Competitive keywords are one of the main parts of the Search Engine Optimisation lingo. They are the heart and soul of blogs, website content, and SERP rankings. Moreover, understanding and targeting the correct competitive keywords is a potential advantage for any business.
SEO and content friendliness for search result pages are not easy wins. Developing a thorough SEO content strategy highlighting competitive keywords and topics has also become necessary in a world where digital platforms are essential branding elements for all businesses.
This article will explain competitive keyword research, why it’s essential for SEO success, and how to perform it using various free tools.
What Are Competitive Keywords?
Competitive keywords are search terms that many businesses target due to their high commercial value and search volume. They’re the phrases potential customers type into search engines when looking for products, services, or information related to your industry.
When we talk about “competitive” keywords, we’re referring to how difficult it is to rank for these terms on search engine results pages (SERPs). This competition level directly affects your SEO strategy, content creation, and ability to attract organic traffic.
“Competitive keyword research isn’t just about finding popular search terms—it’s about identifying the specific phrases that your ideal customers use, and creating a strategic plan to rank for them effectively,” says Ciaran Connolly, Director at ProfileTree.
Competitor Keyword Research Steps
To effectively research and analyse competitors’ keywords, follow these key steps:
Identify your top 3-5 competitors in your space. Look at who ranks for your target keywords and who you are trying to outrank.
Use keyword research tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Google Keyword Planner to find keywords for which your competitors rank. Look at both paid and organic results. Consider integrating a SERP API for real-time data and keyword tracking for comprehensive SEO insights and competitive analysis.
Analyse the difficulty of the keywords based on metrics like search volume, CPC, and keyword difficulty scores in the tools. Focus on viable keywords to target.
Look for opportunities—keywords your competitors rank for that you could potentially outrank them on with some optimisation work. Identify any low-competition, high-value keywords.
Export the keywords into a spreadsheet and organise them based on priorities, search volume, difficulty, etc. This will be your target keyword list.
Use the negative keyword tools in SEMrush or Google Ads to identify negative keywords irrelevant to your business to add to campaigns. For example, if you sell women’s shoes, “men’s shoes” would be a negative keyword.
Set up tracking to monitor your current keyword rankings vs. competitors over time. Tools like Rank Tracker, SEMrush, and Ahrefs allow easy rank tracking.
Have a plan to create high-quality content and optimise pages to target the competitive keywords on your list. Aim to overtake competitors by offering more value to searchers.
Optimising Target Pages for Competitive Keywords
Once you’ve researched target competitive keywords, optimise your pages targeting those terms:
Include the exact keyword match in strategic places like titles, headers, meta descriptions, and image names. But don’t over-optimise.
Craft compelling titles using powerful words that make readers click. For example: “The Complete Guide to [Key Keyword]”.
Ensure pages load quickly—incorporate image compression, minified CSS/HTML, and caching. Fast load times help rankings.
Check that the content is comprehensive and lengthy, at least +1,500 words. Offer better value than your competitors.
Use related and LSI keywords (see below for examples) throughout the content to support the main keywords.
Add multimedia elements—videos, GIFS, infographics. These can enhance pages and engagement.
Include structured data like FAQ schema if relevant. Structured data enhances SEO.
Build internal links to optimised pages targeting competitive keywords from other related pages on your site.
Create anchor text internal links using your target keywords as the link text.
Obtain backlinks from other authoritative sites to boost external signals. Focus on quality over quantity.
Check technical SEO elements like site speed, proper HTML tags, alt text on images, structured data, and XML sitemaps.
By doing comprehensive optimisation focusing on competitive keywords, you can improve rankings and organic traffic from search. Monitor keyword positions regularly and continue optimising pages as the landscape changes.
“When optimising for competitive keywords, many businesses focus solely on on-page factors but overlook the critical role of user experience. A well-structured site that loads quickly and provides intuitive navigation sends positive signals to both users and search engines,” notes Ciaran Connolly of ProfileTree.
LSI Keywords to Incorporate
Here are the relevant LSI keywords and phrases to include throughout the content in a natural way:
As Wordstream has put it, there are many reasons advertisers should prioritise their CPC with competitive keywords in Search Advertising. CPC determines the financial success of paid search campaigns.
Moreover, CPC affects the return on investment (ROI) and helps advertisers determine the level of quality they’re getting. Using CPC correctly can help get inexpensive and valuable results that improve reach and increase sales.
Naturally, keywords with high competition require higher bids from advertisers. On the contrary, when keywords have low competition, bidders will spend significantly less money to get clicks for their keywords.
Deciding on the most suitable competitive keywords can be hectic. The search for key phrases that are exact, budget-friendly, and popular among target audiences is not exactly a walk in the park. Therefore, free and paid keyword tools are designed to facilitate their comprehensive procedure.
For example, Google Keyword Planner gives advertisers ideas and intel on selecting relevant keyword ideas.
High vs Low Competitive Keywords: Finding Your Sweet Spot
Understanding the balance between high and low-competition keywords is crucial for an effective SEO strategy.
High-Competition Keywords
High-competition keywords typically:
Has a significant search volume
Come with a higher CPC in paid campaigns
Are targeted by established, authoritative websites
Often have broader meaning (e.g., “digital marketing,” “web design”)
Requires substantial SEO efforts to rank for
For most businesses, especially SMEs, ranking for high-competition keywords demands significant time, resources, and patience. They typically require:
Extensive backlink building
High-quality, in-depth content
Strong technical SEO
Consistent effort over months or years
Low-Competition Keywords
Low-competition keywords usually:
Have lower search volume
Are more specific (long-tail keywords)
Have fewer businesses actively targeting them
It can be easier to rank for with less investment
Often shows more specific user intent
The advantages of targeting low-competition keywords include:
Faster ranking improvements
Higher conversion rates due to specific intent
Less resource-intensive SEO efforts
Building authority that can help with more competitive terms later
How to Find Low-Competition Keywords
Finding the right keywords requires many elements, including SEO content and appealing to search engine results pages (SERPs). However, advertisers usually neglect the significance of finding low-competitive keywords. Focusing on the following points can completely alter the keyword search.
Looking for Business-Related Topics and Keywords
Finding relevant keywords is not complicated. It takes good research and a deep understanding of the target audience, including their needs and priorities.
Michael Martinez of SEO Theory and Analysis Blog has this to say;
“Assuming I need to make a quick review, I look at the advertising associated with the query results. If it’s substantial and promoting relevant domains (as opposed to “broad match” advertisers), that’s a signal a query is competitive.“
Focus on Low Competition Keywords
These directions should stem from thoroughly understanding one’s website’s competitive power or edge. Playing to one’s strengths could significantly improve the website’s Google rankings. Moreover, competitive keywords and SEO are complementary elements to SERP rankings.
Pro tip: Study the website’s nuts and bolts and determine the most potent topics and keywords to pursue. Next, start promoting these keywords. Practically speaking, there’s no rock bottom or ceiling for competition. Following one’s gut is usually everything.
Fortunately, help is around the corner. Keyword tools such as Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty Tool assist advertisers in finding suitable long-tail keywords that will significantly improve their rankings on SERPs. The software uses a person’s input to find relevant keywords and determine keyword competitiveness based on the website’s competitive power.
Browsing through the tool’s list of ideas is like finding a big fish in a little pond; the results can be incredible.
Talking to the Target Audience and Noting Their Feedback
A rich stock of information about the targeted segments, trends, and needs is a goldmine of potential business and SEO ideas. The next best thing is consumer feedback and complaints. These comments are the best indicator of the business and the current market functioning.
Thinking Like a Customer, Acting Like a Business Owner
Monitoring the ever-changing consumer behaviour and search patterns on Google and other search engines or social media platforms is key to understanding the latest consumer trends. Take, for instance, the rise of voice search and the growing importance of long-tail keywords. New tools like chatbots and machine learning are emerging alongside updates to established methods like email marketing.
Therefore, putting oneself in the customer’s shoes can save businesses a lot of work and costs. For example, people usually inquire about reviews before purchasing. They look for attractive attributes such as warranties, ease of use, and honest values.
Noting Social Media Trends and Language
Social media outlets help businesses find the best competitive keywords. They also enable them to understand the way their target audience thinks. Platforms such as Facebook, X/Twitter, and LinkedIn have become essential to daily internet usage.
Therefore, they turn to them to ask for advice and recommendations in the most casual way, almost identical to speaking in real life. Intelligent business owners get that and use it to their advantage. They use the information found on Facebook and X/Twitter to extract viral keywords to improve their SEO content and try to tailor it to what people like nowadays.
User-generated Content (UGC)
According to Webopedia: User-generated Content (UGC) “is used to describe any form of content such as video, blogs, discussion from posts, digital images, audio files, and other forms of media that were created by consumers or end-users of an online system or service and is publicly available to other consumers and end-users.”
Like the abovementioned point, UGC takes social media monitoring to a new level. Facebook, LinkedIn, and X/Twitter are good indicators; however, other websites, most famously Quora and Reddit, are dedicated to inquiries, debates, and answering questions.
For instance, a business that relies on Quora to enrich its research has a lot of work ahead of it.
How Do I Find the Best Keywords for SEO?
Finding the best keywords for SEO is a crucial part of any SEO strategy. Here’s a breakdown of the process to get you started:
Follow Topic Buckets
Topic buckets are relevant keywords and sub-categories in which users are naturally interested if they invest in the primary topic. For example, if the topic is “facial cleansing,” users will ultimately be intrigued to read about DIY facial cleansers, toners, gentle scrubs, and masks. Paying attention to these untapped keywords will improve SEO and ultimately result in better ranks in SERPs.
HubSpot shared a valuable trick: using keywords that direct users to a website to their advantage. To do so, one must get help from tools such as Google Analytics or HubSpot Sources.
By repeating this research technique on several topic buckets, content creators and website owners will have a stock of information that can be used to improve their content.
Related Search Terms
One of the easiest, most efficient ways to find relevant topics or questions is by checking the “people also ask” and “related searches” on Google. Just search for any specific topic and note those two helpful sections.
Typically, the topics included in these sections are the most popular terms compared to the initially searched topic. They might be about the same subject or have great relevance to it.
What Is Keyword Difficulty in SEO?
As the keyword’s value increases, so does the difficulty of ranking it on SERPs. According to Moz’s Keyword Research Tools’ metrics, the following elements contribute to deciding competitive keywords:
Domain Authority
Page Authority
Citation Flow
Trust Flow
The calculation process utilises each of the previous parts in the following steps:
Determining the Link Profile Strength (LPS) using Moz metrics.
Using different weights to ensure the results are as real as possible.
Combine high and low LPS values to calculate the right metrics and keywords.
The ranking of a website’s high or low authority is irrelevant when using keyword SEO competition or difficulty.
Check their rankings for interesting keywords.
According to Moz, “While difficulty and volume are great indicators of a keyword’s potential to rank high, with the new features Google has added into the SERP landscape, another important score must be considered.”
How to Focus on the Keywords that Matter?
According to HubSpot, “Just because a keyword is important to your competitor, doesn’t mean it’s important to you. However, understanding what keywords your competitors are trying to rank for is a great way to help you give your list of keywords another evaluation.”
One way to go is never neglecting the keywords competitors seem to care about, but more importantly, it’s crucial to improve the ones they are not interested in, too. The latter keyword type presents an excellent opportunity for businesses to get ahead of their competitors.
How does one stalk their competitors’ rankings? Firstly, research teams can manually check for keywords from various browsers and monitor where their competitors stand in SERPs. On the other hand, task-specific tools such as SEMrush can easily show the top keywords for each domain entered.
Ensuring the business understands SEO trends is necessary for the success of its digital exposure. SEO techniques are changing; from voice search to long-tail keywords, there’s no better way to ensure that a company is on the right track than by paying close attention to these constantly developing schemes and advancements.
Using Google Ads Keyword Planner Saves Time and Effort
Google Ads provides access to Google’s keyword planner, an effective keyword research tool.
According to Google, there are two key benefits to using Keyword Planner:
Researching keywords,
Getting historical data.
Advertisers need only set up a Google Ads account. However, it is always recommended to refer to Google Trends to compensate for information that Google Ads cannot obtain.
How to Create an SEO Strategy Full of Competitive Keywords?
SEO is one of the key players in brand visibility today. Digital marketers understand that crafting SEO content is no longer optional. As a result, competitive keywords rose to power, and specialists started to study the best features and tools to cultivate an excellent knowledge of them.
Making a List of Topics
Starting slow and focused is better than taking haphazard moves towards crafting content. Before creators begin to prepare their content, they must have a list of possible topics to cover so they can never run out of interesting references or ideas. Of course, these ideas should adhere to the latest trends on the Internet.
It’s advised to narrow the selection to ten to 15 topics. The selection should include each keyword’s search volume and competition (Tip: use a keyword tool to identify this info).
Go Long Tail After Short Tail
After preparing the short-tail list, create long-tail keywords that complement the short ones. These keywords are most likely sub-categories of the same main topic. By making sure to cover as many possible keywords as possible (i.e., the suggestions appearing in the keyword tool), SERPs are more likely to include the domain.
Dedicating a Page for Each Topic
Rankings for SEO are hard, but there are ways around it. Attempting to rank for several keywords on one page isn’t realistic. However, the next best thing is to dedicate an entire page to just one topic, including subtopics that will benefit the readers and improve the rankings.
According to HubSpot, “The number of topics for which you create pillar pages should coincide with how many different products, offerings, and locations your business has.”
Blogging Is Your Shortcut
Blogging is brilliant for locating the correct keywords and suggested relevant phrases. It’s the easiest method to attract search engines to recognise the domain. All service providers and companies have adopted blogs as an active part of their websites.
Google doesn’t take jammed keywords seriously. It’s recommended that bloggers and SEO writers avoid using long-tail keywords excessively. They do make the blog look unnatural.
Write a Weekly Blog to Develop a Valid Page Authority
In a nutshell, this step is like showing Google that the website is worthy of attention. Writing frequently about recent trends and interesting topics can also improve SERPs results and convince Google to use more links from a particular website domain.
Google recognises when a website is only trying to appeal to it, instead of primarily focusing on providing intriguing content that responds to the target audience’s needs and interests.
Link-Building from Your Website
Connecting several internal links on the same website can do wonders. This method improves page authority and allows SERPs to notice the website domain more.
Cultivating content that others can use as a reference or share on social media is a great way to attract more inbound links.
Staying on Top of SEO Trends and Practices
As said before, SEO news constantly changes, and staying on top means the website will never lose its good SERPs and rankings. Luckily, software and how-to guides are produced every other day, so keeping a close eye on the latest trends won’t be such a challenging task.
Last but not least, update the SEO strategy in general, including the keywords featured and the style of blogs produced.
How ProfileTree Can Help With Your Competitive Keyword Strategy
At ProfileTree, we specialise in turning competitive keyword research into tangible business results. Our approach combines:
Strategic SEO & Research: We identify the perfect mix of competitive keywords that align with your business goals and can deliver qualified traffic.
Content That Ranks: Our team creates authoritative content that satisfies search engines and user intent, helping you climb the rankings for valuable terms.
Technical Implementation: From site structure to mobile optimisation, we handle all technical aspects that impact your keyword performance.
Local SEO Expertise: We implement location-focused keyword strategies for businesses serving specific areas that connect you with nearby customers.
AI-Powered Analysis: We use advanced tools to uncover keyword opportunities your competitors miss and precisely track performance.
Our clients have seen impressive results, including a Belfast business that increased organic traffic by 138% in six months and another that achieved page one rankings for 28 competitive industry terms.
Conclusion: Make Sure You Stay Up To Date
As mentioned, understanding competitive keywords and how to use them to enhance the SEO content strategy can help businesses win search engines’ approval and increase their positioning on SERPs.
The best implementation of a successful content strategy involves making decisions based on the value of CPCS, the competitiveness of keywords, and the right target audience reach.
There are many ways to retrieve competitive keywords. Starting with the basic ones, such as referring to keyword tools, and moving on to more complex ones, such as acquiring relative topic buckets. This narrows down short-tail keywords and then gets efficient long-tail ones to use as a compass for blogs and posts.
Finally, subscribe to the latest software and SEO news feeds to ensure that the business is up to date. You should also keep your research and business development teams up to speed with the newest trends and advancements, and monitor social media and changing consumer behaviour.
These factors will, directly or indirectly, facilitate extracting valuable competitive keywords.
Ready to Transform Your Keyword Strategy? Take Action Now
Stop watching competitors dominate the search results for keywords that should bring customers to your business. With ProfileTree’s proven expertise in competitive keyword strategy, you can start climbing the rankings and capturing the traffic you deserve.
What Happens When You Contact Us:
We’ll conduct a free initial assessment of your current keyword performance and competitive landscape
You’ll receive tailored recommendations specific to your industry and business goals
Our team will create a customised keyword strategy designed to deliver measurable results
Whether you’re struggling with a recent ranking drop, looking to expand into new keyword territories, or simply want to outperform aggressive competitors, our team has the expertise to help you succeed.
Visit: McSweeney Centre, 31 Henry Pl, Belfast BT15 2AY
Don’t let another day pass while competitors claim your potential customers. Reach out now and take the first step toward keyword dominance.
FAQs
Here are some examples of additional FAQS to cover competitive keyword topics:
Q: How often should I be checking competitor keyword rankings?
A: Ideally, you should track keyword rankings for your top target competitive keywords at least every 1-2 weeks. That way, you can closely monitor changes and see the impact of your optimisation efforts. Check more often during active optimisation periods.
Q: How many keywords should I target on a given page?
A: To maximise relevance, it’s generally best to target 1-3 primary keywords per page, supplemented by 5-10 secondary LSI keywords. Avoid trying to optimise a single page for too many disparate keywords.
Q: What’s a good CTR benchmark to aim for?
A: For competitive keywords, aim for CTRS above 10%. The higher you can push your CTR above your competitors, the better, as Google factors CTR into rankings.
Q: How quickly can I expect rankings to improve for competitive keywords?
A: It depends on how entrenched the competition is, but often it takes 1-3 months to see significant keyword ranking gains. You need patience and persistence in SEO. Monitor rankings weekly to gauge the impact of your efforts over time.
Q: Should I use the target keyword in my URL?
A: Generally, it’s good practice to include your target keyword in the URL whenever viable. This helps indicate relevance to search engines.
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