SEO · Guide
If your site is new or low-authority, chasing head terms is a losing game — the first page is already owned by sites with thousands of backlinks. The faster path is the opposite move: pick smaller races you can win. Learning how to find low competition keywords is the single highest-leverage skill for a small site, and most of it comes down to one habit tools can't do for you — actually reading the search results page.
The trap most people fall into is treating a difficulty number as a verdict. It isn't. A keyword difficulty score is a fast filter that narrows thousands of terms down to a shortlist — but the decision about whether a term is genuinely winnable comes from looking at who already ranks. This guide gives you the decision criteria first, then a repeatable workflow, then the manual SERP read that separates a real opportunity from a tempting dead end.
What a low competition keyword really is
A low competition keyword is a query that few capable pages target well, so a smaller site has a realistic shot at the first page. The phrase gets thrown around loosely, so it helps to be precise about the three things that actually matter:
- Difficulty — how strong the pages currently ranking are. Most tools express this as a keyword difficulty (KD) score out of 100; the lower the number, the easier the term is likely to be to rank for.
- Volume — whether enough people search it to be worth the effort. "Low competition" with zero searches is just an empty page.
- Intent match — whether you can satisfy what the searcher actually wants better than the current results.
The sweet spot SEOs call "low-hanging fruit" sits where all three line up: enough volume to matter, low enough competition to reach, and an intent you can serve. A keyword with KD 12 and 10 monthly searches is technically low competition but rarely worth a dedicated page. A keyword with KD 25 and 800 searches that a couple of weak forum threads currently rank for is the prize.
Difficulty filter to start
KD < 30
Narrows the long list before you spend time reading SERPs. Lower it for newer sites.
Strongest SERP signal of weak competition
Forums on p.1
If Reddit, Quora, or forum threads rank on page one, big publishers are not defending the term.
Richest free source most people skip
Search Console
Queries you already rank 8–20 for are pre-validated low competition keywords with proven intent.
A useful reframe from the SEO community: keyword difficulty has nothing to do with your domain authority in isolation — it reflects the strength of the pages already ranking for that specific term. A site competing against Forbes and Backlinko on one query can still find a near-identical query where the top results are a 2019 blog post and two forum threads. Same site, completely different odds. That difference is what you are hunting for.
How to find low competition keywords: the core workflow
This how to find low competition keywords workflow takes an afternoon and repeats cleanly every time you plan content. It is deliberately tool-agnostic — the steps work whether you use Semrush, Ahrefs, a free tier, or just Google.
Start from intent, not a giant seed list
Write down the specific problems your reader is trying to solve, in their words. A durable how to find low competition keywords strategy starts with the job the searcher is doing — broad seeds like 'shoes' or 'CRM' only ever surface high-competition head terms. Narrow seeds like 'CRM for solo real estate agents' lead straight to winnable long-tail queries.
Expand each seed into real queries
Feed each seed into a keyword tool's suggestions, or use Google autocomplete, People Also Ask, and related searches for free. Pull in question phrasings: how, what, best, vs, for, without. These long-tail variants are where most low competition keywords live because fewer sites bother to target them individually.
Filter the list by difficulty and volume together
Sort or filter for a low KD score with non-trivial volume. Scan for the rows where difficulty is low but volume is still reasonable — those are the gold-nugget rows. Discard anything with zero searches and anything whose difficulty is obviously out of reach for your site today.
Open the live SERP for every shortlisted term
This is the step tools cannot do for you. For each candidate, search it in an incognito window and read the first page. Note who ranks, how strong they are, how old the content is, and whether the results actually answer the query. The score got you here; the SERP read decides whether you commit.
Confirm you can win, then map the page
Keep only the terms where you can plausibly outrank what's there with a better, more specific page. For each survivor, note the angle, the format the SERP rewards (guide, list, comparison), and the one question your page must answer better than anyone. That list is your content plan.
Notice that the difficulty score does its job in steps three and four, then steps out of the way. The score is a triage tool. The SERP read is the diagnosis.
Read the SERP: the manual check a difficulty score can't make
The most reliable way to confirm a low competition keyword is to look at who already ranks — and the clearest signal is weak competitors on page one.
"Search for long-tail keywords that are suggested by Google. If you see forums within the top results, it's a good indication that there is not much competition on that specific keyword."
If forums, Reddit threads, or thin, outdated pages fill the first page, the keyword is almost always winnable for a small site. Major brands defend valuable terms aggressively; when they're absent, it usually means the term isn't on their radar yet. Run each shortlisted candidate through a quick read:
A SERP that only looks easy
The difficulty score is low, but page one is wall-to-wall established brands, recent in-depth guides, and a featured snippet that already nails the answer. A low number here is misleading — the term is defended even if the metric says otherwise.
A SERP that signals low competition
Page one includes Reddit or Quora threads, a couple of small niche blogs, an outdated post from years ago, and no comprehensive resource. The intent is clear but no single page fully satisfies it. A focused, current, genuinely helpful page can realistically break in.
There is a famous version of this from the SEO community: an operator running "rubber ducky photoshoots" discovered the term had surprisingly high search volume and almost no real competition — no keyword tool had ever suggested it, and none of the obvious competitors optimized for it. The lesson isn't about ducks. It's that the best opportunities are often the ones the tools never surface, found by paying attention to your own niche and reading the results for yourself.
The free way to find low competition keywords before you pay for a tool
You do not need an expensive subscription to start. Google hands you clues for free if you know where to look, and your own data is better than anything a tool can sell you.
- Google autocomplete. Type a seed phrase and pause — every suggestion is a real query people search. Add a letter (a, b, c…) after your seed to surface more.
- People Also Ask and related searches. The PAA box and the "related searches" block at the bottom of the results are a free map of adjacent long-tail questions, each a candidate.
- Your Google Search Console data. This is the single most overlooked source. Filter the Performance report for queries where you rank in positions 8–20 with real impressions but few clicks. These are pre-validated low competition keywords: Google already considers you relevant, you just need a stronger, more focused page to break onto page one.
- AI assistants as an expansion tool. A prompt like "act as an SEO expert and suggest 20 long-tail, low competition keyword ideas for [topic], with search intent for each" produces a fast brainstorm. Treat the output as raw seeds to validate, never as verified data — always confirm volume and difficulty before committing.
Search Console deserves the top spot. New keywords are a guess about intent; your existing near-miss rankings are proof of it. Refreshing those pages is often the fastest win available — our guide to updating old articles for SEO walks through turning page-two rankings into page-one traffic.
Where winnable keywords usually hide
Illustrative relative competition by query type — directional, not measured data. The pattern is consistent: the longer and more specific the query, the lower the typical competition.
Tools that find low competition keywords, compared
Once free methods give you a shortlist, a dedicated tool speeds up filtering at scale and adds a difficulty number to each candidate. There's no single best how to find low competition keywords tool for everyone — the right pick depends on budget and how your niche sells. Here's how the common options compare. For exact plans and limits, check current vendor pricing, since tiers change often.
| Tool | Best for | Low-competition signal | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semrush | Serious research at scale | Keyword difficulty (KD %) plus personal difficulty (PKD %) tuned to your domain | Steeper learning curve and cost |
| Ahrefs | Backlink-aware difficulty reads | KD score weighted by the strength of ranking pages | Premium pricing |
| KeySearch | Bloggers on a budget | Designed to surface low-competition organic terms, not paid-ad keywords | Smaller database than the majors |
| Ubersuggest | Quick free checks | Difficulty plus volume, with limited free searches per day | Limited free quota; lighter data |
| Google Search Console | Pages you already have | Queries you rank 8–20 for — validated intent, low effort to improve | Only shows terms you already get impressions on |
| eRank | Etsy and marketplace sellers | Filter by competition count, then sort by average searches | Marketplace-specific, not general web SEO |
A note on Semrush's personal keyword difficulty: a term might show a generic KD of 60, which looks competitive, while your personal difficulty comes back at 35 because of your site's existing authority and topical fit. Once your domain has some history, that personalized number is far more actionable than a one-size-fits-all score — it tells you what's reachable for you, not for an average site.
Low competition keywords for AI answers, not just Google
Here's the part most keyword guides miss in 2026: the same low competition, long-tail questions that are easy to rank for on Google are also the queries where you can become the cited source inside AI answers.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews synthesize their answers from pages that address a specific question directly and clearly. For a head term, dozens of authoritative pages compete to be the source. For a precise long-tail question that no major brand has covered well, a single focused page can become the answer the model pulls from — and your brand name lands in front of the reader even when there's no click.
That makes specific, low competition queries doubly valuable: they're winnable in classic search and in answer engines at the same time. The structural requirements overlap heavily — a direct answer up top, clear question-framed headings, and verifiable specifics. Our guide on writing content for answer engines covers that answer-first structure, and how to appear in generative search results maps the wider visibility system. The takeaway: a low-competition keyword list is now also an AI-citation opportunity list.
Tradeoffs and cautions
Targeting low competition is the right call for most small sites, but it isn't free of pitfalls. Apply judgment, not just filters.
Works well when
- Realistic for new and low-authority sites — you compete where the big players aren't
- Long-tail terms convert better because the intent is more specific
- Faster, more predictable ranking timelines than head-term battles
- Doubles as an AI-citation opportunity list for answer engines
Watch out for
- Low difficulty plus low volume can mean a page that ranks but earns nothing
- Difficulty scores disagree across tools and can be misleading without a SERP read
- Domain authority of ranking pages — not your DA — is what actually determines difficulty, which trips up beginners
- Chasing only easy terms can leave you without a path to the higher-value queries later
Two cautions worth internalizing. First, validate volume before you commit: the community is full of operators who published 60 articles on truly low competition terms and still saw almost no traffic, because the keywords had no real demand behind them. Low competition is necessary but not sufficient — it has to be paired with searchers who exist. Second, don't let "easy" become a ceiling. Use low competition keywords to build topical authority in a niche, then ride that authority into the more competitive, higher-value terms once your site has earned the standing to compete for them.
Done well, a how to find low competition keywords strategy isn't about avoiding hard keywords forever — it's about sequencing. Win the small races first, compound the authority, and the bigger races stop being out of reach.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a low competition keyword?
A low competition keyword is a search term that few authoritative pages target well, so a smaller or newer site can realistically rank for it. In practice it shows a low keyword difficulty score (often KD under 30), real but modest search volume, and a first page that includes forums, Reddit threads, or thin, outdated pages rather than major brands.
How do I find low competition keywords for free?
Start with Google itself: type a seed phrase and read autocomplete, the People Also Ask box, and the related searches at the bottom of the page. Each suggestion is a real query. Then open Google Search Console for terms you already rank on page two for. Free tiers of Ubersuggest or KeySearch add difficulty scores when you need a number.
Does a low keyword difficulty score mean I will rank?
No. Difficulty scores estimate competition from the authority of pages already ranking, but they cannot see your site's relevance, content quality, or intent match. Always open the live SERP and read it. If the top results genuinely answer the query better than you can, a low score will not save you — and a moderate score can still be winnable.
What keyword difficulty score should I target for a new site?
A common rule of thumb is to stay under KD 30 for a site with little authority, and under 20 for a brand-new domain. Treat these as starting filters, not guarantees. Semrush also offers a personal keyword difficulty score (PKD) that adjusts the number to your own domain, which is more useful than a generic KD once your site has some ranking history.
Are long-tail keywords always low competition?
Usually, but not always. Longer, more specific phrases attract fewer competitors and convert better, which is why they dominate low competition keyword lists. But some long-tail queries are owned by huge sites, and others have almost no search volume. Validate each one with a difficulty check and a quick SERP read before you commit a page to it.
How do low competition keywords help with AI search visibility?
AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews pull from pages that clearly and directly answer specific questions. Low competition, long-tail questions are exactly the queries where a focused page can become the cited source, because fewer strong competitors own that answer. Ranking for them builds clicks and AI citations at once.