Ever hit a roadblock in your keyword research process?
“I think I've already found all the good keywords there were for me niche…”
Well, if that's you; think again.
Today I'm going to cover 4 ways to get virtually unlimited, relevant keywords for ANY niche.
You see, every process will come up with a typical set of keywords. Every type of competitor you reverse will give you a specific type of findings.
However, when you combine multiple approaches, multiple sources and multiple tools…
You hit the big ‘ole vein of gold right in the mines of Keyword Mountain and life is good.
So, get your dwarfs equipped, get yourself a brew (it's getting hot here!) and prepare for some serious diggin'.
Know Your Precious Minerals
Before we jump into the nitty gritty of finding keywords, you need to make sure you understand what type of keywords are of use for us, affiliates.
Here I extract from the keyword research module in our uber-comprehensive course “The Human Proof Method”:
Can you rank and monetize other types of keywords?
Sure you can.
However, focusing only on those keywords will give you the quickest, easiest results.
Those are our gold and gems, any other keywords are just dirt.
Four Keyword Research Techniques for Unlimited Keywords
1. The Classical Espionage: Reverse your niche competitors
This is the #1 keyword research method for me.
It's one that ALWAYS works and it's how I start researching ANY niche just because it's on the right side of the Pareto distribution: 80% of your keywords will come from this one method.
I get into ridiculous levels of detail for this method in the keyword research module of the course, but in a nutshell here it is for you:
1) Decide a niche. Let's say adventure motorcycling as I'm seriously into that particular niche.
2) If you know zero 'bout the niche (which I suggest you at least have some interest, otherwise it makes things a bit harder) then just go to youtube and search for “adventure motorcycling”. Watch a couple videos, write down the topics they talk about “panniers” “skid plate” “aftermarket exhausts” etc.
3) Go to Semrush and look for “best niche product” and see who ranks.
4) Open a bunch of competitors until you find some NICHE competitors (sites who talk exclusively about adventure motorcycling)
5) Input that competitor's URL into SEMrush and go to “Organic Research – Positions” and then filter with all the modifiers I've mentioned above (Best, reviews, for, what, why, when…)
6) Download the data, repeat with every other niche competitor, merge your downloads, remove duplicates, and start looking at your big ass list of keyword for the most promising ones.
2. Forum Keywords
A great way to find low-competition keywords is to find some forums that rank for the type of keywords we want to find, then reversing them in a similar fashion as explained above.
However, I suggest that you do a round of reconnaissance without applying any keyword filters. What I filter is:
Sometimes you'll see keywords that you as an affiliate can't really monetize straight away.
“Dirt bikes for 13 year olds” has an awesome SV, low competition, but won't make us money by itself.
However if you can come up with some clever ways to use that piece of content to link to your money content, you may get wins that way. Gotta think outside of the box sometimes.
Bryon has a great article about forum keywords and some really thorough videos on this technique inside our course too.
3. Amazon + Ahrefs
One of the ways I've been expanding my money content lately for a site I own has been by going to Amazon, copying the name of EVERY product in my niche + “review” into Ahrefs' keywords explorer and seeing if anyone is looking for a review article for that particular product. Here's an example:
And then I put them all together on ahrefs:
And I get something like this:
Now, of course you want to have a MUCH larger seed list.
Don't search every 3 products because you'll be jumping backwards and forwards too much.
What I do is I input 50 to 100 products (yes, that does take a bit) and I'll get a success ratio of 25% roughly, as in 25 keywords WILL have some (oftentimes good) search volume.
Content ain't cheap so you may as well start writing your reviews based on how many people are looking to buy that particular product. Thats why you want to check A LOT of products.
4. YouTube
The cycle comes back to the video rabbit hole of YouTube and that's because there are BAJILLIONS of content creators in ANY niche right now and guess what, majority of them understand their audience fairly well and talk about topics people WANT to learn more about.
Here's something I do:
I go to YouTube, start digging for some good channels, then open all their videos and see the number of views for any given video.
The highest viewed ones tell me that's a topic I should cover.
I will then input the keyword in Ahrefs and see what other keywords I find:
Fortnine.ca has a review channel that I absolutely adore, and their keyword and topic research game is on-point.
If I was to build a site in this niche, I'd reverse the hell out of them. I'd have a really hard time competing with their quality tho.
But that's none of your troubles if you are going to be blogging about it instead of Vlogging.
For ANY niche you'll find these channels with top of the league content you can use for both keyword research AND into your content to make it more media rich and use different POVs in your topics.
Conclusion + Bonus
When it comes to keyword research, there really are unlimited ways you could come up with ideas and sources for keywords you can then input in Ahrefs/SEMrush for some diggin.
Your only limitation is how far you're willing to become knowledgeable about websites, forums, maganzines, youtube channels and the like inside the niche, and how many things you're willing to try.
Sure thing, a plugin like Keywords Everywhere will make your life easier by spitting keyword suggestions with their (approximate) search volume, literally everywhere.
So as final tip, I suggest you install it in your browser here and flood in keywords.
That's it! Â If you've liked this article, remember that we have two entire modules with over 4 hours of video training dedicated solely in the subject of keyword research into the ‘Human Proof Method' course.Â
It is THAT important!
This is a masterpiece for me. As a blogger I am working in this field and recently thought to expand my career in affiliate marketing. Your article made me understand lot of things that I was bit confused about. Thanks a lot Mr. Alejandro
Love the article and I have a question. Your article points out various ways of finding good keywords but you don’t mention competition. Reverse engineering a competitor is fine but if you have a new site. And their article is good then wont they out compete you? Thanks for the the Amazon search suggestion. Great idea, I’ll have to get on that one.
Competition should always be considered, but it’s about looking at the weak competition when you’re starting out and seeing if you can bump out those folks.
Thank You Mr. Alejandro
I am from Bangladesh and now one of your regular visitors. This is a terrific article. The best thing about articles here is that nothing is hidden from the reader.
I have a google blogger blog and using google keyword planner for my keyword research. Thanks for share such kind of useful article.
Thank you for sharing this strategy and i am gonna use the YouTube keyword strategy
Hi Alejandro,
Finding keywords for any niche is one of the basic but the most important thing thanks for explaining everything in detail. It just refreshed my mind.
i have tried the amazon + ahrefs. and got some good results with handful of searches. worked for me!
Awesome! It’s a bit manual but it’ll definitely give you keywords you wouldn’t otherwise find by just reversing competitors (unless they already reviewed the product) so it’s great to find products not too many people are talking about, but there’s search volume.
This article was very informative. As a newbie it was easy to understand. I learned more from this article than many articles on ” How To Do Keyword Resesrch”