Find Low-Competition High-Traffic Keywords | A How-To Guide

Let’s be honest. The “low-competition, high-traffic keyword” is the holy grail of digital marketing. We all talk about it. It’s this idea of striking oil in your backyard—finding that one magic phrase that thousands of people search for, but somehow, nobody has bothered to write a decent article about.

It sounds like a total myth.

I’ve been in this SEO game for over a decade now. I’ve chased those white whales. I’ve wasted months building content for keywords I had no chance of ranking for, and I’ve also stumbled backward into goldmines. So here’s the truth: these keywords do exist. (And trust me, they do.) But they almost never look the way you think they will. They aren’t just lying on the pavement, waiting for you to pick them up.

The real trick, the thing that separates a successful site from a ghost town, is learning how to find low-competition high-traffic keywords with a repeatable process. This isn’t about “5 quick hacks.” It’s a skill. It’s part detective work, part psychology, and part just learning to read the clues Google leaves for you. This is the whole-system guide on how to do it for real.

More in Keyword Research Category

Understanding Search Intent In SEO

Long-Tail Vs Short-Tail Keywords Strategy

Key Takeaways

Before we get into the weeds, let’s get on the same page. If you only read this part, at least you’ll know the core principles:

• “Low-Competition” means “Beatable,” Not “Empty.” You’re hunting for SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) that aren’t brick-walled by massive authorities. A forum or a “thin” article on page one? That’s a green light.
• “High-Traffic” Is Relative. A keyword with 500 monthly searches can be a goldmine if the buying intent is perfect. A 50,000-search keyword? Could just be worthless vanity.
• Search Intent > Volume. This is the big one. If you don’t match why the person is searching, you will never rank. I don’t care how low the competition is.
• Your Eyeballs Are the Final Judge. Keyword difficulty (KD) scores from tools are just an educated guess. You must look at the search results yourself.
• Your Best Keywords Are Problems. The most valuable keywords are often phrased as questions or complaints. You’ll find these on Reddit, not just in a keyword tool.

What Are We Really Looking For?

So, What Does “Low-Competition, High-Traffic” Actually Mean in 2025?

First, let’s clear up a huge misconception. You are not going to find a single keyword with 100,000 monthly searches and a Keyword Difficulty (KD) score of 0. It just doesn’t exist. If a tool tells you it does, the tool is broken.

The “holy grail” has changed.

“High-Traffic” in 2025 simply means a realistic number of searches for your niche. If you have a brand new blog, a keyword with 700 monthly searches is a home run. I have a client in a hyper-specific B2B industrial niche; a keyword with only 90 monthly searches was a massive win. Why? Because it led to six-figure contracts. Forget volume as a vanity metric. Focus on value.

“Low-Competition” in 2025 means you have a fighting chance. It means the top 10 results aren’t all billion-dollar brands, major news outlets, or government-level authorities. The real signal of low competition is seeing other small blogs, forum posts (Reddit is a big one), or articles that are obviously old, thin, or just don’t answer the searcher’s question.

That is your opening.

Is “High-Traffic” Even the Right Goal?

Not really, and here’s why. It’s mostly a vanity metric.

I would much rather have an article that gets 100 visits a month and converts 10 of them into paying customers than an article that gets 10,000 visits and converts zero.

The real goal is valuable traffic. And value is 100% tied to intent. You have to ask yourself, “What problem is this person really trying to solve?” Are they just curious (Informational)? Are they looking for a specific website (Navigational)? Are they comparing their options (Commercial)? Or are they ready to pull out their credit card (Transactional)?

A low-competition, 300-search-volume transactional keyword like “best hiking boots for wide feet and flat arches” is infinitely more valuable than a 30,000-search-volume informational keyword like “what are mountains.”

How Do You Define “Low-Competition” Realistically?

It’s not a number. It’s an assessment. When I look at a keyword, I’m not just glancing at the “KD” score in my SEO tool. I’m trying to read the story that the search results page is telling me.

I know I’ve found a “low-competition” opportunity when I spot these:

1. Forum Posts: Reddit, Quora, or niche forums sitting in the top 10. This is a huge green light. It means Google is desperate for a good answer, can’t find one in a “real” article, and is settling for user-generated content.
2. “Thin” Content: The articles that are ranking are short (under 1,000 words), poorly written, or just don’t cover the topic very well.
3. Mismatched Intent: The search is “how to change a bike tire,” but the top results are all product pages selling bike tires. Google is misunderstanding the user. You can win by actually answering the question with a guide.
4. Low-Authority Sites: The top-ranking sites look a lot like yours. They’re other blogs, not Forbes, Wikipedia, or Healthline.

This manual check is the entire secret. It’s how you find the gaps the tools can’t see.

The Foundational Mindset (The “Why” Before the “How”)

Why Is Chasing “Head Terms” a Losing Battle?

I have to tell you a story. When I built my first serious blog back in 2011, I thought I was a genius. It was a productivity blog. I decided I was going to rank for “best productivity app.” That was it. I spent a month writing an epic 4,000-word “pillar post.” I reviewed everything. It was a masterpiece.

I hit publish.

Nothing. Crickets.

I checked my rankings. Page 8. A few weeks later? Page 6. I was stuck. The reason was simple: the top 10 results were sites like PCMag, TechCrunch, Wired, and the app stores themselves. I was a rowboat in a shipping lane. I had zero authority, and I was trying to out-muscle giants.

A total waste of time. That’s what happens when you chase head terms. You’re competing against sites with 15 years of authority and multi-million dollar content budgets. You’ll lose. The only way to win is to not play their game. You have to find the keywords they ignore.

What’s the Real Difference Between Search Intent and Keywords?

This is easily the most important concept in this entire guide.

• A keyword is just the words a person types (e.g., “running shoes”).
• Search intent is the problem they’re trying to solve (e.g., “My feet hurt when I run, I need new shoes that have better cushioning”).

Google’s entire multi-trillion-dollar business is built on one thing: figuring out intent. If you create content that solves the problem, you’ll win. If you just stuff the keyword into a generic article, you’ll fail.

Think about it. The keyword “best camera” has a dozen possible intents:

• A beginner looking for their first DSLR?
• A professional photographer looking for a $5,000 mirrorless body?
• A vlogger who just needs something with a flip screen?

A generic “Best Cameras of 2025” post tries to target all of them and satisfies no one. But an article on “Best Beginner Cameras Under $500 for Travel” perfectly matches a specific intent. That’s the keyword you want.

How Can “Topical Authority” Be Your Secret Weapon?

You don’t rank for just one keyword. You rank for a topic. Google wants to see that you are an expert in a particular field. This is the “E-A-T” (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) part of E-E-A-T.

Here’s how you build it: You don’t just write one article. You write a “cluster” of articles that cover a topic from every single angle.

Let’s say your main topic is “sourdough baking for beginners.”

• Your “pillar” post might be “The Ultimate Guide to Sourdough for Beginners.”
• But then you write supporting articles that all link back to that pillar post. And these supporting articles target low-competition, long-tail keywords:
  • “how to feed a sourdough starter”
  • “why is my sourdough starter not bubbling”
  • “best dutch oven for sourdough”
  • “how to get a better ‘ear’ on my sourdough loaf”

By covering the entire topic, you prove to Google that you’re an authority. This makes it easier to rank for every new article you publish within that topic. Those low-competition keywords are your building blocks.

Your Keyword Research Toolkit (The “What”)

Do I Really Need to Pay for Expensive SEO Tools?

Let’s be blunt: it helps. A lot. Paid tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz are powerful because they scrape and index massive amounts of data. They speed up the discovery process by 100x.

But are they required? No.

You can absolutely find amazing keywords using nothing but free tools and your brain. The free method just requires more manual labor, more time, and more cleverness. The tool doesn’t do the thinking for you, it just hands you a bigger pile of data to sift through. I’ll show you both methods, but never believe that a $100/month subscription is a magic wand. A smart researcher with Google’s free tools will beat a lazy researcher with Ahrefs every single time.

What Are the “Big 3” Paid Tools Worth the Money?

If you have the budget, these are the industry standards. I personally use Ahrefs daily, but you can’t go wrong with any of them.

1. Ahrefs: Their “Keywords Explorer” is my go-to. Its main strength is its massive keyword database and its (relatively) reliable Keyword Difficulty score. The “Content Gap” feature (finding what your competitors rank for that you don’t) is worth the price of admission all by itself.
2. Semrush: Very similar to Ahrefs, and some marketers prefer its interface. It has a powerful “Keyword Magic Tool” that is great for brainstorming and filtering. It also provides excellent data on keyword intent (Informational, Transactional, etc.).
3. Moz Pro: Moz was one of the OGs. Their “Keyword Explorer” is solid, and they have a unique “Priority” score that tries to blend volume, difficulty, and organic click-through-rate to give you a single “is this good?” number.

What Are the Best Free Tools to Start With?

This is where the real detective work begins. And who knows more about what people search for than Google?

• Google’s Own Ecosystem:
  • Google Keyword Planner: It’s built for advertisers, so the “volume” numbers are in broad ranges (e.g., “1K-10K”). But it’s fantastic for finding ideas and related terms.
  • Google Search Console: If you already have a site, this is your #1 tool. Period. Go to the “Performance” report. It shows you every query you already get impressions for. You will find absolute gold here—keywords you’re ranking for on page 2 or 3 by complete accident. Optimize your content for those terms, and you can jump to page 1.
  • Google Trends: Amazing for seeing if a keyword is growing in popularity or if it’s purely seasonal.
• Google’s SERP Itself:
  • Autocomplete (Alphabet Soup): Just type your seed keyword into Google and see what it suggests. Then, type your keyword followed by “a,” “b,” “c,” etc. Then try “how to [keyword],” “why is [keyword],” etc.
  • “People Also Ask” (PAA): These are literally the questions people are asking. Every PAA box is a potential article.
  • “Related Searches”: At the very bottom of the page. More gold.

Are There Any “Sleeper” Tools People Overlook?

Yes. Two of my favorites are visualizers. They help you understand the connections between topics.

1. AnswerThePublic: You type in a seed keyword (like “coffee”), and it generates a beautiful visualization of all the questions people are asking about it, broken down by “who,” “what,” “why,” “where,” “are,” “can,” etc. It’s a content-planning machine.
2. https://www.google.com/search?q=AlsoAsked.com: This tool scrapes the “People Also Ask” data and shows you how the questions relate to each other. It gives you a clear map of the user’s journey from one question to the next, which helps you structure your article to answer all of them.

The Step-by-Step Process: Finding Your First “Golden” Keywords

Where Do the First “Seed” Keywords Even Come From?

They don’t come from a tool. They come from your brain and your audience.

Stop thinking about “keywords.” Start thinking about “problems.”

If you’re a personal trainer, don’t start with “fitness.” Start with the exact, verbatim questions your clients ask you.

• “Why do my knees hurt when I squat?”
• “What’s a good snack to eat after 8 PM that won’t ruin my diet?”
• “How do I get motivated to go to the gym on a rainy day?”

These are your seed keywords. They are specific, they are full of intent, and they come directly from your target audience. Your expertise, your hobbies, your job… that’s where you start.

How Do I Use Competitor Analysis Without Just Copying Them?

Copying is a terrible strategy. You’ll always be one step behind. Instead, you’re going to use your competitors for reconnaissance.

Find 3-5 “competitors” that are slightly bigger than you, but not giants. Find other blogs, not The New York Times. Then, plug their domain into a paid tool like Ahrefs (you can usually get a 7-day trial).

Don’t look at their top 10 best keywords. Those are way too competitive.

Instead, look for these two things:

1. Keyword Gaps: Use the “Content Gap” tool. Put in your site and 2-3 of their sites. It will show you keywords they all rank for that you don’t. This is your topic map.
2. Their “Page 2” Keywords: Filter their ranking keywords to only show positions 8-20. These are topics they tried to rank for but didn’t quite nail. Maybe their article was thin, or they missed the intent. This is your opportunity. You can swoop in, write a better article on that exact topic, and beat them.

What’s the “Alphabet Soup” Technique in Practice?

This is my favorite free method. It’s so simple.

1. Go to Google in an Incognito window.
2. Type in your seed “problem.” Let’s use “best hiking boot.”
3. Look at the autocomplete suggestions.
   • “best hiking boot for women”
   • “best hiking boot for wide feet”
   • “best hiking boot brands”
4. Now, go through the alphabet.
   • Type “best hiking boot f” -> “best hiking boot for flat feet“
   • Type “best hiking boot n” -> “best hiking boot near me“
   • Type “best hiking boot w” -> “best hiking boot waterproof“
5. Now, try question modifiers.
   • Type “how to clean hiking boots“
   • Type “why do my hiking boots hurt my toes“

In 90 seconds, you’ve just found a dozen long-tail keyword ideas, all with clear user intent, that you can go and validate.

How Can I Systematically “Scrape” Google’s Features?

Don’t just look at the “People Also Ask” (PAA) box. Use it.

1. Search for your seed keyword.
2. Find the PAA box. Write down the 3-4 questions you see.
3. Click one of the questions.
4. When you click it, Google automatically adds 2-3 new, related questions to the bottom of the box.
5. Click another one. More appear.

You can do this for 10 minutes and map out an entire topic cluster. Every single question is a low-competition H2, H3, or even a dedicated article. Google is literally handing you the content outline that it wants to see.

Can Forums Like Reddit and Quora Really Give Me Keywords?

They don’t just give you keywords. They give you the exact language your audience uses. This is the secret to writing copy that actually connects with people.

I had a client who sold high-end, $500+ coffee grinders. We were completely stuck. All the “best coffee grinder” keywords were locked down by huge review sites.

So, I spent an entire evening just reading r/espresso.

I didn’t see people searching for “best espresso grinder.” I saw them posting things like:

• “Help! Why is my espresso so sour?”
• “I’m upgrading from a [Brand X] grinder, what’s the next step?”
• “Is the [Client’s Brand] really worth the money over the [Cheaper Brand]?”

We built our entire content strategy around these problems. We wrote an article titled “Is Your Espresso Sour? Your Grinder Might Be the Problem.” It became their #1 traffic source for two years. It intercepted users who had a pain point and guided them to the solution (our client’s product).

That’s the power of finding the problem.

The “Validation” Phase: Is This Keyword Actually Good?

My Tool Says “Keyword Difficulty: 5.” Am I Good to Go?

No. Not yet.

I’ve seen KD 5 keywords that were impossible to rank for because the top 5 results were all hyper-authoritative, perfect-intent pages. And I’ve seen KD 40 keywords that I was able to rank for in a month because the SERP was full of garbage.

The tool’s score is just a guess. It’s a starting point. Your eyes are the final judge. You must perform a manual SERP analysis.

What Am I Looking for When I “Manually Check the SERP”?

Open an Incognito window, type in your keyword, and look at the first 10 results. Be a detective. You’re looking for signs of weakness.

• Who is ranking? Is it Forbes, Wikipedia, and Healthline? Or is it “Dave’s Hiking Blog” and a Reddit thread? If you see other small blogs, forums, or user-generated content, that’s a massive green light.
• How good is the content? Click the top 3-5 results. Is the content thin (under 1,500 words)? Is it poorly written? Is it full of ads? Does it even answer the question, or does it just talk around it? If you can confidently say, “I can write something 10x better than this,” you’ve found a winner.
• Is there an “Intent Mismatch”? Does your keyword ask a “how-to” question, but the results are all product pages? This is Google struggling. If you can create the content that perfectly matches the intent (a “how-to” post), Google will often reward you for it.
• How relevant are the titles? Do the top 10 titles perfectly match the keyword you searched? Or are they for a broader topic? If your keyword is “best hiking boots for wide feet” and the top result is just “best hiking boots,” you can win by being more specific.

How Do I Sniff Out True “Searcher Intent”?

Google tells you exactly what it thinks searchers want. You just have to look.

Search your keyword and look at the type of content that’s ranking.

• Are they all blog posts / “how-to” guides? Then you must write a blog post.
• Are they all e-commerce category pages? Then Google thinks people want to shop. A blog post won’t rank.
• Are they all videos? Then people want to see it done. You should embed a video in your post.
• Are they all “best of” listicles? Then people are in comparison mode. You must create a “best of” list.

This is the “matching” part of the equation. Don’t fight Google. Don’t try to rank a product page for an informational query. See what Google is already rewarding, and create the best version of that.

You Found Your Keyword. Now What?

How Do I Weave This Keyword Into My Content Naturally?

Please, do not “keyword stuff.” The days of writing “our best hiking boots for flat feet are the best flat-foot hiking boots you can buy” are long over. It will get you penalized.

Think “topic,” not “keyword.” Your goal is to create the single best, most comprehensive resource on the planet for that query.

That said, on-page SEO still matters. Here’s a simple, natural checklist:

• Title (H1) Tag: Your main keyword should be in the title, preferably as close to the beginning as possible.
• Introduction: Use the keyword or a very close variation within the first 100 words. This signals to the user and to Google that they’re in the right place.
• Subheadings (H2s, H3s): Include your keyword or related LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords in some of your subheadings.
• Body Content: Write naturally. If you’re truly covering the topic, you will automatically use your main keyword and dozens of related synonyms without even thinking about it.
• URL: Make your URL short and clean. (e.g., yoursite.com/best-hiking-boots-wide-feet)

The goal is to write for the human first. As researchers from MIT Sloan demonstrated, search engines are increasingly designed to understand context and intent, not just a string of words. If you provide a genuinely helpful, expert-level answer to the user’s problem, you’ve done 90% of the SEO work.

Is the “Keyword Hunt” Ever Really Over?

No. It’s not a “set it and forget it” task. It’s an ongoing process.

Your best-performing articles will give you new keyword ideas (from Google Search Console). Your competitors will publish new content you need to analyze. User behavior will change.

But once you have this framework, it’s no longer a guessing game. You have a system. You know how to find the cracks in the wall, the questions no one else is bothering to answer, and the problems your audience is desperate to solve.

Stop hunting for keywords. Start listening for problems. The traffic will follow.

FAQ