How to Find Low-Competition Keywords
You find low-competition keywords by looking for searches where page one is weak: forums, thin posts, and sites no bigger than yours. Tools can shortlist candidates, but the confirmation is always reading the actual results.
This post covers where to find candidates free and how to confirm a winner.
What Makes a Keyword Low Competition?
What makes a keyword low competition is the page one you would have to beat, nothing else. A keyword is low competition when the current results are forums, decade-old posts, thin pages, or stores your size, because those are fights you can win with one good answer, sometimes even when you rank without backlinks.
Difficulty scores are the shortcut version of that read. Semrush’s keyword difficulty metric runs 0 to 100 and is built mostly from the backlinks and authority of the ranking pages, with 0-14 rated “very easy” and under 30 “easy.”
Treat the score as a filter, not a verdict. It shortlists candidates fast, but it cannot see that result three is an unanswered forum thread from 2019, and that detail is often the whole opportunity.
Length is the other reliable signal. The more words in the search, the fewer sites bothered to target it, which is why the same phrase pattern keeps working: product plus problem, product plus audience, product plus place. That is the whole case for long-tail vs short-tail keywords on a store that has no authority yet.
Think about what your buyer adds when the generic search fails them. Size, skin type, room, climate, budget. Those add-ons are where competition thins out and intent thickens.
Where Do You Find Candidates for Free?
You find low-competition keyword candidates for free in Google itself, which is where I start while most people open a tool. Its autocomplete predictions come from real searches people run, shown because they are common or trending, so every suggestion is proof of demand in the searcher’s own words.
Work the pattern deliberately:
- Type your product plus each letter of the alphabet and harvest the suggestions.
- Open People Also Ask boxes and expand them; each click loads more questions.
- Add qualifiers: “for beginners,” “for sensitive skin,” “vs,” “without.”
- Mine your own customer emails for questions no tool has ever listed.
An hour of this produces a bigger list than most stores can write in a quarter. The honest half of the free versus paid tools debate is that paid tools mostly speed up and sort what this exercise finds by hand.
Keep the harvest in a plain spreadsheet with three columns: the phrase, where you found it, and a yes or no after you check the results. Boring, and it works.
Why Do Small Keywords Beat Big Ones for Stores?
Because the big numbers lie about clicks and the small ones lie about value. Semrush’s zero-clicks study found 25.6% of desktop searches and 57% of mobile searches end without a click to any result, and head terms are exactly where answer boxes and ads eat the most.
Specific searches run the other way. Shopify’s own guidance on long-tail keywords pegs them at more than 90% of all searches and notes they convert better because the intent is already defined. The person typing “cast iron fire pit for small patio” has a wallet out, not a curiosity.
This is also how you eventually win the big terms. Each small victory stacks into topical authority on the subject, and the site that owns the questions ends up contesting the head term with a running start.
For a store, that trade is the whole business case. Fifty visits from buyers beat five thousand from browsers, and low-competition keywords are where those buyer searches are still unclaimed.
Just know the head terms will still be there when you are ready. Nothing about starting small locks you out of going big; it just means you arrive with a site that has already won something.
How Do You Confirm a Keyword Before Writing?
You confirm a keyword before writing by searching it and grading page one against three questions. Who is ranking: big brands or beatable sites? What format ranks: posts, products, or forums? How good is the best answer: complete, or clearly improvable?
Beatable, matchable, improvable is the pass mark. If the top results are majors with complete answers, move down your list; there is no shame in skipping a fight you would lose, only in spending a month on it.
Do not toss the tiny ones while you grade. A phrase with no reported volume but a weak page one is often worth keeping, and the case for zero-volume keywords is strong enough that I gave it its own post.
I will concede the uncomfortable part: this check is judgment, not math, and the first few reads feel uncertain. It sharpens fast. After twenty SERPs you will spot an open door in ten seconds.
The graded no’s are not wasted either. Keep them on the spreadsheet with the reason, because a fight you cannot win today is often winnable in a year, and the list is your map of what growing stronger unlocks.
Then commit one post per confirmed keyword and give it the format page one told you to build. The keyword picked the fight; the post just has to show up armed.
Weak Page One, Real Demand, Buyer Intent
- Treat difficulty scores as a filter, not a verdict, with under 30 rated easy in Semrush
- Look for longer searches that add size, skin type, room, climate, or budget to the product
- Type your product plus each letter of the alphabet into Google and harvest the autocomplete suggestions
- Expand People Also Ask boxes, add qualifiers like for beginners or vs, and mine customer emails
- Keep the harvest in a spreadsheet with three columns: phrase, source, and a yes or no
- Search each keyword and grade page one: who ranks, what format ranks, and how good the best answer is
- Keep zero-volume phrases with a weak page one, and log graded no’s with the reason
- Commit one post per confirmed keyword in the format page one told you to build
Want Your First Fifty Winnable Keywords?
Low-competition keywords are found in Google itself: harvest real searches from autocomplete and People Also Ask, shortlist with a difficulty score if you have one, and confirm every pick by reading the page you would have to beat. Weak page one, real demand, buyer intent. That is the whole formula.
If you want the list without the legwork, book a call. I will pull your Search Console, run the harvest for your niche, and hand you fifty keywords your store can win this quarter, each one SERP-checked. And if you want a partner on it every month, see my SEO services.
