How to Find Low Competition Keywords in 2026

How to Find Low Competition Keywords That Actually Rank in 2026

Low competition keywords are search terms where the top-ranking pages have few backlinks, low domain authority, or thin content - making them realistic targets for newer or smaller websites. They're the fastest path to organic traffic if you know how to find them.

But here's what most guides get wrong: they tell you to filter for "KD under 10" in Ahrefs or Semrush and call it a day. That's step one of a five-step process. A keyword difficulty score is a rough estimate based on backlinks to the top 10 results. It doesn't account for search intent, brand dominance, content quality, or whether Google even shows organic results for that query anymore.

I find low competition keywords using DataForSEO APIs and Claude Code instead of clicking through GUI tools. The approach is faster, more flexible, and gives you structured data you can actually analyze at scale. Here's the full process.

What Makes a Keyword "Low Competition"

A keyword is genuinely low competition when three conditions align: the top-ranking pages have weak backlink profiles, no dominant brands control the SERP, and the content currently ranking is beatable.

Keyword difficulty scores are a starting point, not an answer. Every SEO tool calculates KD differently. Ahrefs bases it on referring domains to the top 10 results. Semrush uses a proprietary formula that factors in authority, backlinks, and other signals. SE Ranking analyzes the top 10 with its own weighting. A keyword with KD 5 in one tool might show KD 25 in another.

What actually matters is what you see when you look at the SERP:

• Who's ranking? If the top 5 results are all DR 80+ sites like Forbes, Reddit, and Amazon, the keyword isn't low competition regardless of what the KD score says. If you see niche blogs, forums, and mid-authority sites, there's an opening.
• How good is the content? Thin 500-word articles ranking in the top 5 are a gift. You can outrank them with comprehensive, better-structured content.
• What's the backlink situation? Check referring domains to the top 3 results. If they have under 10-15 referring domains each, you can compete without a massive link building campaign.
• Is search intent clear? Ambiguous intent keywords are harder because Google isn't sure what to show, so the SERP is unstable and your content might not match what Google decides to display.

The Ahrefs blog makes an excellent point that ranking difficulty is relative. "Black sandals" has a KD of 1, but every page-one result has a domain rating above 76. For Target, it's low competition. For a new shoe blog, it's impossible. Always compare the SERP to your own site's authority.

5 Steps to Find Low Competition Keywords

Step 1: Start With Seed Topics, Not Keywords

Don't start with a keyword tool. Start with your business.

What problems does your product solve? What questions do your customers ask before buying? What topics does your team have genuine expertise in?

Write down 5-10 broad topics. If you run an SEO agency, your seeds might be: "local SEO," "technical SEO audit," "link building," "content strategy," "SEO for ecommerce." These aren't keywords yet - they're starting points for expansion.

The mistake most people make is starting too broad. "SEO" as a seed generates millions of keywords, most of which are irrelevant to your business. "SEO for dentists" generates hundreds, most of which are directly useful.

Step 2: Expand With a Keyword Research Tool

Plug your seeds into a keyword research tool and generate variations. Here's what to use depending on your budget:

Free options:

• Google Keyword Planner - gives search volumes (ranges, not exact) and competition levels
• Google Search Console - shows keywords you already rank for (great for finding opportunities you're close to winning)
• Keyword Surfer - free Chrome extension showing volumes in Google results

Paid options:

• Ahrefs Keywords Explorer - phrase match and question reports with KD scores
• KWFinder by Mangools - specifically designed for finding low-difficulty keywords
• SE Ranking Keyword Research Tool - good balance of features and price

API option (what I use): DataForSEO's keyword overview API returns search volume, CPC, competition level, and search intent for any keyword list. I send batches of 50-100 keywords at a time and get structured JSON back that I can filter, sort, and analyze programmatically. No clicking through interfaces, no export limits.

For each seed topic, aim to generate 100-200 keyword variations. You'll filter most of them out in the next step.

Step 3: Filter Ruthlessly

This is where most of the work happens. From your expanded list, filter using these criteria:

Keyword difficulty: Under 30. Some guides say under 10, but that's too restrictive. KD 10-30 keywords are absolutely achievable for sites with some existing authority (DR 20+). If your site is brand new, stick to KD under 15.

Search volume: Above 50. Below 50 monthly searches, the traffic potential rarely justifies the effort unless the keyword has extremely high commercial value (CPC above $10).

Search intent: Matches your content type. This is the filter people skip and it's the most important one. If you're writing blog posts, filter for informational and commercial investigation keywords. If you're building product pages, filter for transactional keywords.

CPC as a proxy for value. A keyword with 200 monthly searches and a $15 CPC is more valuable than one with 2,000 searches and $0.50 CPC. The advertisers bidding on it know something about conversion rates.

After filtering, you should have 10-30 keywords worth investigating further.

Step 4: Manually Check the SERP

This step separates amateurs from professionals. For every keyword that survives your filters, search for it in Google and look at what's actually ranking.

Ask yourself:

• Are there any weak pages in positions 1-5? (thin content, outdated, poor UX)
• Do you see user-generated content ranking? (Reddit, Quora, forums - these are beatable)
• Is there an AI overview? (if so, organic CTR may be lower than the volume suggests)
• Are the top results from sites similar in authority to yours?
• What content format dominates? (listicles, how-to guides, tools, videos)

If Reddit or Quora threads rank in the top 5, that's one of the strongest signals of low competition. It means Google doesn't have enough quality content to fill the SERP, so it's pulling in forum discussions instead.

Step 5: Prioritize by Business Impact

Not all low competition keywords deserve your time. Rank your finalists by business impact:

1. Tier 1: Conversion keywords. Low competition + commercial/transactional intent + directly related to your product. These get content first.
2. Tier 2: Authority keywords. Low competition + informational intent + builds topical authority in your niche. These support your Tier 1 pages through internal linking.
3. Tier 3: Traffic keywords. Low competition + high volume + loosely related to your business. Nice to have, but don't prioritize over Tier 1 and 2.

This prioritization framework follows the 80/20 rule - a small number of well-chosen keywords will drive the majority of your SEO results. Chasing volume without considering business impact is the most common keyword research mistake.

Why Keyword Difficulty Scores Lie (And What to Do About It)

Every major SEO tool has a keyword difficulty metric, and none of them agree with each other. This isn't because the tools are bad - it's because reducing ranking difficulty to a single number is inherently oversimplified.

Here's what KD scores miss:

Brand dominance. KD scores don't account for brand queries or navigational intent. "Best Buy coffee makers" has a KD of 1 in Ahrefs, but you'll never outrank Best Buy for it because it's a navigational query.

Content quality gaps. Two keywords might both have KD 5, but one has excellent content ranking (hard to beat) while the other has thin, outdated articles (easy to beat). The KD score doesn't distinguish between them.

SERP features. If Google shows a featured snippet, AI overview, knowledge panel, and four ads above the organic results, the effective competition is much higher than the KD score suggests - because organic CTR drops dramatically.

Your specific authority. KD 30 is easy for a DR 60 site and nearly impossible for a DR 5 site. The number means nothing without context about who's trying to rank.

The fix: use KD as a first-pass filter, then manually verify competition by examining the actual SERP. Check the top 3-5 results for referring domains, domain rating, content quality, and content freshness. This takes 2-3 minutes per keyword and saves you from wasting months on keywords that look easy but aren't.

How to Find Keywords Competitors Miss

The best low competition keywords are the ones that don't show up in standard keyword research workflows. Here's where to look:

Trending topics before they peak. Exploding Topics identifies search trends 12+ months before they become competitive. If you can publish comprehensive content on a trending topic before the big sites notice it, you'll rank with almost zero competition.

Google Search Console gap analysis. Your GSC data contains keywords you already rank for in positions 11-30 - visible to Google but not yet driving meaningful traffic. These are your lowest-hanging fruit because Google has already decided your content is relevant. A content refresh, better internal linking, or a few backlinks can push these to page one.

Competitor keyword gaps. Use Ahrefs or SE Ranking to find keywords your competitors rank for that you don't. Filter for low-KD keywords in their profiles and check whether the content quality is something you can beat.

People Also Ask and related searches. PAA questions are often lower competition than the main keyword they appear under. If you can answer a PAA question better than existing results, you have a shot at both the PAA box and organic results.

Niche forums and communities. The questions people ask in Reddit threads, Facebook groups, and industry forums often use language that doesn't show up in keyword tools. These natural-language queries tend to be low competition because no one is targeting them.

Building a Content Strategy Around Low Competition Keywords

Finding low competition keywords is only half the job. The other half is turning them into content that actually ranks.

Create topic clusters, not isolated articles. A single article targeting one low competition keyword gets you one ranking. A cluster of 5-10 related articles with proper internal linking builds topical authority and helps all the articles in the cluster rank better. This is the strategy that compounds over time.

Match content format to search intent. If the SERP shows listicles, write a listicle. If it shows how-to guides, write a how-to. Fighting against the dominant content format is fighting against what Google has already determined searchers want.

Go deeper than what's ranking. The content currently ranking for low competition keywords is often thin - that's partly why the competition is low. If the top result is 800 words, write 2,000. If it covers 5 points, cover 10. If it has no images, add screenshots and diagrams. Comprehensiveness is your competitive advantage.

Internal link strategically. Use the SEO benefits of internal linking to pass authority from your stronger pages to your new low competition keyword pages. And when those pages start earning their own backlinks and traffic, link from them to your higher-competition target pages.

How Long Until You Rank (Realistic Timeline)

Setting expectations matters. Here's what we've seen across our own blog and client sites:

• KD 0-10 keywords: 2-8 weeks for sites with existing authority (DR 20+). 2-4 months for new sites.
• KD 10-20 keywords: 1-3 months for established sites. 3-6 months for newer sites.
• KD 20-30 keywords: 2-6 months for established sites. 6-12 months for newer sites.

These timelines assume you're publishing high-quality content that matches search intent and has some internal links pointing to it. Without that, add months.

The single biggest accelerator is backlinks. One quality backlink from a relevant, authoritative site can cut your ranking timeline in half. If you're targeting low competition keywords and actively building links to those pages, you'll see results much faster than organic link acquisition alone.

The API Approach: Finding Keywords at Scale

If you're comfortable with AI tools and APIs, there's a faster way to find low competition keywords than clicking through Ahrefs or Semrush.

At Nest Content, we use DataForSEO APIs for keyword research at scale. A single API call returns search volume, CPC, competition level, and search intent for up to 700 keywords. We pipe that data through Claude Code to analyze patterns, identify clusters, and prioritize by business impact - all in minutes instead of hours.

The workflow looks like this:

1. Generate seed keywords from business topics
2. Expand via DataForSEO keyword suggestions API
3. Filter by KD, volume, CPC, and intent programmatically
4. Analyze the SERP data for top candidates
5. Feed winners into a content automation pipeline

This isn't for everyone. You need technical skills and API access. But if you're already using AI for SEO, adding programmatic keyword research to your workflow eliminates the bottleneck of manual tool-clicking.

For most people, dedicated SEO software like KWFinder, Ahrefs, or SE Ranking is the more practical choice. These tools exist because they make the process accessible without writing code. Use whatever gets you to the analysis stage fastest.

Start Finding Your Low Competition Wins

Low competition keywords are the foundation of every successful SEO strategy - especially for newer sites that can't compete on domain authority alone. The process is straightforward: generate keywords, filter by difficulty and intent, verify the SERP manually, and prioritize by business impact.

The key insight most people miss: low competition doesn't mean low value. Some of the most profitable keywords in any niche have low competition because they're specific enough that the big sites haven't bothered targeting them. A keyword with 150 monthly searches and $20 CPC that you can rank for in two months is worth more than a 10,000-volume keyword you'll never crack page one for.

Start with your Google Search Console data. Find keywords where you're already ranking 11-30. Improve that content. Build internal links to it. That's your quickest path to results, and it costs nothing but time.