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
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 keyboards 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 gold and 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 competitor's low competition topics
this is by far the easiest place to
start because by looking at your
competitors most traffic 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 competitors domains
i'll go with nerdwallet.com next go to
the top pages report which shows you the
pages that send the site for 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
weibull versus 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 fund 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 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
will be near identical
on the other hand if you compare the
search results for best rap albums
2020 and best wrap 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
from nerd wallet
where the kd filter is set to 20 you'll
see that this page is on
colorado first time homebuyer 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 filter
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 first-time homebuyer colorado
and you'll also know that first-time
homebuyer 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 u.s 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 u.s states
copy the comma separated list and then
head on over to ahrefs keywords explorer
let's add our seed first time homebuyer
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
usdates
and hit the any word tab so when i hit
apply
it'll show us any keywords that includes
the phrase first time homebuyer
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
all right 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
five seconds
to think of seed keywords related to
beards
ready
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 hr
site explorer
and enter a competitor's domain i'll go
with beardaholic.com
next go to version 2 of the organic
keywords report
which shows you the site's keyword
rankings now let's add 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
and now you'll see some great topics
like best double 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 monkeytail 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
all right the next way is one of my
favorite tactics for affiliate sites
and that's defined versus in review
keywords at scale for affiliate sites
versus 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 that buy
button
now more likely than not you won't know
all of the brand names
for all the different types of products
in your niche
but you know who does e-commerce 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 verses and
review keywords
i'll hit the include filter and type in
verses
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
so let's hit the exclude button and add
bob
and now you'll see some great keywords
like nina rava review
alpha baby cruise versus vista and bric
tax marathon click type reviews
all of which seem to have barely any
competition from a link's 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 take away 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
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
