Training, huh? Now that’s an idea I could definitely do in the near future, thanks for suggesting! I already have plans for that and I guess I can actually do that here in Malaysia to start it off. Thanks for your feedback, hope you have a lovely Thursday!
Riaz,thank you for your article, seems like keywords are the main part of writing content and getting ranked by Google. I am always looking for more information and how to get my content ranked and you about covered everything here. I’m going to bookmark and use as a checklist next time I write for my website. Keep up the good work.
Glad I could help Robert, Thanks for dropping by. Do let me know if there’s anything else I could help you out with.
WOW…What a great and extremely extensive post on finding keywords. Very well thought out and also really easy to understand; especially for the newbies out there wanting to get in to the online world and how it all works in the ‘engines’. Its a big old mine field and difficult to get ranked if you do not know what you are really doing!
Great Stuff….Enjoyed reading this.
Cheers
Carl
Thanks Carl, I want to help out as many people as i can to kick start their Online Business easier and understanding keywords is crucial for their success. Thanks for dropping by, hope you have a lovely day!
Hi Riaz
Keyword with low competition can also be called long tail keywords. The big companies are very lazy when it comes to these low competition and traffic keywords and this gives us the chance to rank for them.
I always try to aim for a QSR of less than 100 and then I do some SERP competition to determine the strength of those keywords.
You’re right on that one Viljoen, the longer the better as it is also more specific. Thanks for the feedback!
Hi Riaz
Thanks for a great post.
Jaaxy is indeed a great keyword research tool and by far the best I have found.
I really enjoy the great level.of detail you have added to this article and enjoyed you relating it to your own experience. Makes it much easier to understand.
I understand that Jaaxy has different functions and membership levels. What would you recommend for people just starting out in internet business?
There are different packages one can take but for starters, I recommend taking the Pro which costs $19. Its very helpful and you have access to everything you need at your stage before you’re confident enough with moving further. Hope that helps!
This is a very good post, and I learned a lot. I had never heard of Quora, so thank you for the introduction. I will definitely check it out.
Also, very good information regarding the numbers to look for. I’ve heard ranges from nothing searched less than 50 verses your 100 to even higher. The 100 makes more sense, for sure. I was surprised you set your upper limit for competition to 300.
I’ve been considering Jaaxy myself, as well as a few other options. Do you find Jaaxy to be fairly easy to use? Have you tried any of their other competitors? I would be curious to know the pros and cons compared to Jaaxy.
Hey Tonia,
Basically any other keyword tool works just about the same – What I take highly into consideration is how efficient they are in giving accurate results of competitors and traffic as well as the speed and Jaaxy definitely has the best fit as compared to other keyword tools such as Goole or even Samurai.
As for competitors, the lesser the better but I find the range of 300 is the absolute maximum number of competitors for a certain keyword if you really must have it. Of course, the lesser the better so 200 and 100 are very good numbers as you can rnak much faster that way. Hope that helps!
Hello!
Very informative article. There is so much I can learn about keyword searching from your webpage. Can you explain what QSR is for me? I’m still not completely clear on what that does for finding a keyword. I really enjoyed all the details and plan to use the tips you provided in future articles, I create.
Gladly Amanda,
QSR stands for Quoted search results. Results as in the number of websites out there targeting the same keyword as you. In other words, its just a fancy word for competitors for you to be aware which is important as it helps you decide better before going after a keyword. Hope that helps! Glad you liked my article 😀
Thank you so much for breaking this down! I was a bit confused on a few things that you were able to clear up nicely for me. 1. I was curious as to what QSR to shoot for, now I know-300 or less and 2. Totally had no idea you aren’t supposed to break up the keywords! I will have to go back and fix a few things on my own site!!! Great post, I will be back!
Diana
Hey there Diana,
Glad I was able to help you out on that, breaking the keyword would make it lose its power. Awesome to know I managed to help out regarding that as well as the QSR part. All the best for your website!
Low competition keywords are definitely the key to ranking in Google. If you dig down enough, you can easily find low competition keywords. They don’t always have high traffic, but the thing is, if you consistently write for these low competition search terms over and over again, over time they add up to a lot of highly ranked pages in Google. Eventually, you will end up with a lot of highly targetted visitors coming to your website. If they find information on what they are searching for, then you are half way towards selling to them. This is far more effective than just vaguely targetted traffic, say from ads for example.
Right on Marcus,
People go for huge traffic first because of greed but as a small website, you need to start small and target less competitive websites too in order to build rapport. Besides, if one post can gain you 100 visitors a month, ten posts can gain you 1,000 so that’s a plus already. Ranking on top is much better than second page becuase honestly, that’s where the traffic is.
I learned a few new things looking at this page. It explains everything very well and was easy to read. There were a lot of images but they were all relevant to the page otherwise they would have made a slight mess. Keep up the great job and never give up!
Thanks Bill, glad you liked my article. Happy New Year!
I enjoyed reading your post and it was helpful and has so much great information in it I have bookmarked it for future reference.
Even though i have been around for awhile I still struggle with those darned keywords. I usually use phrases and put the keywords in my post titles as well as in my first paragraph.
Can I use a keyword like, for example, ‘body image’ in the title and then call my post ‘don’t get obsessed with body image’? Will this bring traffic or does the entire post title have to be the keyword?
Great post and very helppful
Great question Margaret,
It is absolutely fine to type in “Don’t get obsessed with body image” as along as you don’t break the initial keyword. Always bear in mind that you can add in words to make your keyword sound nice just as long as you don’t break the keyword, that’s fine. Hope that helps!