Keyword research is the building block of on-page SEO.
And if you’re scrolling through Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Ubersuggest, or even staring at a spreadsheet with hundreds of rows & columns of keyword data…
You may be asking yourself: “Where the heck do I start?”
Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to eventually sort through all of those keyword opportunities.
But you don’t need to start there, especially if you are pretty new to SEO.
So where’s the best place to start?
Your competitors.
But we’re not just going to copy them.
We’re going to find the keywords that they’re ignoring and capitalize on those opportunities.
I’m going to show you how to do this with Ahrefs, it can also be done with SEMrush and other popular SEO tools.
Note: Ahrefs used to have a free 7-day trial but they no longer offer it as of March 23. You’ll need to select the $199/month option to do these steps. You can also replicate a similar process in SEMrush, which starts at $119/month.
Whether you like it or not, stores like Amazon, Target, and Walmart will be your biggest competitors in many cases. And though you’ll never be able to compete with them in terms of DA/DR (backlinks), you can still outrank them by targeting keywords that they missed.
I’m going to show you exactly how to do it using two different examples.
Example 1: “men’s socks”
Let’s say you own an apparel brand and you happen to sell men’s socks. It might seem obvious that your target keyword should be “men’s socks.”
Well, not exactly. Although “men’s socks” gets 26,000 searches per month, it’s a difficult keyword to rank for with Amazon and Target in the #1 and #2 spots, respectively.
So instead, we’re going to look for a close variation of this keyword. Here’s how:
- Open Google and search “men’s socks” (or your keyword).
- Copy the URL from the top result. In this case, it’s Amazon.
3. Paste the URL into the Site Explorer on Ahrefs.
Make sure that “Path” is selected next to the URL, then hit “Enter” on your keyboard.
The reason we select “Path” is so that we’ll only be shown keywords from that particular URL, not the entire Amazon domain.
4. Once you’re on the results page, click the keyword filter and type “buy, sale, shop” into the field.
5. Select “Partial Match” and “Any,” then hit apply. It should look like this.
This filter extracts only the keywords that contain the words “buy,” “sale,” and “shop.” These are common search modifiers that people use when they are ready to buy something online. Your results will show examples like “buy [keyword]” and “[keyword] sale.”
6. Let’s take a look at the results in this example.
For a reminder, the original keyword “men’s socks” received 26,000 searches per month and had an estimated difficulty of 45.
As we look through the results, notice the keyword “mens socks sale.”
It has a search volume of 250 per month but only a Keyword Difficulty of only 8.
In theory, this is a much easier keyword to rank for. And because Amazon only ranks #7 for it, it’s not really something they’re focused on.
If you sell men’s socks, this is your winning keyword.
Let’s look at another, less straightforward example.
Example 2: “men’s shorts”
Let’s say you’re a brand like Bearbottom, Chubbies, or even Lululemon. And you’re not selling any of your men’s shorts through Google search because page 1 is dominated by Amazon, Target, Walmart, and other marketplaces.
This particular SERP has a ton of ad spots but the first organic result is Amazon, as you can see below.
For reference, this keyword gets 100,000+ searches per month and is quite difficult to rank for.
If you’re brand new to SEO, this keyword will take years to capture.
So again, we’ll look for a close alternative that’s less competitive.
- Search “men’s shorts” (or your keyword) in Google and copy the URL from the top result (Amazon).
2. Paste the URL into the Site Explorer on Ahrefs and make sure that “Path” is selected next to the URL (same as example 1).
Again, we’re going to apply filters to find low competition keywords that have purchase intent.
3. Click the keyword filter and type “buy, sale, shop” into the field. Select “Partial Match” and “Any,” then hit apply.
Now we’re left with just 28 keywords that match the filter. Unfortunately, these keywords are still pretty competitive with the average Keyword Difficulty in the 50s.
These aren’t great keywords to target, especially if you’re a newer website. They’re competitive and worst of all, they have a low search volume.
Unless you’re selling high ticket products where the AOV is several hundred or even several thousand dollars, it would be a waste of time to pursue these low-volume keywords just to sell a $30-80 pair of shorts.
You’ll notice that there aren’t any keywords containing “sale” in the results. Let’s explore this further.
4. Go back to quick Google and search “men’s shorts sale.”
Amazon ranks for “mens shorts sale” but it’s a different page titled Men’s Short Clearance (see image below).
5. Go to the “Keywords Explorer” in Ahrefs and search this keyword: “mens shorts sale.”
For you, it will be “[your keyword] + [modifier].”
In this example, “mens shorts sale” only gets 6100 searches per month but the difficulty is much lower, just 16 compared to 55.
With a significantly lower amount of competition, you’ll be able to rank for it more easily.
This is your winning keyword.
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