How to Find Low-Competition Keywords With Free Tools Only

How to Find Low-Competition Keywords: The Short Answer

Low-competition keywords are search phrases you can realistically rank for. Find them in four free passes: Google Autocomplete for real phrasing, Google Trends for interest, page one of the results for weak spots, and Search Console for queries you almost own. No subscription needed, and no invented difficulty score.

That matters because the standard advice — "just buy a keyword tool" — quietly assumes you have a monthly budget and a site with enough history for the data to mean anything. The real problem for most beginners is not a lack of data. It is that you have been guessing which topics to write about, publishing into silence, and getting zero clicks back. Guessing gets expensive fast when every dollar is already spoken for.

This process replaces guessing with evidence you can collect in about an hour per topic. Each pass answers something the previous one could not: Autocomplete gives you the phrasing real people use, Trends shows relative interest over time, the results page shows who you would have to beat, and Search Console shows where Google already places you.

One honest caveat before you start. Google's own guidance says there is no guarantee that any particular site will be added to its index, and that sites following its guidance are only more likely to appear in results ^[4]. So treat everything below as a way to make better bets, not a way to remove risk.

Two Different Things Get Called "Competition"

Beginners usually mean one thing: how hard it is to outrank the pages already on page one. That is only half the picture, and the missing half is the reason so many "easy keyword" lists fail.

• Page-level competition is about the results themselves: are they thin, off-topic, out of date, or answering a slightly different question?
• Site-level competition is about you: has your site published anything on this subject before, and do you have pages you can link to and from?

A phrase can be weak on page one and still be a poor first target if you would be the eleventh site writing about it with no internal links behind your page. The four passes below check both, in the order that saves you the most time.

What free tools can and cannot tell you

Autocomplete predictions are filtered and subject to Google's removal policies, so they should not be taken as always reflecting the most popular search terms on a topic ^[3]. Google Trends is a normalized sample of search activity, not a census ^[3]. Search Console only shows queries where your site already appeared in results ^[2]. None of them hands you Google's internal ranking difficulty, because that is not published.

So you work with proxies: real phrasing, relative interest, result quality, and your own existing position. The classic beginner mistake here is to find a phrase that looks empty of competition and then write a page that rehashes what already ranks. Google's guidance is blunt about this — content should be unique and created by you rather than copied or rehashed, it should be up to date, and repeating words to game rankings is against its spam policies ^[4].

Step 1: Collect Real Phrases With Google Autocomplete

Autocomplete is a search feature that completes what you start typing, using automated systems that surface predictions reflecting real searches done on Google ^[1]. Those systems weigh the language of the query, the searcher's location, trending interest in a query, and past searches ^[1]. It also predicts individual words and phrases from real searches and word patterns across the web ^[1].

Two cautions before you sweep. First, Autocomplete is not a popularity ranking: Google says it differs from, and should not be compared against, Google Trends ^[1]. Second, signed-in users may see personalized predictions based on their activity ^[1], so run this in a private window and keep your location in mind as you type.

The modifier sweep

Type your seed topic, then work through these lists in order, writing down every completion that appears:

• Question openers: how, what, why, when, where, which, can, do, does, is, are
• Comparing: vs, versus, or, best, cheapest, worth it, alternative to, instead of
• Beginner framing: for beginners, first time, starter, step by step, explained, mistakes
• Constraint words: on a budget, for small spaces, for renters, with pets, under 50 dollars
• Doubts and problems: not working, stopped working, review, complaints, reddit
• Alphabet soup: your seed plus each letter a to z, noting what appears

Aim for 40 phrases, then dedupe down to the ones with a clear question behind them. You are not hunting for the biggest phrase — you are hunting for a specific one. Page type matters too: a phrase from someone comparing two options needs a comparison page, not an explainer, which is the whole point of matching your page to the searcher's intent. For a wider version of this workflow, see our repeatable free keyword research process.

Step 2: Check Relative Interest in Google Trends

Google Trends gives access to a largely unfiltered, anonymized, categorized and aggregated sample of actual search requests ^[3]. The numbers are normalized: each data point is divided by total searches for that geography and time range, then scaled 0 to 100 based on the topic's proportion of all searches ^[3]. That is why two regions showing the same interest score can still have very different total search volumes ^[3].

In practice, that means Trends answers "is this roughly steady, growing or fading?" — not "how many people search this each month?" Two more limits worth knowing before you read a chart: Trends only shows data for popular terms, so low-volume phrases appear as 0 ^[3], and Google builds in statistical noise that is most noticeable on queries with low or no search interest, so apparent one-off spikes should not be read as real search activity ^[3].

A five-minute Trends routine

1. Set the country to where your readers are, then compare a handful of candidate phrases on one chart.
2. View 12 months to spot seasonality, then switch to five years to see direction.
3. Judge the shape of the line, not a single peak.
4. Write the verdict on your sheet and move on — Trends is one data point among others ^[3], not a verdict on its own.

Step 3: Read Page One Like a Judge

Now search the phrase yourself. Do this in a private window, and remember that results are specific to the time, place, device and recent history of the person searching ^[2] — so what you see is evidence, not the whole truth. Your job is to answer one question: could I add something here that the current results lack?

Weak-spot signals worth writing for

• Forums, social threads or Q&A posts ranking with no dedicated page answering the question
• Every result answers a slightly different question — the concept is explained, but nobody shows the steps
• The top pages are visibly dated on a topic that changes (rules, prices, software screens)
• Nobody offers the arithmetic, template or checklist a reader would actually want to copy
• Retailer pages dominate, with no explanatory content between them

Signals to walk away

• A strong site holds a dedicated page that answers the exact question and covers the obvious follow-ups
• Every result is fresh, thorough and clearly written by someone who did the work
• The phrase only makes sense as part of a much bigger topic you are not ready to cover

If you walk away often, that is the process working. The cost of a bad target is a week of writing, and you cannot get that week back. When a phrase survives this pass, the next job is making the page genuinely more useful than the results — the standard we walk through in what Google's helpful-content guidance means for small affiliate sites.

Step 4: Find Near-Misses in Google Search Console

Search Console is the only free source that tells you how your own site is actually performing. The Performance report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position; the default view covers roughly the last three months, and data can be grouped by the queries people typed ^[2]. You can also export the chart and table data to work on offline ^[2].

The near-miss filter

1. Open the Performance report, Search results, and keep the default date range ^[2].
2. Switch the table to the Queries dimension ^[2].
3. Filter average position to somewhere between roughly 8 and 30. This is our rule of thumb for "shown, but not chosen" — not a Google threshold.
4. Sort by impressions so the phrases with real demand rise to the top.
5. Export the list ^[2] and add the rows to your research sheet.

If your site is brand new, you may have nothing here yet. Skip this step, run steps 1 to 3, and come back once you have a couple of months of impressions. Our guide to the Search Console reports worth checking weekly covers the rest of the interface.

The Free Low-Competition Keyword Scorecard (Copy It)

This is the asset to keep. Score each candidate from 0 to 2 on six criteria, then decide. It is our rubric, not a Google metric — the point is to make your reasoning visible so you stop re-litigating the same three topics every week.

Decision rule: 9–12 points, write it this month. 6–8, park it. 0–5, drop it and stop thinking about it.

Worked example

Illustrative example. The phrases below are invented to show the arithmetic, not taken from real search data, and no results are claimed.

Candidate A: "how long does a starter take to rise in a cold kitchen" — real phrasing 1 (Autocomplete), demand shape 2 (flat line), result weakness 1 (mixed), question clarity 2, unique angle 2 (you can log three bakes and show a table), link path 2 (three bread pages already live) = 10 → write this month.

Candidate B: "sourdough" — real phrasing 0 (you invented the angle), demand shape 2, result weakness 0 (strong dedicated pages), question clarity 0, unique angle 1, link path 1 = 4 → drop. Note that the high-demand phrase scored worse than the long one, which is the entire lesson.

Blank template

Seed: __________
Phrase: __________
Found in (Autocomplete / Search Console / other): __________
Trends shape (flat / rising / seasonal / spike / zero): __________
Page-one weak spot: __________
My unique angle: __________
Pages I can link from: __________
Score: __ / 12 → Write / Park / Drop
Planned publish date: __________

Your Seven-Day Plan, and What This Site Can't Promise

A shortlist is only useful if it turns into a published page. Here is one week, in the order that avoids wasted effort:

1. Day 1: run the Autocomplete sweep on two seeds; aim for 40 phrases.
2. Day 2: Trends-check the top 15 and cut the seasonal spikes and dead lines.
3. Day 3: read page one for the survivors; cut anything dominated by exact-match, fresh, thorough results.
4. Day 4: score the rest and pick one.
5. Days 5–6: write the page, leading with the answer a reader came for.
6. Day 7: publish, then link to it from two or three related pages — the plan in internal linking for a small affiliate site is enough at this size.

If the page earns impressions but not clicks after a few weeks, you are not starting over. You are in the refreshing cycle described in what to check, change and date when you update old posts.

How this site makes money, plainly

You are right to ask whether a site recommending tools is just chasing commissions. Here is our position: nothing in this article requires a purchase. Autocomplete, Trends and Search Console are free Google products ^[1][2][3], and the results page costs nothing to read. Some pages on this site do contain affiliate links, and we may earn a commission if you buy through them — which is exactly why we say when a step needs nothing paid. If you ever see a recommendation here, compare the price on the vendor's own signup page and read the terms yourself; the clauses worth reading in an affiliate program's terms is a decent starting filter. We cannot promise you rankings, traffic or income, and Google makes no such promise either ^[4].

Google's help pages and guidance get revised, so check the date on any documentation you rely on and re-read the current version before you build a habit around a specific setting.

Related guides: the free Wealth Generation Academy guide on this.

This guide is general education. Program terms and tools change; check the linked official pages for the current version. How we write: editorial policy. This page has no affiliate links.