When doing keyword research you'll usually
start with a broad seed, toss it into a keyword research tool, go to a keyword ideas report,
and then pick a needle from the haystack. There's nothing wrong with this because it's
important to tackle popular keyword phrases. Now, on the flip side, if everyone is doing
keyword research this way then everyone will be finding the same keywords, ignoring
hundreds or maybe even thousands of perfectly good opportunities. But there are ways to find untapped keyword
opportunities where competition is low, but search traffic potential is medium to high. So in this tutorial, I'm going to show you a
few advanced keyword research tips to find untapped keyword opportunities that
are worth going after. Stay tuned. [music] Now, the word "untapped" in the context
of SEO is kind of a buzzword. But I want to put some meaning behind
the idea of "untapped keywords" because they do exist. An untapped keyword is one that's
flown under the radar. It still has search demand but is less
competitive than the obvious targets. Now, there isn't exactly a cookie-cutter
way to find these keywords. And if there was, then these keywords
wouldn't be untapped. Finding golden keyword opportunities is
more about identifying patterns and then using your keyword research skills to follow
a rabbit hole which can often lead you to an opportunity, a detour, and sometimes
a dead end. But you need to follow the rabbit
hole to find out. So let's kick this tutorial off with the easiest
tactic and that's to look at your competitors' low competition topics. This is by far the easiest place to start
because by looking at your competitor's most trafficked pages, you'll be looking at
relevant topics to your niche along with organic traffic metrics. And I'll be using Ahrefs Site Explorer
to do this. So to get started, enter one of your organic
search competitor's domains. I'll go with nerdwallet.com. Next, go to the Top Pages report, which
shows you the pages that send the site the most search traffic. Next, let's set a Keyword Difficulty filter
with a maximum value of something low like 20, considering the personal finance
niche is pretty competitive. Now, before I apply the filter, it's important
to note that the numbers in the data table will change. Meaning, once I hit Apply, things like traffic,
value, and keywords will all decrease. And that's because the results will change
to reflect the set filters -- in this case, pages that have keyword rankings with
difficulty scores of 20 or less. Let's hit Apply. Now, when you skim through this list, you'll
want to use some common sense and compare the URL slugs with the top keyword. And what you're looking for is to see if
the top keyword is the one that the page is actually targeting, which you can
kind of tell from the URL slugs. For example, this URL is clearly targeting
"webull vs robinhood" and that's also the top keyword so this is potentially a lower-competition
topic that gets a decent amount of search traffic. Now, to see the total global traffic to this
page, just click the caret, and you'll see that it gets a similar amount of monthly search
visits when compared to the filtered amount of search traffic. But the fun doesn't have to stop here. After you've gone through your first competitor's
Top Pages report, go to the Competing Domains report to find other competitors with
similar keyword rankings. Then just rinse and repeat as many
times as you'd like. The next method is to identify unique
keyword modifiers. A modifier is an add-on to a base keyword. For example, if your head term is "credit
cards," then modifiers could be "top", "best", the current year, or any combination. Now, the type of modifiers we're looking for
are ones that would alter the search results. For example, if you search for "best credit
cards" and "best credit cards 2021," the results would be near identical. On the other hand, if you compare the search
results for "best rap albums 2020" and "best rap albums 2000," you'll have completely different
search results because the modifier changes the searcher's expectations. So if we go back to the Top Pages report for
Nerdwallet where the KD filter is set to 20, you'll see that this page is on "colorado
first time home buyer programs". The top keyword seems like the one the page
is targeting, and if I click the caret, you'll see the total global traffic potential isn't
far off from the filtered traffic number. Now, if you use some common sense, then you'll
know that the keyword "first time home buyer" is going to be more competitive than
"first time home buyer colorado." And you'll also know that first time home
buyer programs will generally be slightly different from state to state. So in this case, we've identified a modifier
to a competitive phrase. Now it's time to follow the rabbit hole. So I'll go to Google and search for "50
us states copy and paste." Let's click through to the first result,
and click "Copy list to clipboard." Next, I'm going to format these so that each
state is separated by commas instead of new lines using this tool. I'll paste in my list of US states, copy the
comma separated list and then head on over to Ahrefs Keywords Explorer. Let's add our seed "first time home buyer"
and run the search. Next, I'll go to the Phrase Match report. Now, all you have to do is hit the Include
box, paste in your comma separated list of 50 US states, and hit the Any word tab. So when I hit Apply, it'll show us any keyword
that includes the phrase "first time home buyer" as well as one of the US states. And now we have at least 50 pages we can
create content around where many are low competition and they're all closely
related which could work well from a site structure perspective. Alright, the next way to find untapped
keywords is to look for uncommon seeds. As I showed you before, the most common
way to do keyword research is to enter a few broad seeds in a keyword research tool,
go to a keyword ideas report, and then sift through the results. But because tons of people are doing the exact
same thing, everyone will be looking at similar sets of keywords. To prove my point, let's say you have
a content site on beards. Now, I want you to take the next 5 seconds
to think of seed keywords related to beards. Ready? [countdown] So how many did you come up with? I came up with three. "Beard," "beards," and "mustache." And I'm guessing there's some overlap
between your list and mine. So to separate yourself from others, you
need to find seeds that are lesser known but still popular. To do that, go to Ahrefs Site Explorer
and enter a competitor's domain. I'll go with beardoholic.com. Next, go to Version 2 of the Organic
Keywords report, which shows you the site's keyword rankings. Now, let's set a keyword filter to
exclude common seeds. So I'll hit the Keywords filter and set the rules
to "Doesn't contain" "beard" and then I'll set a second rule to "Doesn't contain" "mustache." Let's hit Apply. And now you'll see some great topics like
"best stubble trimmer," "goatee styles," and "mutton chops" to name a few. Now, we're not looking for keyword ideas
here, we're looking for seeds. So that would be keywords like "stubble," "goatee,"
"mutton chops," "laser comb," and "monkey tail." So let's go back to Keywords Explorer
and run a new search. Then we'll hit the Phrase match report. And as you can see, we have quite a few
potential low competition topics, and it would just be a matter of looking at the
SERPs and deciding whether the keywords are worth targeting. Alright, the next way is one of my favorite
tactics for affiliate sites and that's to find "vs" and "review" keywords at scale. For affiliate sites, "vs"- and "review"-type
keywords are awesome to rank for because people who are searching for them are
likely very close to making a purchase. And these keywords tell us that searchers
have likely done some research and narrowed down their purchasing decision to
just a couple different products. Meaning, your content could be the last
touch point before they hit the "buy" button. Now, more likely than not, you won't know
all of the brand names for all of the different types of products in your niche. But you know who does? Ecommerce sites. Most ecommerce search and category pages
will have a "brand" facet where they list all or some of the more popular brands
within their store. So let's say we have a site on baby products. I'll start by heading over to an ecommerce store
like strolleria.com which sells baby strollers. Next, I'll click on the "Shop brands" menu
item, and seeing as they're all listed here, I'll scrape the list using a Chrome
extension called Scraper. Just right-click on one of the links in
Chrome, and hit "Scrape similar." I'll clean up the list a bit since we don't need
the links and then copy it to my clipboard. Next, let's head on over to Keywords Explorer and
paste these brand names, into the search box. And then let's head on over to
the Phrase match report. Now, since we're looking for "vs" and "review"
keywords, I'll hit the Include filter and type in "vs," and "review" with an asterisk at the
end, which will act as a wild card catching words like "reviews," "reviewing," etc. Finally, I'll hit the Any word tab and hit Apply. Now, there's going to be some irrelevant
keywords in here because brand names are often popular words that hold different
meanings like Apple, Amazon, and Coach. In our case, "bob" seems to be producing
some unwanted keywords. So let's hit the Exclude button and add "bob." And now you'll see some great keywords like,
"nuna rava review," "uppababy cruz vs. vista," and "britax marathon click tight reviews" - all
of which seem to have barely any competition from a links perspective. Now, these are just a few keyword research
tactics that I've used to find untapped keyword ideas. But the one thing I want you to takeaway from
this video is that when you're doing keyword research or any SEO tactic for that matter,
your best tool is going to be your ability to recognize patterns within data. And some creativity won't hurt. So go and try these tactics out for your site,
try and go beyond what I've taught here, and if you enjoyed this video, make sure to like,
share, and subscribe for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials. I'll see you in the next one.
