Actionable & Free Keyword Research Guide

What's your Niche? Let's dig into it.

As you begin to do keyword research, you should first consider who your customer is. Your objective is to inform, and you can't inform if you don't know what type of customer you aim to acquire.

So let's say you're in the Finance Niche, what is your place of expertise?

Brainstorm and try to focus on the businesses solution you want to provide to customers. Do you want to help people with low or bad credit get credit cards? Great, so let's drill into that sub-focus and find three primary keywords to focus on your campaign.

I like to use smallseotools.com for my quick research. I use Spyfu for a more in-depth analysis, but we're going to focus on free solutions in this piece.

Starting from their suggestion tool, I'll go ahead and search
​"low credit cards."

The first thing you'll notice is SST gives you an interest projection to help you know if you are in a seasonal niche and if it's growing in interest. Keep the Google Trend data in mind when you're focusing on content production.

So we have eight keywords that are quite general. Let's aim for:

'Low cred cards best'
'Low credit card APR'
'Low credit card processing fees'

At this level, with a new website, you virtually have no chance to rank for a broad keyword. We're going to plant a keyword tree with these topics on top, sub-topics below, and finally, long-tail keywords at the end of the root. You can start the long-tail research with all three seeds once you have at least 30-100 entries. Stop the search and export the CSV.

But wait! You're aren't finished yet.

It would be best to sort out what is an "easy" win and what you should consider a sub-topic.


At SEOexpert.Ninja, we use a particular method to find easy keyword wins called KGR. Doug Cunnington coined the Keyword Golden Ratio, and he goes in-dept on the technique on his site. Check it out here.


Suppose you're in a rush and don't have time for a manual research method. You can use AllInTitle to do a free search. You can search eight keywords at a time with the free version.

​A quick guide on translating these metrics for the layman:

1. If the KGR is above 1, it's too competitive to rank easily
2. If the KGR is between .25-1, you can rank in the top 250
3. If the KGR is less than 0.25, you should rank within the top 100
4. High CPC can be a sign that the 1st page is too competitive to rank easily
5. High volume (over 1k) should be considered sub-topics

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So pick three keywords that are above 1k monthly searches as your sub-topics. Any remaining keywords that fall below 1 KGR can be considered long-tail posts. It would be best if you focused on sub .25 posts first for easy wins. So you've found what keywords you need to focus on for your initial content research. Now you should focus on crafting posts that are no less than 800 words that are compelling and well researched. You should focus on fulfilling the search intent.

Someone looking for the "best low interest credit cards in Canada" doesn't need a winded 3 paragraph introduction to what credit cards are. Instead, write a brief intro into the types of people who may qualify for low-interest cards and descriptions of the cards that meet their criteria. Maybe even other finance guides towards the conclusion.

Inform first. 
Sell last.

​If you're interested in a more in-depth analysis or you'd like us to craft you a comprehensive list. Contact Us for a consultation!

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Mansa Brice- SEOExpert.Ninja

SEO 🚀, Hamon Master💪, Writer.