How do you find longtail keywords when you don’t even know what to search for? What about longtail keywords that you actually have a chance to rank for? Today I am going to share with you two easy methods you can use to find tons of rankable keyword ideas quick on Ubersuggest. (Even if you don’t have topic ideas in the first place.)
Sometimes I wish that I could just click a button and a list of great keyword ideas would pop up.
Maybe you feel this way too. Sometimes it seems like in order to find keywords, you first have to KNOW what keywords to search for!
But how do you find keywords if you don’t have any ideas?
Today I am taking a break from my usual homemaking topics and writing about something else that occupies my time… blogging and SEO! (Not that blogging can’t count as homemaking. 😉 )
Finding longtail keywords to implement into your writing can sometimes be tricky, especially for new bloggers. You not only want to find keywords that are relevant to your niche, but they also need to have good search volume and a low SEO difficulty.
To add to this, it can be difficult to know WHAT keyword phrases to search for in the first place.
Maybe you know you want to write about homesteading, or baking, or travel. But what precisely should you write about?
How can you find out exactly what longtail keywords your audience is searching for– ones with page 1 ranking potential?
Today I am going to teach you two methods I use to find the best long tail keywords and content ideas that:
- Are relevant to your niche
- Have good search volume
- Have Low SEO difficulty
…even when you don’t know what to search for in the first place.
I use Ubersuggest to do my keyword research, but these methods can be modified and used in other keyword tools as well.
How to Find Longtail Keywords You Can Actually Rank For (When You Have No Ideas!)
Method 1: Take advantage of Ubersuggest’s “Related” keywords button!
Using the “Related” button is kind of like a fill in the blank, because it brings up searches that are similar to the keyword you entered but maybe have one or two different words.
It’s almost like a keyword wildcard!
To use this method you first need to know what niche you are writing for. Then, you need to think of a phrase in that niche that someone might search for, but phrase that is unfinished. (Kind of like a “fill in the blank’)
Ubersuggest will use your unfinished phrase to “fill in the blank” and give you many longtail keyword ideas. Here’s how to do it:
As an example, lets pretend we are writing a blog in the “sewing” niche.
My unfinished keyword phrase is going to be “How to sew a”. Because I am leaving the phrase unfinished, when I click the “related” button Ubersuggest will find longtail keywords that include this phrase, or a close variation of it.
In Ubersuggest, click on the “Keywords” menu option, and select “Keyword Ideas”. Type in your phrase, click search, then click on the “Related” button.
Then, make sure to click on the “SEO Difficulty” filter, and choose to see only the easy difficulty (0-35) keywords, or type in your own range of numbers. Sometimes I like to filter down to no higher than 15 to get the absolute easiest keywords to rank for.
For our “How to sew a” example, there are some really good ideas of longtail keywords that have decent volume and very low ranking difficulty, which makes them great targets for new bloggers!
That was an easy way to find lots of content ideas in the sewing niche, even though we didn’t really start out with any specific ideas besides “sewing”. These even have page 1 ranking potential.
After you find the longtail keywords you like, add them to a list to use for later! Take note of their search volume and seo difficulty as well.
Some other examples of unfinished phrases to search for include:
- “How to cook with…” (for food bloggers)
- “How to Write a…” (For bloggers in the writing niche)
- “Best Baby…” (for parenting bloggers)
- “Travel tips for…” (for travel blogs)
- “Free printable…” (for printable makers)
Thinking of these kinds of phrases isn’t too difficult. You just need your base topic (your niche or something within it) and half a sentence to search for!
Method 2: Analyze Your competitors and their audience
The second method to find longtail keywords is to analyze your competitors.
Ubersuggest has a handy feature that lets you analyze other people’s URLs to see what keywords they are ranking for. (Other keyword research tools can do this too.) This is a useful way to find keywords when you have no ideas because you don’t have to think of any phrases to search for, at all!
Another benefit to this method is discovering what your potential audience is interested in and reading about already.
When you find keywords from your competitors blogs that interest you, you can then try to rank for them as well, and maybe even reach their same audience. (Which if you are in the same niche, is probably your target audience too.)
This doesn’t mean you are going to copy their blog post, but it does mean that you are going to try to offer your unique insight on that same topic, or attempt to present the topic better than they did.
First, you need to make a short list of some websites in your niche that are your competitors.
Choose large, popular websites, as well as smaller or newer websites to get a good mix.
Once you have a competitor’s url in mind, go back to Ubersuggest and click on “Keyword ideas” again. Click on “Search by Website”, type in the website you want to analyze, then click search.
As an example, lets look at the website “Marthastewart.com” and search for home and diy related keywords.
Once again, set the SEO difficulty filter to “easy”, or the specific numbers you are looking for.
There are some really interesting results here I want to talk about.
“No bake cheese cake” has an amazing search volume, and a low seo difficulty score. But don’t get too excited. Although you can totally try to target this keyword, you will see that when you search for “no bake cheesecake” (spelled as one word) you will see that the search difficulty is actually very high.
This is called a misspelling or a duplicate keyword. Good SEO is all about user intent, and Google is very good at correcting a user’s misspelling and presenting them with search results that are for what they intended to search for.
Just something to keep in mind as you are searching for keywords that will benefit you.
When you have identified some good keywords from your competitors, add them to your list then try another website!
Its a good idea to analyze as many websites as possible to find keywords that you know your audience is already searching for.
How to find longtail keywords: final thoughts
I regularly use these two tips to find longtail keywords that are easy to rank for. I try to keep a large running list of content and keyword ideas at the ready so I can pull from it when I need to!
Right now, I have so many keyword and content ideas there’s no way I could use them all!
Even if you are struggling to come up with topic ideas for your blog, you can find keywords to use to optimize your posts. This will help people find your website and increase your traffic! This is something new bloggers can and should do.
What niche are you writing in? Share your “unfinished phrases” ideas with us below!
Wow! This was a super helpful post for me as a new blogger! I have wondered these very things! I know what I want to write about, but what are others hoping I’ll write about! ☺️
I’m glad it was helpful!
Great suggestions. Ubersuggest is my favorite for searching for keywords.