One of the most essential steps in search engine optimization (SEO) is keyword research. If you want to rank highly on the search engines, you should begin by finding relevant keywords people use while searching for information on your niche. Once you determine these keywords, you can focus on optimizing your content for them.

However, when searching for keywords, you should realize that the competition level is higher for some keywords than others. The broader a keyword is, the more likely the websites are to target it and the higher the competition level. If you want to find low-competition keywords, you should discover niche-specific keywords. Besides, such keywords provide more relevant leads than short-tail keywords.

What are Niche Keywords?

Niche keywords are long-tail keywords that are highly specific and target a narrow industry vertical. Businesses need to optimize their websites and PPC campaigns for niche keywords, not just broad and popular terms, which can be challenging to rank for, especially for new ventures. Therefore, keyword research is vital to a digital marketing strategy for lead generation.

Importance of Focusing on Niche-Specific Keywords

Niche-specific keywords are specific, detailed, and zero in on a particular segment of your target audience. They differ from broad keywords and focus on a specific aspect of your contents, products, or services. For instance, a keyword like “massage” is a broad term that can be highly competitive because of its high search volume. It's too wide and will not provide a highly relevant audience as the topic can be divided into many other subtopics. 

Instead of targeting such a keyword, you can use a keyword like “before and after lymphatic drainage massage”. According to Ahref, this keyword is easy to rank for.

The keyword is highly relevant and will appeal to a small group within the large group of people searching for massage services. That’s unlike other internet users searching for the keyword “massage”. People searching for such a keyword may be looking for different products and services such as Swedish massage, how to do a massage, or the cost, which means they aren't likely to convert when you get such traffic.

People searching for “before and after lymphatic drainage massage” already know what they want. If you offer such a service, you can easily connect with specific customers who are searching for your services. While niche-specific keywords have a lower search volume than broader terms, they provide better results as people searching for them go further down the buyer’s journey. They are more likely to convert as they know what they are searching for.

When you focus on niche-specific keywords, you can also create highly targeted content to address your audience's interests and needs. When users find the information they are searching for on your site, they are more likely to stay on your website. This can send a positive signal to Google that you are providing helpful content.

How to Find Niche-Specific Keywords For Your Business

Now that we understand the importance of using niche-specific keywords, here are the steps to follow to find them.

Determine Your Niche

Whether you are targeting broad or niche keywords, you must start by determining your niche. The niche will help you find the broad terms you can then niche down on. You can use the following tips to determine your niche. These are:

• Determine your industry. While this may look obvious, the industry you are in can be your niche. For instance, if you offer organic cleaning services, you are in the cleaning industry, which is also your niche.
• Products or services offered. The name of your products and services can also hint at your niche.
• Determine the problem your business solves. Whether you sell a product or a service, it means there is a problem you are solving for your clients. For instance, if you are cleaning organically, you are helping people avoid toxic cleaners. You can also determine your niche by identifying the solutions you offer to your client.
• Ask your customer service team. If you find it hard to get relevant search terms, you can ask your sales teams for terms and phrases customers use in their queries.

By following the tips above, you can easily find keywords for your niche. After that, you can focus on optimizing for such keywords. Once you have broad terms that meet your needs, consider the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets. You can create ten topic buckets you consider relevant to your business. You can then use the topics to find more specific keywords. It can also help to put yourself in the buyer's persona. Consider the topic you are likely to search for.

Find Highly Relevant Niche Keywords

Now it's time to find highly relevant keywords you feel are essential to rank for because these are the keywords your customers are targeting. These steps will provide you with your last list of keywords, so you will have to narrow down the keywords and phrases you got in the last steps to find longer phrases.

You can enter the short terms and phrases you found earlier in a keyword research tool to find long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are usually extended and more specific versions of the shorter keywords. A common rule of thumb is that a longtail keyword should contain four or more keywords. That means you can enter a phrase like “shoes” to get a long tail keyword like "best running shoes for flat feet”. Here are ways to find long tail keywords:

• Use Google Analytics/Google Search Console

If your site is old, you can look at your Google Search Console or Google Analytics to determine which keywords have already brought users to the site. Check your site traffic source and go through the organic search traffic to determine the keywords people use to find your site. 

• Google AutoComplete Feature

Another helpful tool often ignored is Google when searching for popular and relevant search terms for your site. After all, you will go straight to the source using this method. To use it, begin typing a short and specific keyword and find the suggested searches. This works because Google provides suggestions based on popular search terms for your entered keyword, which can hint at the popular phrases people are searching for.

• Using Keyword Research Tools

Another way to help you find keywords in your niche is through keyword research tools. There are different tools to help you identify a wide range of keyword opportunities, including the less obvious terms that can quickly bring traffic and increase sales. If you create a new site, you will not have the luxury of using historical data to predict future performance. Therefore, you need to find potential keywords to drill down for your niche-specific keywords.

• Analyze Your Keyword List

After getting a list of keywords you can target, you will need to analyze them further to determine which one to prioritize. This is important as you don't need to use the whole keywords list. You need to find potentially relevant ones for your business so that you understand the correct terms and their performances.

You can use the keyword tools to determine the search volume and competition level. You also want to see how the long tail keywords stack against each other. 

Assess the Search Volume and Keyword Difficulty

While niche keywords will hint at the keywords with lower search volume, it doesn't mean they will always be easy to rank for. When you find a potential keyword, you need to review its competitiveness compared to the search volume. You can review the difficulty score using a keyword research tool like Semrush or  Ahrefs. You can then organize the keywords found in order of their keyword difficulty. The tools will also show you the search volume, enabling you to find low-competition keywords with a high search volume.

Most keyword research tools usually assign a difficulty score running from 0 to 100, with the latter being the most difficult. If your site is new and you use Ahrefs for keyword research, you can find keywords with a difficulty of less than 10. This is a critical metric to look at when ranking on the search engine, as it will help you understand how easy or difficult it is to rank for that particular keyword. If you use your niche-specific keywords for a PPC campaign, you must pay special attention to the cost per click. This metric shows how much companies are willing to pay when people click their ads.

Some of the other factors to consider when analyzing your keyword list include the following:

• Relevance

One of the factors that Google uses to rank keywords is relevance. To rank for a particular keyword, it needs to match the user's search intent, and that's why you need to ensure that you find keywords that match the user's search intent. Additionally, your content should be the best resource for people searching for the query. If your content doesn’t offer better value than the competition, Google will not rank it highly.

• Authority

Google will rank a site highly if it considers it authoritative. To make your site look authoritative, it needs to provide helpful information. After creating the content, you must promote it to get social signals and backlinks. If you target a keyword where big sites such as Forbes or Mayo Clinic are ranking, it will be hard to compete with them. 

• Search Volume

The search volume of a keyword is also another essential factor to consider. You can rank on the first page for a specific keyword, but you will not get any traffic if no one searches for such a keyword. Fortunately, most keyword research tools will show you the monthly search volume of a keyword. This figure refers to the number of times different audiences use a keyword.

However, you must also realize that a high monthly search volume isn't necessarily better. Often, keywords with high search volumes are more challenging to rank for. As noted earlier, the competition level in a longtail keyword will usually be lower than in a short-tail keyword. You can get higher traffic from a keyword with a lower search volume and a low competition level than another with a higher search volume and high competition.

How to Use Niche Keywords

After finding niche keyword ideas, you need to use them in your content. No matter the type of content you create, whether blog posts, guides, sales, or landing pages, niche keywords will work for these types of content. Therefore, when considering how to use the keyword in your content, you should be guided by the search intent.

Ensure you perform a SERP analysis to determine the style and length of your content.  SERP analysis involves analyzing the top-ranking sites to determine what the top sites are doing to appear on top of the search engines and if there are opportunities to outrank them. Here are a few tips on doing that, assuming you have done keyword research and determined your audience’s search intent:

• Do Competitor Analysis

This step involves searching for top keywords on Google to see the top sites' ranking. Once you determine the top sites, you can pay close attention to their URL, title, headings, page content, top keywords, featured snippets, and more. This will hint at what your competitors are doing well to appear on top of the search engines.

• Identify Opportunities

After determining the top-ranking sites on the SERPs, you can search for ideas to help you get ahead of the competition and drive more traffic. For instance, you might realize that the competitors are using many target keywords in their headings while their content has a lot of bulleted lists. To enable you to compete with them, you can adopt similar techniques in your content to compete with them. You can also think of additional steps to allow you to outrank them on the search engines.

For instance, if you find that your competitors are using a table of contents at the top of their page, you can include anchor links to improve your experience and remain ahead of them. A general rule of thumb is to include the target keywords in certain areas of your page, such as the title and heading. You should also include it at least one to two times in the body. You can take a more aggressive approach depending on the keyword search intent, topic, and competition level.

Once you have published the content, you should promote it to get backlinks to the site, such as the target niche keywords of the anchor text. Remember that SEO is an ongoing process and not a one-day affair. After you have optimized your content, you should include the niche keywords list in the Keywords Overview. This will help you monitor their keyword ranking and identify potential improvement areas.

Monitor the Keyword List and Adapt it to Your Niche

After getting the right keywords for your page, you need to continue monitoring the keywords and their performances to determine which ones are working and which aren't. When doing that, you should remember that you will not rank immediately. Therefore, you should keep an eye on the performance of the pages to see how they rank over time. If you struggle to rank a page, consider optimizing it even more. You can do that using strategies such as link building or content optimization.

If you are doing PPC keyword research, you might realize that the keywords you target your ad for are very competitive. Rather than wasting time and resources trying to rank for the keyword, you can check the keywords you created and target a different one. For instance, if you run an ad on organic cleaning but find the keyword too competitive and does not bring clicks, you can select another keyword, such as homemade organic cleaners.

Overall, the most important thing is to monitor the performance of your ad to see if it is bringing clicks and conversions. When you take time to monitor a campaign and find the keyword that works best, you are more likely to increase your conversions.

Tips For a Successful Niche-Specific Research

We have provided the key steps to follow when doing niche-specific keyword research. There are also some tips to follow to improve your chances of success:

• Understand Your Audience

This is an essential part that is often overlooked. Before you even think of the best keywords to target, you need to think of the audience you are optimizing for. You can do that by performing market research to know the topics that are important to customers to understand the keywords likely to draw customers to them. This is one of the top digital marketing ideas for small businesses.

• Use Variations to the Keywords

As noted earlier, there are different keyword research tools to help in your keyword research.  When you get a good keyword to target, don't just optimize for it. Use these tools to find keyword variations to add to your articles. Doing that will help increase the visibility of your content because it will also reach other users searching for the keyword variations.

For instance, if you use a long tail keyword of the “cost of a massage,” you might realize that some users will use the “price of a massage”. When you create content that optimizes for both keywords, you can increase the chances of more users discovering your content.

• Use Keywords as the Foundation for Your Content

A common mistake content creators make is creating content and then trying to fit the keywords. This shouldn't be the case. Instead, they should do the opposite, where they begin with finding keywords and then creating content around those keywords. This works because if people search for that particular keyword, they are interested in seeing content around it. Doing that will enable the keyword to fit well in your content. 

• Understand the Different Stages of the Sales Funnel

When doing keyword research, it's essential to understand the different stages of the sales funnel. Once you do that, you can focus on creating well-optimized content for Google. These stages are:

• Awareness. This stage is for reaching prospects who are strangers to your business. You provide them with educational content to help you build relationships with them.
• Consideration. The prospects in this stage seek more information to determine their options. You can use this stage to introduce them to your content and educate them on how helpful the product or service is to them.
• Decision stage. Prospects in this stage are searching for the best possible product or service. When finding keywords and creating content for this stage, tell them why they should buy from your business.

Remember that no two businesses are the same; therefore, you should research how the search intent looks at the different stages of the buying journey.

• Check for Keyword Seasonality

You might come across a keyword with a high search volume and low competition and feel you have hit the jackpot. However, after digging deeper, you might realize that the keyword has only had a high search volume for one month. For instance, a keyword like “Valentine's flowers” may only have a high search volume in February.

The same applies to other keywords like “Christmas trees”. When you target such a keyword, you will only make sales during those periods. Therefore, the keyword might not be worth targeting unless it's your line of business. Even if it is, you might only need to optimize for the keywords around those months. Therefore, the seasonality of a keyword is a key consideration when searching for a keyword to target.

• Leverage Trending Topics

Targeting trending topics and keywords is one way to drive more traffic to your site. You can use Google Trends to determine the keywords that are growing in popularity and the ones that are shrinking.

• Use the On-site Search Box

If your website has an on-site search box, this is a great tool you can leverage to find the kind of content that visitors are searching for. You can do that by going to the site search setting in Google Analytics and turning on the site search tracking. This will give you a hint of the content your visitors are searching for. If there is a keyword they are searching for but doesn’t have content for it, you can create content around it.

Conclusion

Keyword research can determine the level of success of your site. If you target the right low competition but high search volume keywords, you can quickly drive traffic and increase conversion on your site. If you are a beginner searching for niche-specific keywords, our detailed guide will provide the results you desire. You can read our comparison of SEO and SEM for driving website traffic.