What Are Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords and Why Do They Matter?

Whether in a business context or not, you’ve likely heard the phrase “low-hanging fruit.” It’s used to refer to things that are easy to get ahold of — if you’re picking fruit, the fruit on low-hanging branches is the easiest to grab.

What you may not know is that the term has a specific marketing meaning as well.

To be more specific, marketers often talk about low-hanging fruit keywords. This comes up in the context of search engine optimization (SEO), where you need to target specific keywords to get your website content ranking in search results. But what are low-hanging fruit keywords, and what’s their significance?

On this page, we’ll go over the following:

• Quais são as palavras-chave mais comuns?
• Why is low-hanging fruit SEO important?
• Your guide to finding low-hanging fruit keywords

Read on to find out more!

Quais são as palavras-chave mais comuns?

Low-hanging fruit keywords are terms that are considered easy to rank for in search results. They represent the ideal combination of keyword qualities — low difficulty and competition with a decent amount of traffic.

Why is low-hanging fruit SEO important?

There are a few significant benefits to finding low-hanging fruit keywords, including:

• Less competition: Low-hanging fruit keywords typically have fewer businesses competing for them, so you have less competition for rankings.
• Higher rankings: These keywords are easier to rank for, meaning it’s easier to rank high (potentially even in the top spot in search results).
• Less time and effort: Because rankings come easier with these keywords, they require a lot less time and effort on your part. That means you have more time to devote to other keywords and processes.
• More traffic: In addition to bringing higher rankings, low-hanging fruit keywords also tend to bring more traffic to your website, which is the whole point of targeting keywords.
• More conversions: As your website attracts more traffic due to these keywords, you’ll be able to drive more conversions, which lead to more revenue.

As you can see, there is a plethora of benefits that come with targeting low-hanging fruit keywords, so it’s worth your time to prioritize these terms when conducting SEO.

Your guide to finding low-hanging fruit keywords

We’ve established both the definition and the importance of low-hanging fruit SEO, but the question is, how do you find the right terms? The answer is that you follow a particular type of keyword research process.

Of course, the details of that process will inevitably look a little different depending on which tool you use. Just a few of your options are:

• Console de pesquisa do Google
• Ahrefs
• Semrush

These and plenty of other tools exist to help you find the right keywords, not to mention the option of simply conducting a manual search.

Since it’s not worth the effort of giving separate tutorials for 10 different tools, we’re just going to use Ahrefs as an example on this page. You can modify the process as needed for other tools.

Step 1: Input an initial keyword

The first thing you’ll want to do is go to Ahrefs, log in, and go to the Keywords Explorer tool. Once you’ve done that, you can kick things off by searching for an initial keyword. The idea is to type in a keyword along the lines of what you want to target so that Ahrefs can generate related keywords. In this example, we’ll search for “metal fabrication.”

Step 2: Navigate to related keywords

Once you’ve searched for your keyword, you’ll reach a page showing you plenty of metrics on that term. What you should do now is go down to the section titled “Keyword Ideas.”

Underneath “Terms match” and “Questions,” you’ll see a list of related terms. Choose one of those categories and click the “View all” button at the bottom. That will take you to a page where you can view a long list of similar terms to the one you searched for, along with plenty of metrics related to each one.

Step 3: Identify low-hanging fruit keywords

Here’s where you can start finding low-hanging fruit keywords. So, how do you figure out which keywords qualify? The answer is to focus primarily on two metrics: Keyword difficulty (KD) and search value (SV). You can also look at traffic potential (TP) if you want.

Using these metrics, you want to find keywords that hit a good balance between them. That is, you want keywords with a low KD and a high SV (as well as a high TP, if you’re including that metric). For most keywords, the KD and SV will either both be high or both be low. But there may be a few where you find that ideal balance.

In the example above, you can see that the very top option — “metal fabrication near me” — has a pretty low KD of 9 (out of 100), while its SV is the highest on the list at 5.5K. Its TP is also super high at 6.0K. That makes it a perfect example of low-hanging fruit.

It makes sense that this keyword qualifies, since the phrase “near me” makes it an inherently location-bound keyword. When people look up that keyword, they’re only going to see results in their area. So even though metal fabricators across the world are targeting that term, we’re not competing against most of them.

Not every keyword will have that ideal of a setup. But you should still be able to find some that have a fairly low KD while also having a relatively high SV, and those are the keywords you’ll want to target. Just follow the process above, testing out different keywords and going through all the related terms, until you’ve built up a good list of options.

Grab more fruit (of all heights) with SEO.com

Now that you know how to identify low-hanging fruit keywords, it’s time to get the ball rolling.

But don’t focus exclusively on low-hanging fruit. There’s a lot of value in shooting for other keywords as well — keywords that might come with more competition. And then there’s the matter of building content around them and ranking for them.

If that sounds like a daunting prospect, the simplest solution is to partner with a professional SEO agency like SEO.com. With our SEO services, you’ll be able to identify all the best keywords to target, integrate them into your content, and get your site ranking for them. And though we’ll handle the workload for you, you’ll still have full control over the whole process.

Interested in partnering with us? Just contact us online today to get started!