Chung
Thanks Daria. Will check it out 🙂 I read your article. Thank you 🙂 I want to find low-difficulty keyword… but how? Instead of me coming up with a list, does SEMrush help generate a list of low difficulty keyword related to my keyword?
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Daria Sherr » Chung
Sure it does, for instance, the Keyword Gap tool bit.ly/2Xk7lPZ lets you apply the filters and make a low difficulty keywords search (use advanced filters → include KD less than 60%). Same filters you can find in the Organic Research tool and Keyword Magic tool 🙂
Keyword Gap Help – SEMrush Toolkits | SEMrush
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Chung » Daria Sherr
Thanks again. Appreciate your help. Excellent support from SEMrush 😁
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Daria Sherr
Thanks, Chung 🤗 For any additional questions please feel free to ask!

Chung
Thanks Jason. If the KD numbers are useless, how can I look at the SERP to see which keyword is easier or more difficult to rank?
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Dolman » Chung
What are you trying to achieve? What are you using KD to help you figure out?
Chung
I am using the tool to find topics to write about for my blog. My blog is new so I want to find low-difficulty keyword (correct?). How can I look at SERP to see which keyword is easier or more difficult to rank?
Dolman » Chung
Does your blog target a specific niche, market, or industry?
Have you already completed your keyword research to find all of the different ways people search for the things you should be talking about in your blog posts?
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Chung » Jason
My site is a collection of famous quotes. Each of my posts is just the quote, author name and an image with the quote. I am looking for what topics I should focus my quotes on, e.g. quotes on life, funny quotes, love quotes, friendship quotes, etc. So, I put these keyword in the keyword tool and hoping to find those with a low difficulty score. But many people said that it's not enough to look at the score and that I should also look at SERP, I am stuck at what I should look for in SERP to help me determine the keyword difficulty?
Dolman » Chung
When I say to look beyond the keyword difficult to look at the SERP, I mean using a tool like Ahrefs to look at the URLs of the pages that rank for the target keyword in question and figure out which other keywords those people use to search for the same thing.
When looking at the URLs of the pages ranking for the target keyword, you can use Ahrefs to see how many other related keywords the page ranks for.
For example, this page – https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/not-perfect-quotes – ranks in one of the top 10 spots for 92 keywords that people looking for "I'm not perfect quote" keywords are searching.
https://ahrefs.com/positions-explorer/organic-keywords/v5/exact/us/all/all/all/all/all/all/all/1/traffic_desc?target=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.brainyquote.com%2Ftopics%2Fnot-perfect-quotes
According to Ahrefs, these keywords are searched 10,000 times per month, have an average KD of 2 and might appear to be a good topic to focus on if you were to just look at KD alone.
Upon review of the SERPs for these keywords, these are the pages that most often rank in one of the top 10 positions for the keywords people looking for "I'm not perfect quotes" use when they search Google:
https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/not-perfect-quotes
https://www.wiseoldsayings.com/not-perfect-quotes/
https://www.wow4u.com/notperfectquotes/
https://www.azquotes.com/…/topics/not-being-perfect.html
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/imperfection
While the Ahrefs rank, DR and total backlinks for each of these domains is quite high, the UR of each page is between 10-30 with 0-50 backlinks to the page.
In comparison, this page – https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/protest-quotes – ranks in one of the top 10 spots for 34 keywords that people looking for "protest quote" keywords are searching.
https://ahrefs.com/positions-explorer/organic-keywords/v5/exact/us/1-10/all/all/all/all/all/all/1/volume_desc?target=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Fquotes%2Ftag%2Fprotest
According to Ahrefs, these keywords are searched 3,000 times per month, have an average KD of 4 and might appear to be a good topic to focus on if you were to just look at KD alone.
Upon review of the SERPs for these keywords, these are the pages that most often rank in one of the top 10 positions for the keywords people looking for "protest quotes" use when they search Google:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/protest
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/protesting
https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/protest-quotes
https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/protest.html
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/activism
https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/activist-quotes
https://www.wiseoldsayings.com/protest-quotes/
While the Ahrefs rank, DR and total backlinks for each of these domains is quite high, the UR of each page is between 10-20 with 0-10 backlinks to the page for all except one which has 75 backlinks pointing to the page that ranks.
Comparing the KD, UR, backlinks to page for each keyword…
protest quotes: 34 keywords being searched 3,000 times per month | KD = 4 | UR = 10-20 | Backlinks = 0-10
I'm not perfect quotes: 92 keywords being searched 10,000 times per month | KD = 2 | UR = 10-30 | Backlinks = 0-50
Given the above, if you had to choose between these two sets of keywords… which would you choose and why?
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Chung » Dolman
Wow thank you so much for such a detailed analysis! Since both "protest quotes" and "I'm not perfect quotes" keywords have a low KD, it would be better to choose the one with higher search volume?
Dolman » Chung
Welcome. Happy to help. Hopefully others can benefit as well since using keyword research to choose content topics is an important subject most people struggle with.
Depends on the other keywords people who are looking for quotes about being imperfect and people who are looking for quotes about protesting use when they search.
Aside from people using the keyword "I'm not perfect quotes" to search for quotes about imperfection, these are some of the most commonly used keywords to search for such quotes:
flawed quotes, flaws quotes, imperfect quote, imperfect quotes, imperfect sayings, imperfection quote, imperfection quotes, imperfection sayings, not perfect quotes
Those 10 keywords are searched 2,500 times on their own and there are 2,000 more keywords that include at least one of those terms that are being searched thousands, if not tens of thousand of times per month.
Among them is a group of almost 200 keywords being searched more than 1,000 times per month related to "quotes about imperfect love", 50 keywords being searched more than 500 times per month related to "quotes about life being imperfect", 65 keywords being searched more than 250 times per month related to "quotes about marriage and relationships being imperfect" and many more segments of search demand that have enough search intent they can be targeted on their own.
Aside from people using the keyword "protest quotes" to search for quotes about protesting, these are some of the most commonly used keywords to search for such quotes:
activism quote, activism quotes, activist quote, activist quotes, demonstration quote, demonstration quotes, protest quote, protest quotes, protesting quote, protesting quotes
Those 10 keywords are searched 1,500 times on their own and there are 2,000 more keywords that include at least one of those terms that are being searched thousands, if not tens of thousand of times per month.
Among them is a group of 100 keywords being searched more than 500 times per month related to "peaceful protest quotes", many of which are looking for quotes about peaceful protest from Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and John F. Kennedy who would deserve their own pages of quotes on all subjects that would include these on the subject of protesting.
In addition, there are about 50 keywords being searched more than 250 times per month related to "black activism quotes", about 50 keywords being searched more than 250 times per month related to "quotes for female protesting and activism" and many more segments of search demand that have enough search intent they can be targeted on their own.
Given the above, whether you choose "quotes about being imperfect" or "quotes about protesting and activism", you should start by creating a number of supporting pages to target the underlying segments of search demand that support those topics before building a hub page that would target the core intent/seed keywords and interlink with all of the supporting pages.
As far as whether to start with "quotes about imperfect love", "quotes about life being imperfect", "quotes about marriage and relationships being imperfect", "black activism quotes", "quotes for female protesting and activism", or "quotes about peaceful protests", you can apply the same logic that has been applied thus far (number of keywords, total search volume, UR + number of backlinks to most commonly occuring top 10 ranking pages) to determine which one would be the best to start with.
Ultimately, you're going to build pages for all of them, but going through the above decision making process will help you prioritize which ones to start with first.
Chung » Dolman
I really appreciate your help, patience and long
informative reply! I took your reply seriously and I actually went to subscribe for Ahref to understand how it works (because I am a newbie)… it took me some time to subscribe but anyway now I have access… I have quite a number of follow-up questions..
First (Q1), how did you come up with the low KD keywords like "I'm not perfect quotes"? Finding low KD keywords is important for a new site like mine so this is the most important question for me. Do you enter a competitor's domain to analyze in Ahref's "Site explorer" section and then set the KD filter to 0-5 and find out the list of keywords with low Keyword Difficulty (KD)?
Chung
Second (Q2), you said: "Aside from people using the keyword "I'm not perfect quotes" to search for quotes about imperfection, these are some of the most commonly used keywords to search for such quotes:
flawed quotes, flaws quotes, imperfect quote, imperfect quotes, imperfect sayings, imperfection quote, imperfection quotes, imperfection sayings, not perfect quotes"
How did you find out find this list of keywords such as "flawed quotes"?
When I put in "I'm not perfect quotes" in keywords explorer, it gave me a list but all had the words "I'm not perfect" in it ( see screenshot).

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Dolman » Chung
================
First (Q1), how did you come up with the low KD keywords like "I'm not perfect quotes"?
Finding low KD keywords is important for a new site like mine so this is the most important question for me.
Do you enter a competitor's domain to analyze in Ahref's "Site explorer" section and then set the KD filter to 0-5 and find out the list of keywords with low KD?
================
Start with "quote", "quotes", "quotations", "saying", and "sayings" as your seed keywords and click on the "having same terms" to find all of the keywords in the Ahrefs database that include those keywords.
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer
Depending on how much search demand there is among the most popular keywords, restrict the number of results using the Volume filter.
In the case of searches for "quotes" and "sayings", the most popular keywords are searched 550K, 300K, 285K, etc. times per month.
Among them, there are searches for "geico quote", "insurance quotes" and many others you can remove using the "Exclude" filter.
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer
Once you've done that, you can start to browse through the list of keywords to find any that sound interesting.
Given the amount of interest for keywords like "love quotes", "positive quotes" and "funny quotes" in the short tail of the search demand curve, you can use the KD and/or volume filters to further refine the list of keywords.
By limiting the search volume of these keywords to 500, 1,000, 2,000, or any number of searches per month, you can find lots of interesting segments of search demand you can possibly target.
Keywords with 0 to 500 monthly searches:
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer?volume=Min-500&exclude=geico%2Ccar%2Cinsurance%2Chome%20insurance%2Chealth%20insurance%2Cprogressive%2Cxname%2Clname%2Cstock%2Cstocks
Keywords with 500 to 1,000 monthly searches:
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer?volume=500-1000&exclude=geico%2Ccar%2Cinsurance%2Chome%20insurance%2Chealth%20insurance%2Cprogressive%2Cxname%2Clname%2Cstock%2Cstocks
Keywords with 1,000 to 2,000 monthly searches:
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer?volume=1000-2000&exclude=geico%2Ccar%2Cinsurance%2Chome%20insurance%2Chealth%20insurance%2Cprogressive%2Cxname%2Clname%2Cstock%2Cstock
After finding "I'm not perfect quotes" as one of the segments of search demand when filtering the results as instructed above, you can research the SERPs to see who is ranking for other "I'm not perfect quotes" and other keywords related to "I'm not perfect quotes" that people might search to start expanding your seed keyword list beyond just "I'm not perfect quotes" to include keywords with similar intent like "imperfect quotes", "imperfection quotes" and many others.
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Second (Q2), you said: "Aside from people using the keyword "I'm not perfect quotes" to search for quotes about imperfection, these are some of the most commonly used keywords to search for such quotes:
flawed quotes, flaws quotes, imperfect quote, imperfect quotes, imperfect sayings, imperfection quote, imperfection quotes, imperfection sayings, not perfect quotes"
How did you find out find this list of keywords such as "flawed quotes"?
When I put in "I'm not perfect quotes" in keywords explorer, it gave me a list but all had the words "I'm not perfect" in it ( see screenshot)
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In addition to the related keywords found by researching the SERP and competitors as discussed above, you can also search for synonyms or use something like Related Words – https://relatedwords.org/ – to find more of the words people searching for "I'm not perfect quotes" might use without using those exact words.
not perfect = imperfect
imperfect = imperfection
imperfection = flawed
Armed with those seed keywords, you can repeat the first step and re-do the keyword research starting with "imperfection quotes", "not perfect quotes", "imperfect quotes", etc. as the seed keywords:
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer?volume=1000-2000&exclude=geico%2Ccar%2Cinsurance%2Chome%20insurance%2Chealth%20insurance%2Cprogressive%2Cxname%2Clname%2Cstock%2Cstock
Continuing again as you did earlier, you can now review the list of keywords for underlying patterns, filter the list as you so choose, and research and analyze the SERPs and competitors to find more keywords you can target related to "quotes about being imperfect".
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Chung
Wow, another extremely helpful answer! Thank you so much, Jason! I also did some homework and watched some Ahrefs videos to learn how to use the tool. Your reply is also extremely helpful! Thank you!
I have more questions..
Q3: I have followed your advice and came up with a keyword "loyalty quotes" that I want to target. It has 0 KD and 15K volume. I went to relatedwords.org and searched loyalty quotes, it gave me a list but it looks like only the first 3 keywords are related. Correct? So the rest should be ignored? Then, I put these related words into ahref keyword explorer again, but what next?
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer
I saw that love quote has a very high KD.. which is not good for me, so that means I should focus on loyalty quotes?

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Chung
Q4: using the imperfect quotes example, say I want to target the keyword "I'm not perfect quotes", "I'm not perfect quote", "imperfect quotes", "flawed quotes". Does that mean when writing my content, I need to have all these words in the same page? even I need to write "quote" and also "quotes" in the same page? and should I write my content with this exact phrase match "I'm not perfect quotes" instead of a partial match like "Quotes about me not being perfect"?
Q5: This actually brings up a fundamental question I have always had: how can I tell Google what keywords I want my page to rank? I just did a site scan in Google analytics and it says it only has 6 keywords… my pages are full of words, how come Google only found 6 keywords? Does it have to do with the keywords I put in SEO plugins like RankMath? maybe I should put in more keywords in the plugin?
Dolman » Chung
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Q3: I have followed your advice and came up with a keyword "loyalty quotes" that I want to target. It has 0 KD and 15K volume.
I went to relatedwords.org and searched loyalty quotes, it gave me a list but it looks like only the first 3 keywords are related. Correct? So the rest should be ignored?
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loyalty = loyal = being loyal
faithful = faithfulness = being faithful
While being loyal and being faithful are similar, do you see the same URLs ranking for "loyalty quotes" and "quotes about being loyal" as you do when the keywords are "faithful quotes" and "quotes about being faithful" instead?
Upon review of the SERPs for "loyalty quotes" and "quotes about loyalty" and the SERPs for "faithful quotes" and "quotes about being faithful", do you see the same URLs ranking for all of them?
loyalty quotes, quotes about loyalty keywords:
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer
SERP URLs:
https://www.keepinspiring.me/loyalty-quotes/
https://quoteambition.com/loyalty-quotes-sayings/
https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/loyalty-quotes
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/loyalty
https://www.wiseoldsayings.com/loyalty-quotes/
faithful quotes, being faithful quotes keywords:
https://Ahrefs.com/…/5f44b7e9fa7fa28…/google/us/overview
SERP URLs:
https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/faithful-quotes
https://www.wiseoldsayings.com/faithful-quotes/
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/faithful
https://www.yourtango.com/2019327034/faithful-love-quotes-about-being-loyal-partner-relationship-commitment
https://everydaypower.com/loyalty-quotes/
Since these URLs are not the same, you might have a hard time convincing Google the search intent for "being faithful quotes" and "being loyal quotes" is similar enough the underlying search intent could be satisified by a single page rather than two.
Dolman » Chung
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Then, I put these related words into ahref keyword explorer again, but what next?
https://ahrefs.com/…/1a6f68506397b52…/google/us/overview
I saw that love quote has a very high KD.. which is not good for me, so that means I should focus on loyalty quotes?
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If you were to repeat the above for "love quotes", you'll find the same results as I did for "being faithful quotes" and "being loyal quotes" because it's not really directly related to loyalty quotes.
Related Words is a good tool to help find synonyms the same as a thesaurus, but it doesn't offer much beyond that.
Since someone can look for "loyalty quotes" using more than just synonyms when they search, some of the related keywords they might use include:
quotes about being loyal
being loyal quotes
quotes about loyalty
trust and loyalty quotes
honesty and loyalty quotes
FYI… these keywords were found by looking at the Organic Keywords report for the SERP URLs noted earlier.
https://ahrefs.com/positions-explorer/organic-keywords/v5/exact/us/all/all/all/all/all/all/all/1/traffic_desc?target=https%3A%2F%2Fquoteambition.com%2Floyalty-quotes-sayings%2F
In some situations, neither Related Words or a reverse engineering of competitor rankings will provide much help to find related or synonym keywords.
In those cases, you can search for a definition of the word, brainstorm different ones yourself or use something like RhymeZone or VisuWords to find more synonyms, antonyms, and other words related to loyalty:
https://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?org1=syl&org2=l&typeofrhyme=rel&Word=loyalty
https://visuwords.com/loyalty
You can do the same using "loyal" as the seed keyword and then rinse and repeat the above using "allegiant quotes" and "fidelity quotes" to see if the same URLs rank for "loyalty quotes" and "fidelity quotes" or if the search intent for each is similar enough they should.
https://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?typeofrhyme=syn&Word=loyal&loc=spellmap3
https://visuwords.com/loyal
Once you have some other keywords people searching for "quotes about loyalty" are likely to use when they search, you can put them back into keyword explorer as your seed keywords to find more of the same:
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer
Then, click on "Having same terms" to find all of the keywords people use that include at least one of those seed keywords as part of the search query:
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer
In this case, there are 4,000+ keywords being searched tens of thousands of times per month.
Within these keywords there are segments of search demand related to many specific types of "quotes about loyalty" people are searching for:
fake loyalty quotes – 17 keywords
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer?include=any%3Afake
beowulf loyalty quotes – 50 keywords
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer?include=all%3Abeowulf
dog loyalty quotes – 37 keywords
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer?include=all%3Adog
quotes about loyalty and friendship – 102 keywords
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer?include=any%3Afriend%2Cfriendship
quotes about loyalty and family – 122 keywords
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer?include=all%3Afamily
trust and loyalty quotes – 86 keywords
https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer?include=all%3Atrust
In the case of the first 3 examples, you might not want to target those segments of search demand because they don't relate closely enough to the topic of "quotes about loyalty", but the last 3 are prime examples of the segments of search demand you could target.
Depending which URLs you see ranking for those keywords, you could either create a page dedicated to "quotes about trust and loyalty" that would be a spoke page to the "loyalty quotes" hub page and do the same for the others or you could add a section dedicated to "trust and loyalty quotes" along with a section dedicated to "quotes about loyalty and family" and a section dedicated to "quotes about loyalty and friendship" to the "quotes about loyalty" page that would list all of them on one page.
Dolman » Chung
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Q4: using the imperfect quotes example, say I want to target the keyword "I'm not perfect quotes", "I'm not perfect quote", "imperfect quotes", "flawed quotes". Does that mean when writing my content, I need to have all these words in the same page? even I need to write "quote" and also "quotes" in the same page? and should I write my content with this exact phrase match "I'm not perfect quotes" instead of a partial match like "Quotes about me not being perfect"?
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See above. Above all else, the page should match the underlying search intent of the topic being searched.
In the case of a page about "loyalty quotes", as you add the "trust and loyalty quotes", "quotes about being loyal to your family" and "quotes about being a loyal friend" to the page along with any other content that would include the words loyal, loyalty, trust, family, friendship, and many of the others Google associates with this topic, you're going to improve your relevancy score for the topic itself.
Along with using exact match and partial match anchor text when building your internal and external links, you should have enough relevance towards the topic of "quotes about being loyal" that you can either rank a single page for all of them or multiple pages in a hub and spoke configuration should you target each segment of search demand separately.
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Q5: This actually brings up a fundamental question I have always had: how can I tell Google what keywords I want my page to rank? I just did a site scan in Google analytics and it says it only has 6 keywords… my pages are full of words, how come Google only found 6 keywords? Does it have to do with the keywords I put in SEO plugins like RankMath? maybe I should put in more keywords in the plugin?
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See above.
Content that matches the underlying search intent + keyword rich anchor text for internal links + on page SEO (title tag, meta description tag, header tags, schema markup) is 90% of the work if not more.
Adding keywords to those plugins is like adding salt and pepper to a steak. While they can help add flavor, they can't replace the meat itself.
That being said, these plugins can help make it easier to implement the on page SEO, internal link, and other optimization so they're still valuable in that sense, just not a "magic bullet" in the sense you can rank better by adding more keywords.
Above all else, you rank better by doing a better job of matching the underlying search intent and mirroring the segments of search demand Google typically sees when someone is interested in this topic.
On-page SEO and links are going to help support the content you create, but the salt and pepper don't taste the same without the steak.

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Chung
Thank you so much again, Jason. I think I am getting the hang of it now. I analyzed this page in Ahrefs:
https://www.goalcast.com/2017/03/09/top-20-most-inspiring-dalai-lama-quotes/
https://ahrefs.com/positions-explorer/organic-keywords/v5/prefix/us/all/all/all/all/all/all/all/1/position_asc?target=www.goalcast.com%2F2017%2F03%2F09%2Ftop-20-most-inspiring-dalai-lama-quotes%2F
I read the content of the whole page (which is not too long, only 20 quotes) and then I went to Ahrefs to do a site analysis to see what keywords it ranks for.. Most of the keywords are about kindness and compassion which I understand because a few of the sayings are about kindness and compassion. But, 4 keywords that Ahrefs says the page ranks for cannot be found as exact, partial match or as any related content in the page. They are:
Dalai Lama new year quotes
Dalai lama quotes on marriage
Dalai lama quotes on family
Dalai lama quotes health
Do you know why this page also ranks for these keyword (according to Ahrefs)?
Dolman » Chung
This page likely ranks for those keywords because there aren't any others that do a good enough job satisfying the underlying search intent and demand related to them.
In addition, since this page appears to do a good job of matching the underlying search intent for quotes by the Dalai lama, even when the page doesn't specifically target these keywords, Google ranks this page for them as well since it does such a good job covering the majority of the underlying search intent and demand related to it.
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Chung
Thank you so much, Jason for your patient and highly informative replies. I have learnt a ton with your help! May i add you to stay in touch? 😊
Dolman » Chung
Sure thing. Happy to help and stay in touch… interested to hear how it works out.
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Chung
Thanks Daniel. I would like to manually check difficulty in SERPs, but how? could you please explain? My purpose is to look for keyword (topics) to write the content of my blog. My blog is new so I am looking for keyword with low difficulty.
Daniel » Chung
There's no set method and it takes a bit of practice but basically put your keywords into Google and see what sort of sites pop up in the top 10. If its big authoritative sites then you will struggle to compete, if its smallish sites or gibberish sites then you have an opportunity. Don't just look at the domain name though, examine the search intent. I had a keyword that was basically a tutorial on how to do something with a certain product. The top site was amazon but it didn't tell you how to do the certain thing, it was just selling the particular product. None of the SERPs results explained how to do this certain thing, Google just ranked amazon at the top because there was nothing better. But the search difficulty according to some softwares was high presumably because the domain name was amazon. It was pretty easy to outrank. Hope that makes sense. There's no real rules to manually checking, just use common sense.
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Chung » Daniel
Thank you so much! It's easy but I never thought of that 😄 haha Thank you so much again. So, do you still use a keyword tool? and what do you use it for?
Daniel » Chung
Don't tell any of the other guys here but I don't use any keyword tools lol, just Google and my brain. It works for me but I only really work on comparatively small sites. The real experts here know how to profit from the business intelligence behind the data of keyword tools but that's not me.
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