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How to Find Low Competition Keywords With Keysearch

ByNina Clapperton

Ready to write some blog posts that actually rank for keywords? No more targeting “Rome travel” and ranking on page 8!

I’m going to show you my easy technique for finding low competition keywords in Keysearch. These are keywords even a brand new blogger can rank for, and a more experienced blogger can get traffic from within the week.

All you’ll need is a Keysearch subscription, a clear idea of your niche and your audience (so we know what keywords to look for), and a spreadsheet to keep track of all the epic keywords we’re going to find for you! (Don’t worry, I’ll tell you what to put in it!)

I’ve used this method to get a new site to 10k pageviews in just 3 months – no backlinks, no black hat SEO; nothing but good old fashioned low competition keywords.

To follow along, I recommend having Keysearch open for you to do the steps as I do them.

👉 Get Keysearch – my favourite keyword research tool – for 30% off with code “sheknowsseo”!

Step 1: Search a Seed Keyword

Screenshot on a mock up of a laptop of the Keysearch Keyword Research area showing a "seed keyword" of "Rome Travel" with a high difficulty and a search trends showing that 80-100% of searches happen 9 months of the year.

Log in to Keysearch and go to the Keyword Research area. This is the “homepage” once you’ve logged in.

To start, we need to give Keysearch something to search for.

Pick a seed or root keyword – this is a keyword like “Rome” or “Ferrari”. It’s not a keyword we would actually target, but it acts as the base for the longer, easier to rank for keywords that we can target.

I get even more specific and search “Rome travel” or “Rome tour”, since “Rome” may not reveal any travel related keywords at first.

Keysearch will pull up that keyword, and about 700 related keywords that we may also be interested in.

Remember, the related keywords are based on that seed keyword. If nothing relevant is coming up, you need to either add on to your seed keyword or change it.

Step 2: Filter By Difficulty

Infographic showing the Keysearch Difficulty Scores. Hardest = Red = 60+, Hard = Light Red = 50 - 59, Medium = Yellow = 40 - 49, Easy = Green = 30 - 39, Easier = Light Green = 20 - 29, Easiest = Blue = 0 - 19.

Keysearch has a range of Difficulty Scores, with blue being the easiest and dark red being the most difficult.

This is based on a general approximation of difficulty, not based on how difficult it is for your blog specifically.

For this method, we filter for a Difficulty Score up to 39 – because that is the last “green” keyword. This will include all of the blue, light green, and green keywords for us.

Keysearch’s Difficulty Score is largely based on backlinks, if the URL is optimized for the keyword, and Domain Authority (DA) of the ranking sites.

By filtering for these easier keywords, we’re getting keywords with, on average, lower DAs ranking, fewer backlinks needed, and that may not be optimized for the keyword.

That makes it much easier for us to rank for it!

Screenshot of Keysearch's filter function on a laptop mock up zoomed un to show the "Score" is filtered from 0 to 39 manually.

To filter, you just click the “Filter” button on the left hand side of the screen, above the list of Related Keywords. Set it to “0” to “39”, and hit the blue “Filter” button to submit it.

This will filter from the 700 Related Keywords. It does not run a new search or add any extra keywords, which is why it’s important to have a helpful seed keyword.

Step 3: Manually Filter the Keywords

Now that we’ve reduced our 700 keywords to the easiest options, it’s time to do some manual filtering.

You will need to go through these keywords and evaluate them one by one.

There isn’t a good shortcut for this. It’s best to manually eveluate them for your audience.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • Is this relevant to my niche?
  • Will this keyword help my audience?
  • Are my audience interested in this keyword?
  • What is the user intent of this keyword? Can I answer it with my website/blog?
  • Does this keyword fit in my content silo/pillar/topic cluster?
  • Do I have the proper expertise and experience to write on this?
  • Is this a YMYL or an ecommerce keyword? If so, do I have the relevant degrees or certifications, or an ecommerce site?
  • Are the SERPs actually easy, or did Keysearch make a mistake? (This happens sometimes, because Keysearch can’t take into account topical authority. For example, if all the top 10 sites are dedicated Rome travel blogs, and you have a general blog, it’ll be too hard for you to compete on topical authority.)

Only write on keywords that are beneficial to your audience, relevant to your site, and that you have clear experience or authority on.

Step 4: Create a Topical Map

Once you have all of your keywords that are easy, rankable, and relevant to your audience in a spreadsheet (I recommend my SEO Spreadsheets for Bloggers ), it’s time to plan your content.

Many people organize their keyword plans by volume, but never consider how they interconnect.

This makes internal linking a proper nightmare afterwards, and often leaves your audience with SEO blue balls because you only have one post on a topic cluster for months at a time.

My SEO Spreadsheets for Bloggers include 2 topical map spreadsheets, depending on how you like to organize things.

I recommend segmenting your keywords by content silo and then by topic cluster within that silo.

Topic Silo Examples

For example, let’s keep using “Rome travel”.

We run a site called “We Love Rome!”. The content silos are Rome attractions, food in Rome, and Rome accommodations.

Within Rome attractions, we have the topic clusters: Rome tours, free things to do, and day trips.

We have 10 keywords (I’ve made these up and not verified them on Keysearch fyi):

  1. Best cooking classes in Rome
  2. Best gluten free pizza in Rome
  3. Rome to Florence day trip
  4. Free things to do in Rome
  5. Best gelato near the Trevi fountain
  6. Airbnbs in Rome
  7. Rome apartments with a balcony
  8. Private tour guide Rome
  9. Budget travel Rome
  10. Best day trips from Rome

They’re all Rome keywords, but they don’t all belong in the same silo.

So I would organize them into their relevant clusters.

It would look something like this:

Rome Attractions -> Day Trips:

  • Rome to Florence day trip
  • Best day trips from Rome

Rome Attractions -> Rome Tours:

  • Best cooking classes in Rome
  • Private tour guide Rome

Rome Attractions -> Free Things To Do:

  • Free things to do in Rome
  • Budget travel Rome

See how that organizes things better?

This example is for a very niched down site. Most of us won’t have those.

So in this case, we may be able to get away with writing in different silos and clusters at the same time, but most sites can’t.

With She Knows SEO, I started topic clusters then left them alone for eons while working on courses. So I had 2 posts on SEO Keywords, and people were left with a ton of questions.

Luckily, I have my Facebook group where I answer them. But I could have saved us all heaps of time and energy by finishing that topic cluster before I moved on to AI or travel blog names 🤣.

I left people with SEO blue balls, and that’s not good!

Step 5: Write the Posts

Now you’re ready to write the posts for your easy keywords!

In fact, some of these keywords may not be for blog posts at all. They may be for services pages, sales pages, or ecommerce product descriptions.

SEO isn’t just limited to blogs, although that’s my favourite type of SEO.

I’ve even used this method to find easy keywords that I can record Youtube videos on – which is how I get #1 rankings on Google for my Youtube videos.

If you’re writing a post or page, you’ll need to do more than just find a keyword. You’ll need to actually use it in the post.

Don’t forget to properly optimize the post for your keyword!

👉 Get Keysearch – my favourite keyword research tool – for 30% off with code “sheknowsseo”!

Conclusion

Finding keywords is a very small part of SEO, yet everyone seems to think it’s the main thing.

I get it! It feels like a magic keyword will be the difference between 20k pageviews a month and 50k.

To some extent, yes they are. But largely, they’re not.

A keyword is just a keyword.

You can find the easiest keyword of all time that would bring in 10k pageviews a month, BUT if you aren’t in that niche, you won’t rank for it. And your audience would be hella confused.

The real key to SEO success is putting your audience first, always.

I ignore easy keywords or low competition keywords if they don’t make sense for my audience and my niche.

Always remember that keywords are market research, but you need to validate it with what you know about your audience.

Now, some easy keywords will still need a backlink. So don’t forget to keep doing your outreach!

Read More About Keyword Research

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Nina Clapperton is the founder of She Knows SEO.

She started blogging in 2018 and spent years doing everything “right” while earning $0. Then she stopped guessing and learned how search actually works. She rebuilt her travel site around audience intent and structure and grew to 50,000 sessions in 6 months. Within a year, the blog was bringing in $30,000 months and later crossed 243,000 pageviews.

She took the same audience first SEO approach and built her education business into multiple $100,000 months.

Now Nina teaches bloggers and online business owners how to build search powered businesses grounded in strong positioning, clear structure, and monetisation that actually supports their audience. She covers traditional SEO and AI driven search without the tech bro noise, and she’s known for explaining complex strategy with analogies you won’t forget.

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