Rankfill

How to Find Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords for Quick Wins

You published something three months ago. You checked rankings every week. Nothing moved. Then you looked at what actually ranked on page one and realized: those are authority sites with thousands of backlinks, and you're competing against them on a term everyone targets.

That's the moment most people start looking for low-hanging fruit keywords — terms where the competition hasn't shown up yet, or has shown up badly, and a well-written page can rank without a years-long backlink campaign.

Here's how to find them.

What Makes a Keyword "Low-Hanging Fruit"

The phrase gets used loosely, so let's be precise about what you're actually looking for.

A low-hanging fruit keyword has three characteristics:

  1. Low keyword difficulty — Typically under 20 on a 0–100 scale. This usually means the existing pages ranking for it are thin, poorly optimized, or sitting on low-authority domains.
  2. Real search volume — Not necessarily high, but enough to matter. A term with 150 monthly searches that you can rank #1 for is worth more than a 5,000-search term where you'll never crack page two.
  3. Clear commercial or informational intent — You need to be able to write a page that actually satisfies what the searcher wants, so you can hold the ranking once you get it.

Long-tail keywords are where most of these opportunities live. Broad, short terms are almost always saturated. The more specific the phrase, the less competition tends to show up.

Method 1: Mine Your Own Site's Existing Rankings

Before you look anywhere else, check what Google already thinks you're relevant for.

Open Google Search Console and go to Performance → Search Results. Sort by impressions, not clicks. Look for queries where you're:

These are pages that Google has indexed and partially trusts for a topic, but hasn't fully committed to ranking. A targeted content update — adding a section that directly addresses that query, improving the title tag, adding internal links — can push these from page two to page one fast.

This is the most underused tactic in SEO. You already have the domain authority signal. You just need to strengthen the page-to-query match.

Method 2: Look at What Competitors Rank For That You Don't

Pull up a competitor — specifically one whose domain authority is similar to or slightly above yours. Not the industry giant; the mid-size player in your niche.

In Ahrefs or Semrush, use the Content Gap or Keyword Gap tool. Enter your domain and 2–3 competitors. Filter for keywords where they rank in the top 20 and you rank outside the top 100 or don't rank at all.

Then apply these filters:

What you get is a list of terms a real business in your space is actually ranking for — which means the intent is likely commercial or informational, not just informational fluff — and the difficulty is low enough that you can compete.

This works because a similar-authority site ranking for a term is proof the barrier to entry isn't domain authority alone. It's content. You can write the content.

If you want to go deeper on this approach, finding niche keywords your competitors are missing is worth reading next.

Method 3: SERP Scraping for Weak Competition Signals

You don't always need a paid tool for this. Search the keyword you're considering. Then look at who's on page one:

Signs the keyword is winnable:

Signs you should move on:

This manual check takes two minutes per keyword and saves you from writing content that will never move.

Method 4: Use Question-Based Keyword Research

Questions are structurally easier to rank for because they map to a specific intent and most existing content doesn't answer them precisely.

Tools that surface question keywords:

Filter for questions that are specific enough that a single focused page could answer them completely. Vague questions ("how does SEO work") have too much competition. Specific questions ("how to find low-hanging fruit keywords" — the one you just searched) often have thin results you can beat.

For sites trying to capture traffic at scale, long-tail searches cover thousands of these queries in ways that single-page strategies never will.

Method 5: Look at Keyword Modifiers That Reduce Competition

Take any competitive seed keyword and attach modifiers that change the intent:

Each modifier you add removes a chunk of competitors who aren't writing about that specific variation. Difficulty drops. Relevance stays. The person searching a modified query is also further down the decision path, which usually means better conversion.

A long-tail keywords generator can automate much of this brainstorming if you're working through a large topic set.

Putting It Into a Workflow

The mistake most people make is treating keyword research as a one-time event. Low-hanging fruit windows close — a term that's easy to rank for today might get targeted by three well-resourced competitors in six months.

A repeatable process looks like this:

  1. Weekly or monthly: Export fresh Search Console data and flag position 8–20 queries
  2. Monthly: Run a keyword gap analysis against 2–3 competitors
  3. For new topics: Run question research and SERP-check before committing to any piece

Prioritize by effort-to-impact ratio. A term with 200 monthly searches and KD 5 that you can rank for in 60 days beats a 2,000-search term with KD 45 that takes a year and might still miss.

If you're running this process across an entire site and want the competitor mapping done systematically, Rankfill identifies exactly which keywords competitors are capturing that your site is missing, along with traffic estimates for each opportunity.

FAQ

How low does keyword difficulty need to be to count as low-hanging fruit? Generally under 20, but context matters. A KD of 25 on a term where you have strong topical authority might be easier to rank than a KD of 10 on a topic you've never covered.

Can a brand new site target low-hanging fruit keywords? Yes, but be realistic about timeframes. A new site with zero backlinks will struggle even against weak competition. Domain age and a handful of links help. Focus on the most specific, lowest-competition terms available.

How many low-hanging fruit keywords should I target at once? Start with 5–10, publish those pages, monitor rankings for 60–90 days, then expand. Trying to publish 50 pages at once makes it hard to learn what's actually working.

What if I find a keyword with low difficulty but no search volume? Skip it. Zero volume means Google has no data — either nobody searches it or the phrasing is off. Test the term in Search Console after you publish, but don't prioritize it over terms with confirmed demand.

Does content quality matter if competition is low? Yes. Ranking is only half the job. Thin content that ranks will have high bounce rates, which eventually signals to Google that your page isn't satisfying searchers. Write pages that fully answer the query — that's what holds rankings once you get them.

How do I know if a keyword is too broad to target? Look at the SERP. If the top results cover wildly different subtopics, the keyword is too broad and Google doesn't know what intent to satisfy. You want keywords where the top results all answer the same specific question.