How to Find Low Competition Keywords You Can Actually Rank For

Most advice on how to find low competition keywords goes like this: open a tool, set a difficulty filter, export everything under 20.

I've audited plenty of sites built on that list.

They rarely rank for it.

The problem isn't the tool. It's that a difficulty number can't see the thing that decides whether you'll win: the quality of the pages already ranking.

Here's the seven-step process I use instead.

What "Low Competition" Really Means

A low competition keyword is one where the pages ranking today are weaker than the page you can build.

That's a comparison, not a score.

It depends on your site as much as the keyword. A query that's easy for an established firm with years of links can be out of reach for a site launched last month.

Two numbers usually get mistaken for competition:

• Keyword difficulty (KD) in SEO tools. Each vendor calculates it differently, and most lean heavily on how many sites link to the top-ranking pages.
• "Competition" in Google Keyword Planner. Google's Keyword Planner help page defines it as the number of advertisers that showed on a keyword relative to all keywords across Google. It's a paid search measure.

Neither one tells you whether the top result is a thin page, a forum thread or a guide that answers a different question.

You only learn that by looking.

Step 1: Set Your Own Baseline

Before you hunt for easy keywords, find out what "easy" means for your site.

Open Search Console and look at the queries where you already rank in the top ten.

Note what those queries have in common:

• How specific are they? Two words or six?
• What page type ranks: a service page, a guide, a product?
• Which sites sit around you in the results?

That's your current competitive level.

Any new target with results pages similar to those is a realistic bet. A target where the top ten is wall-to-wall national brands is not, at least not yet.

Note: A brand new site with no rankings has no baseline. In that case assume you can only beat results pages that already contain weak or off-topic pages, and pick your first targets from those.

Step 2: Mine Search Console for Page-Two Queries

The cheapest low competition keywords are the ones Google already associates with you.

In the Performance report, filter for queries with an average position between roughly 8 and 30.

Sort by impressions.

These queries have two things going for them: Google already sees your site as relevant, and you're close enough that a better page can close the gap.

For each one, check which of your URLs ranks.

Often it's the wrong page. A blog post ranks for a service query, or the homepage ranks for something a dedicated page should own. Building or fixing the right page is frequently all it takes.

I start almost every keyword project here, and it's the same first step I describe in my guide to keyword research for a service business.

Step 3: Narrow Broad Topics With Specific Modifiers

Competition drops as queries get more specific.

Not always, but often enough that this is where most of the opportunity sits.

Take a broad topic and add modifiers that narrow who is searching or what they need:

Pull phrasings from autocomplete, People Also Ask boxes and the related searches at the foot of the page.

Then read your enquiry emails and call notes.

Customers describe problems in words no tool has collected yet. Those phrases are some of the least contested searches you'll ever find, which is why I cover them at length in my explainer on long tail keywords.

Step 4: Use Difficulty Scores as a Filter, Not a Verdict

Now bring in a keyword tool if you have one.

Difficulty scores are useful for one thing: sorting a long list so you check the most promising rows first.

Use them like this:

1. Export your expanded list with volume and difficulty.
2. Drop the rows where difficulty is far above what you already rank for.
3. Keep everything else, including rows with zero or very low volume.

Don't throw away the zero-volume rows.

Tools build their figures from samples, and specific queries are exactly where those samples run thin. In niche services and B2B keyword research, plenty of searches that bring in real enquiries show up as zero.

A tool is also handy for seeing what smaller competitors rank for. Sites similar in size to yours are a good source of winnable queries, and my guide on finding competitor keywords shows how to pull them.

If you're filtering thousands of rows across many services, this is the part worth automating with a keyword pipeline, so your time goes on the results page checks instead.

Step 5: Read the Results Page for Weakness Signals

This is the step that actually finds low competition keywords.

Search each shortlisted query in a private window, set to a location you care about, and study the top ten.

You're looking for pages that shouldn't be hard to beat:

One or two of these in the top five is a good sign.

Three or more and you've probably found a genuine gap.

The opposite pattern is also worth noting. If every result is a focused, current page from a strong site, move on, however low the tool's score.

Pro tip: Open the top three results and ask one question: would a customer prefer my page to this one if I built it properly? If the honest answer is yes, the keyword is low competition for you.

Step 6: Check for an Intent Gap

Some of the best targets aren't weak results. They're mismatched ones.

An intent gap is when the ranking pages don't quite answer what the query asks.

For example:

• The query asks for a cost, and the results are general service pages with no figures.
• The query names an audience, and the results speak to everyone.
• The query is a comparison, and the results only describe one option.

Google ranks the best match it has, even when that match is imperfect.

A page that answers the exact question can overtake stronger domains, because it serves the searcher better.

If you're unsure how to read what a query wants, my explainer on what search intent is breaks the signals down.

Audience mismatch works the same way. For a construction estimating firm I worked with, some of the existing search traffic came from homeowners who would never buy, so I filtered every keyword for contractor intent before deciding what to build.

Step 7: Score the Shortlist and Build One Page per Cluster

By now you'll have a shortlist of queries with weak or mismatched results.

Before writing anything, do two things.

Group the queries. If two queries return mostly the same results, one page should cover both. Splitting them invites cannibalisation, which my guide on avoiding keyword cannibalisation explains how to spot.

Score each cluster. I use three quick ratings from 1 to 3:

• Value: what a visitor from this cluster is worth to the business.
• Weakness: how many weakness signals the results page showed.
• Fit: whether you can genuinely answer the query better than what ranks.

Build the top-scoring pages first. Link each one from a related service page or hub so it isn't left as one of the orphan pages nobody can reach.

Then track it.

Check the page's queries in Search Console a few weeks after it's indexed. If it's stuck below position 20, the results page was stronger than it looked, and that tells you something useful about your baseline.

When I run keyword research for clients, this scoring sits next to commercial value and urgency in the same sheet, so a weak results page never outranks a worthless query.

Pick Five Weak Results Pages This Week

You don't need a perfect list to start.

Open Search Console, pull your page-two queries, and search the top five yourself.

Mark every forum thread, thin page and outdated answer you see. Those are your first targets.

Once the quick wins are built, the bigger job is fitting them into a full map of your market. If you'd like help with that, my keyword research service covers it from first-party data to a ranked build order.