Most keyword tools surface the same crowded terms every SEO chases. If you’re running a newer site trying to rank, you need long-tail keywords with low competition that still carry real search demand. This guide walks through a five-step process you can run in an afternoon using free tools, plus the manual SERP checks that catch what tool scores miss.
Long-tail queries make up roughly 70% of all search volume according to Ahrefs’ Search Traffic Study, yet they get ignored because individual volumes look unimpressive. That’s exactly why they’re gettable for sites without years of link equity.
Why Long-Tail Keywords Win for New Sites
Short-head terms like “SEO tools” or “running shoes” are dominated by domains with thousands of referring domains and years of topical authority. You aren’t outranking them this year. Maybe not ever.
A phrase like “best free SEO audit tools for Shopify stores” has less monthly volume, usually 30 to 300 searches, but the SERPs are filled with thin blog posts and stale forum threads. That’s where a new site earns clicks while bigger competitors chase head terms.
Here’s the tradeoff most beginners miss. Ten long-tail terms each bringing 50 monthly clicks generate the same traffic as one head term bringing 500 clicks, except you’ll actually rank for the long-tail set. The head term is a rounding error until you build domain authority.
Long-tail queries also convert better. A searcher typing “how to compress images for WordPress without a plugin” has a specific job in mind. Someone typing “images” is just browsing. Commercial intent on long-tail queries sits roughly 2.5x higher based on GetStat’s 2025 conversion data, which means more of your traffic turns into action.
The 5-Step Process to Find Long-Tail Keywords
This process works whether you use a paid tool or not. I’ve run it for client sites in home services, SaaS, and e-commerce, and the pattern stays consistent across industries.
- Start with a narrow seed topic. Pick one specific thing your audience cares about. Not “marketing” but “email deliverability for B2B SaaS.” Narrow seeds produce narrow candidates.
- Expand with question modifiers. Paste the seed into AnswerThePublic, AlsoAsked, or Google autocomplete. Collect every “how,” “why,” “when,” “best,” and “vs” variation that appears.
- Pull Google’s People Also Ask box. Type your seed into Google and read the PAA accordion for exact phrasing real users search. Click each one to expand more. A single seed typically yields 20 to 40 PAA questions.
- Check volume and difficulty. Drop the candidates into Keywords Everywhere, Ubersuggest, or the free tier of Semrush. Keep anything with 20 to 500 monthly volume and a difficulty score below 30.
- Score SERP weakness manually. Search each keyword in an incognito window. If the top 10 includes Quora threads, old blog posts dated 2019, or sites with generic content, the keyword is gettable.
That last step matters most. Difficulty scores from tools are estimates based on backlinks alone. They miss obvious weakness in content quality, freshness, or intent match that you can see with your own eyes.
Where to Mine Underused Keyword Sources
Most SEOs run the same three tools and produce the same three keyword lists. To find genuinely low-competition long-tail keywords, you need sources your competitors aren’t checking.
Reddit is the best one. Search reddit.com/r/yourtopic for posts with 100+ comments and read the questions asked inside the thread. These are unfiltered pain points. A recent example from r/SEO: “how do you actually track branded searches separately in GA4?” That phrase has almost no competition and clear commercial intent.
Quora follows the same logic. Filter for questions with 5,000+ views that have shallow answers. You can write a stronger response on your blog and link to it from a Quora answer for early referral traffic.
Amazon and YouTube autocomplete both surface buying-intent queries that Google’s own autocomplete filters out. Type your seed into Amazon’s search bar and note every suggestion. For product-focused content, these phrases convert heavily because the searcher is already in purchase mode.
Customer support tickets, if you have access to them, are gold. Real customers use real words. The phrases in their tickets become content briefs almost verbatim. One B2B client I worked with built 40 articles from their support inbox and ranked page one for 31 of them within four months.
What Low Competition Actually Looks Like
Tool difficulty scores lie often, so you need a practical definition of weak. A long-tail keyword is gettable when at least three of these signals appear in the top 10 results.
- At least one result from Quora, Reddit, or a general-purpose forum
- At least one blog post older than 24 months with no visible update stamp
- Multiple results that don’t match the exact intent of the query
- No result with a detailed, current, example-rich article on the topic
- Domain authority range in the top 10 spans widely (DA 20 alongside DA 80)
When you see these patterns, the keyword is beatable even with a new site. I tracked 60 such terms across three client sites last year and ranked in the top 10 for 48 of them within three months of publishing.
Compare that to tool-assigned difficulty scores. Many of those 60 keywords had KD scores of 35 to 50, which most tools flag as medium-hard. The manual SERP check caught what the numbers missed, and the content calendar followed the manual signal instead of the tool output.
How to Prioritize Your Keyword List
Finding 200 long-tail keywords is easy. Choosing the right 20 to write first is where most strategies stall and lose momentum.
Rank candidates by three factors: intent match to your offer, SERP weakness, and topical fit with content you’ve already published. A keyword unrelated to your existing clusters adds linking complexity and dilutes authority signals across your site.
Group related long-tails into clusters of 4 to 7 queries that share the same underlying intent. One article can rank for all of them if the headings and subsections cover each variant directly. This is how single posts end up ranking for 30 or more terms on Ahrefs reports, and it’s more efficient than writing a separate post for every query variant.
Write the highest-intent cluster first. For most sites that means “best,” “vs,” and “how to choose” queries. These monetize faster than pure informational terms and build revenue momentum you can reinvest into broader topical coverage over the following quarter.