Low Hanging Fruit Keywords: How to Find Them Fast

Low hanging fruit keywords are search terms where you have a realistic chance of ranking on page one without a major content investment. They typically combine moderate search volume, low keyword difficulty, and clear commercial or informational intent that aligns with what you already do.

Most teams spend the bulk of their SEO effort chasing high-volume, high-competition terms they will never realistically rank for. The smarter move is to identify the gaps where you can win quickly, build authority from those wins, and use that momentum to go after harder terms later.

This is part of a broader set of thinking on how go-to-market strategy and organic growth connect. If you are working through how search fits into your overall growth model, the Go-To-Market and Growth Strategy hub covers the wider picture.

Why Most Keyword Research Misses the Point

When I was running an agency and we brought in a new SEO client, the first thing most of them wanted was a list of the highest-volume keywords in their category. Fair enough instinct, but almost always the wrong starting point. The terms with the most searches are usually dominated by established players with domain authority built over a decade. A mid-sized brand entering that fight from a standing start is not doing SEO. It is doing optimism.

The problem with standard keyword research is that it optimises for the wrong variable. Teams sort by volume, filter out anything that looks too small, and end up with a target list that looks impressive in a slide deck but produces almost no organic traffic for 18 months. The opportunity cost of that approach is significant, because during those 18 months there were dozens of lower-competition terms that could have been driving qualified visitors and building the domain authority needed to compete on harder terms later.

Good keyword strategy is not about finding the biggest terms. It is about finding the terms where the gap between your current position and page one is small enough to close with realistic effort, and where ranking actually moves a commercial needle.

What Makes a Keyword “Low Hanging Fruit” in Practice

The phrase gets used loosely, so it is worth being precise. A low hanging fruit keyword has three characteristics working in combination.

First, the keyword difficulty is low enough that a site with your current domain authority has a realistic path to page one. What counts as “low enough” depends on where you are starting from. A site with a domain rating of 40 and decent topical coverage can often compete for terms with a difficulty score of 20 to 35. A newer site might need to focus on terms under 20. The number is a guide, not a rule, and the quality of the pages currently ranking matters more than the score itself.

Second, the search intent is clear and matches something you can genuinely address. A term with 200 monthly searches from someone who is close to making a purchase decision is worth more to most businesses than a term with 5,000 searches from someone who is browsing broadly. Intent is the filter that volume often obscures.

Third, the term has enough volume to be worth the effort. “Enough” is relative. For a niche B2B product, 50 searches per month from the right audience can represent meaningful pipeline. For a consumer brand, that same number might not move anything. Set your volume floor based on your own conversion economics, not on what looks good in a report.

Start With Google Search Console, Not a Keyword Tool

This is where I always start, and it consistently produces better results faster than opening a third-party tool and beginning from scratch. Google Search Console shows you the terms your site is already appearing for in search results, including the ones where you are ranking on page two or three but not yet getting clicks. Those are your most immediate opportunities.

Pull the Performance report and filter for queries where your average position is between 8 and 20. These are terms where Google has already decided your content is relevant enough to show. You are not starting from zero. You are a few positions away from meaningful traffic. The question is what is holding you back: thin content, weak on-page optimisation, insufficient internal links, or a page that simply needs updating.

Cross-reference those terms with your click-through rate. A term where you are ranking position 9 with a 0.5% CTR is worth very different attention than one where you are ranking position 9 with a 4% CTR. The latter suggests high intent and a SERP layout that rewards organic results. That is where you focus first.

I have done this exercise with clients who had been investing in SEO for two or three years without a clear picture of where they were already close to ranking. In one case, we found 40 terms in the position 8 to 15 range that had never been specifically targeted. Updating the relevant pages and strengthening internal linking moved 11 of those terms onto page one within 90 days. No new content required.

How to Use Keyword Tools to Find Gaps Competitors Have Left Open

Once you have exhausted your existing Search Console data, competitor gap analysis is the next most productive place to look. The process is straightforward: identify two or three competitors who rank well in your space, run their domains through a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs, and look for the terms they rank for that you do not. Then filter that list by keyword difficulty and volume to find the terms that are both winnable and worth winning.

The terms that fall through the cracks are often long-tail variations of broader topics. A competitor might rank well for “project management software” but have weak coverage of “project management software for remote teams” or “project management software for construction companies.” Those specifics are where intent sharpens, competition thins, and conversion rates improve.

One thing I have learned from doing this across dozens of categories: the most interesting gaps are rarely the obvious ones. They tend to be terms that are adjacent to a competitor’s core content, where they have not invested because the volume looks modest. Those are exactly the terms that convert well, because the person searching knows specifically what they want.

Pay attention to the SERP itself, not just the keyword data. Open the top-ranking pages for any term you are considering and ask honestly whether your content can be better. If the first page is dominated by large publishers with comprehensive guides and you are planning a 600-word page, the difficulty score is irrelevant. If the first page has a mix of thin, outdated content from sites with similar authority to yours, the opportunity is real regardless of what the difficulty score says.

The Long-Tail Approach: Where Volume Looks Small but Intent Is Sharp

Long-tail keywords are the most reliable source of low hanging fruit for most businesses, and they are consistently undervalued because the volume numbers look unimpressive in isolation. A term with 80 monthly searches sounds like it barely matters. But if that term has a difficulty score of 12, a clear commercial intent, and your site is already topically relevant, ranking for it is achievable in weeks rather than months, and the traffic it drives is pre-qualified.

The compounding effect of long-tail coverage is what makes it strategically interesting. Ranking for 50 long-tail terms with 80 to 200 searches each produces more total traffic than ranking position 8 for a single term with 5,000 searches. And the conversion rate on specific-intent terms tends to be meaningfully higher, because the person has already done most of their own filtering before they searched.

When I was building out content strategy for clients at scale, we would often identify 100 to 200 long-tail targets in a single research session and tier them by difficulty and relevance. The bottom tier, terms with difficulty scores under 15 and clear intent alignment, would go into production first. They were the ones that produced early wins, which in turn built the confidence and the budget to go after harder terms later. That sequencing matters more than most teams appreciate.

Question-based terms deserve particular attention here. “How do I” and “what is the best way to” searches often have lower competition than their non-question equivalents, and they are well-suited to featured snippet targeting. If your content answers the question clearly in the first 50 to 100 words, you have a reasonable chance of capturing the snippet, which drives clicks even when you are not ranking position one in the traditional sense.

How to Prioritise Your Keyword List Once You Have It

Finding low hanging fruit keywords is the easier part. Deciding which ones to act on first is where most teams lose time. The default is to sort by volume and work down the list, which is a reasonable starting point but misses some important nuance.

A more useful prioritisation framework combines four variables: keyword difficulty, search volume, business relevance, and content gap. Business relevance asks whether ranking for this term would actually drive the kind of visitors who become customers or leads. Content gap asks whether you need to create something new or whether you can improve something that already exists. Improving existing content is almost always faster and produces results more quickly than creating from scratch.

Score each term across those four dimensions on a simple 1 to 3 scale and sort by total score. The terms that score high on all four are your immediate priorities. The ones with high volume and high relevance but also high difficulty go into a longer-term plan. The ones with low relevance, regardless of volume, come off the list entirely.

This kind of structured prioritisation is something I have found genuinely useful when managing large content programmes across multiple clients simultaneously. Without it, teams default to working on whatever feels most interesting or most urgent, which rarely maps to what will produce the best commercial outcome. The scoring takes 20 minutes and saves weeks of misdirected effort.

For teams thinking about how keyword strategy fits into a broader growth model, this piece on why go-to-market execution has become more difficult is worth reading alongside your keyword planning. The channel complexity it describes is directly relevant to how you allocate organic search effort.

Seasonal and Trend-Based Opportunities Worth Watching

Some of the most accessible keyword opportunities are time-sensitive, and most teams miss them because their research process is not set up to catch them early enough. Seasonal terms, terms that spike around industry events, and terms connected to emerging topics can have very low competition in the weeks before they peak, simply because most competitors have not yet published content targeting them.

Google Trends is the most practical tool for this. It shows you relative search interest over time and lets you identify terms that are growing before they become competitive. A term that is trending upward with a current difficulty score of 15 is a very different opportunity from a stable term with the same difficulty score, because you are getting in ahead of the competition rather than alongside it.

The catch with trend-based keywords is that the window is short. If you identify a growing term and take six weeks to produce content, you may have missed the moment. This is where having a content production process that can move quickly matters. Teams that can go from keyword identification to published content in two weeks have a structural advantage over teams that take eight.

Industry-specific events and regulatory changes are another underused source of timely low-competition keywords. When a new regulation is announced in a sector, the search volume for related terms often increases sharply while the number of pages addressing it is still low. Being early with accurate, useful content in those moments builds both traffic and credibility.

Common Mistakes That Undermine Low Hanging Fruit Strategy

The most common mistake is treating low hanging fruit as a short-term tactic rather than an ongoing process. Teams do one research session, produce content for the terms they find, and then move on. But the landscape shifts continuously. New competitors publish content, existing pages lose relevance, and search behaviour evolves. A keyword that was competitive six months ago may now be winnable. A term you ranked for last year may have slipped without anyone noticing.

The second mistake is ignoring the quality of the pages currently ranking. A keyword difficulty score of 25 means very little if the pages ranking for that term are genuinely excellent. Conversely, a difficulty score of 40 might be very achievable if the top-ranking pages are thin, outdated, or poorly structured. Always look at the actual SERP before deciding whether a term is worth pursuing.

Third: treating keyword research as separate from content quality. Finding the right term is only half the job. If the page you create is not genuinely useful, well-structured, and better than what is already ranking, you will not hold the position even if you initially achieve it. I have seen clients rank quickly for low-competition terms and then lose those rankings within three months because the content was thin. The keyword gets you in the door. The content determines whether you stay.

Fourth, and this is a subtler one: over-indexing on tools and under-indexing on judgment. Keyword tools are useful, but they are measuring a model of search behaviour, not search behaviour itself. Volume estimates can be significantly off, especially for niche or technical terms. Difficulty scores do not account for the specific strengths and weaknesses of your site. Growth strategy in organic search requires you to use the data as input to your thinking, not as a substitute for it.

Connecting Keyword Wins to Broader Growth Strategy

Organic search does not exist in isolation, and the teams that get the most from low hanging fruit keyword strategy are the ones who connect it explicitly to their broader commercial goals. A keyword win that drives traffic from an audience segment you are not trying to reach is not actually a win. It is just a vanity metric with good rankings.

The question to ask before any keyword goes into your priority list is: if we rank for this and it drives the traffic the volume estimate suggests, what happens next? Does that traffic convert to leads, trials, or purchases? Does it build the audience we are trying to build? Does it support the positioning we are trying to establish in the market? If the answer to those questions is unclear, the keyword may not belong in your plan regardless of how easy it looks to rank for.

This is where keyword strategy intersects with the kind of go-to-market thinking that determines whether organic search is actually contributing to growth or just generating traffic reports. BCG’s work on go-to-market strategy is a useful reference point for thinking about how individual channel tactics connect to the overall commercial model.

When I was managing large-scale search programmes, the most productive conversations were never about which keywords to target. They were about what the business was trying to do commercially and how search could support that specifically. That framing changes which keywords look attractive and which ones are just noise. It also makes it much easier to explain the value of SEO investment to people who are not close to the channel.

If you want to think through how keyword strategy sits within a wider growth framework, the Go-To-Market and Growth Strategy hub is a good place to continue. The articles there cover channel strategy, audience development, and measurement in more depth.

About the Author

Keith Lacy is a marketing strategist and former agency CEO with 20+ years of experience across agency leadership, performance marketing, and commercial strategy. He writes The Marketing Juice to cut through the noise and share what works.

Frequently Asked Questions