Ranking for competitive, high-volume keywords is the holy grail of SEO.
Wikipedia has nailed the strategy perfectly:
- Create timeless, evergreen content worthy of attention
- Regularly update and improve your old content
- Recalibrate and reformat your content for specific niches and industries
- Promote your content
It is not as easy as we make it sound, however.
Here’s our internal process for targeting and ranking for competitive, high-volume keywords in Google search.
But, to get you started, here’s the TL;DR:
| Section | Suggestions |
|---|---|
| Identify the Competitive Keywords | Evaluate keyword difficulty and search volume together to balance effort vs. potential reward. Target a mix of high-traffic “head” terms and lower-competition long-tail variations. |
| Map the Landscape | Conduct a competitive keyword analysis to identify what your rivals are ranking for and uncover relevant keyword gaps that represent easy wins. |
| Internal Linking | Use descriptive, relevant anchor text that reinforces target topics and helps search engines understand page context. Link to both new and cornerstone content. |
| Voice Search Optimization | Incorporate conversational phrases and Q&A formats to capture voice search queries. Structure answers clearly for AI-driven snippets. |
| Focus on Industry Terms | Integrate niche-specific terminology to strengthen topical authority and improve relevance for industry-savvy users and algorithms. |
| Content as a Blank Canvas | Regularly refresh your content with updated statistics, examples, and internal links to maintain freshness and ranking potential. |
| Proper Keyword Placement | Place target keywords naturally in titles, headings, meta descriptions, introductory paragraphs, and image alt text—without keyword stuffing. |
| Write Compelling Content | Align each piece of content with the search intent behind its target keywords, and deliver value that encourages engagement and sharing. |
| Optimize Your Keywords | Revisit underperforming keywords and experiment with variations or semantic alternatives to improve click-through and ranking. |
| Analyze and Tweak | Monitor search rankings, impressions, and clicks regularly. Adjust your strategy based on which keywords and pages show the most traction. |
| Ranking in LLMs & AI Search (Object-Level Targeting) | Structure your content around identifiable entities—people, products, organizations—using schema markup and clear relationships between concepts. This helps AI search engines cite your content as a trusted source, not just rank it for keywords. |
Table of Contents
1. Identify the competitive keywords
This should be the foundation of your content marketing strategy. One simple way to do it is to do deep keyword research yourself. The keywords must be relevant, have a high potential to funnel traffic, and must be intent-driven. But the search volume should also be substantial.
When conducting deep keyword research, you should evaluate keyword difficulty and search volume—both are crucial for assessing how feasible it is to rank. Use tools that show keyword competition keywords so you can gauge the competitiveness of each term, prioritize high-ROI targets, and spot lower‑competition long-tail variations that might be easier to win.
The purpose is to maximize your returns not just on the money but also on the effort you put into your campaign.
So, how many do you think is the ideal number of keyword variations for proper search engine optimization?
Five? 20?
Nope. Try 1,000.
But do not forget your competitor as well since you will benchmark your SEO strategy with theirs. For example, which of their keywords are most successful? Apps like SpyFu are valuable tools to spy on your competitors.
Then you can reverse engineer the process to develop your own. In the same vein, you can also spot gaps in their campaign where you can take advantage, understanding that sometimes the advantage to you may be targeting no or low-volume searches.
2. Map the landscape
Now that you have an idea of the competitive keywords in your field, the next step is to look at the big picture.
Conduct a more exhaustive audit of the competitive keywords in your specific industry. You need to identify the reasons why some websites rank for high volume keywords and find some common grounds that you can build on.
In this mapping phase, conduct a competitive keyword analysis to identify not just what your competitors are targeting, but also which relevant keywords they may be neglecting. This insight uncovers potential keyword gaps you can exploit.
You can ask yourself the following questions:
- What are the competitive keywords they are using?
- What are they using for their title tags? Why are these effective?
- How did they produce their content?
- Which content is getting the most engagement?
- How can you implement best practices to your SEO campaign?
3. Internally link to your blog posts
After you have completed your competitive keyword analysis work, you will want to start linking to your blog posts internally.
Remember the three elements of a good content post stated above? Using analytics, audit your content and determine which ones resonate with your audience better. However, make it relevant to your new content thematically and not just link for the sake of rankings. In this way, you can ramp up the activity on your website. You can also get some of that juju from your most successful blog and into your new post.
When choosing internal link anchor text, rely on your keyword tool or keyword research tool to deliver data‑backed insights. These tools help ensure you’re using high-impact phrases that align with thematic relevance and search intent.
If you’re in need of someone to help, our link building services should be a good match.
4. Optimize for voice
Voice is going to be the future of online search. More than three billion people today own a device equipped with a voice smart assistant.
About 5 in 10 people are using online voice searches. You can expect the figure to rise since voice search is faster and more convenient.
Voice searches often reflect specific search intent, such as questions (“How do I…?”), which tend to affect search rankings differently than text-based queries. By optimizing for conversational, intent-rich phrasing, you can increase your chances of ranking in voice-driven results.
Unlike with text, voice search is characterized by several elements:
- The long-tailed keywords are longer, perhaps five or more words
- The tone is more conversational, like you would talk to someone in front of you
- More geared toward local listings
- The keywords are simple and direct to the point
- Designed for question-type keywords
- They tend to include filler words
It is not to say that you should focus your resources on targeting search engine optimization for voice search. For now, text search is still the standard.
But it is nice to have this strategy in your back pocket that you can pull out during emergencies.
5. Focus on Industry terms
Your homepage should generally target a broad spectrum within your specific industry.
Category pages and landing pages serve as anchors for overarching keyword research. These should reflect deep understanding of search intent within your niche to ensure alignment with both industry terms and user expectations.
However, you have to hone in on your target market with surgical precision.
To do this, you need to create sub-categories containing products, articles, infographics, videos, or images. The main goal is to address the pain points of your audience.
In this way, you can create contextual links to each post–both internal and external links–whenever necessary. Once they rank for the keywords they want, your life becomes easier since they will naturally attract organic links like bees to honey or raccoons to trash.
6. Content as a blank canvas
Think of your blog post as a blank canvas and you, the crazy and struggling artist.
Use your keyword research tool to identify evolving terms and trends—your post is a living keyword tool for uncovering new angles. Regular keyword research can inform iterative improvements like new examples, updated data, or better formatting based on what’s resonating.
Once you have finished the template–a well-researched article that addresses the pain point, it is now time to do the analytics. You have to audit your work to gauge its success. Auditing your work will also enable you to tweak the content to make it better.
You can scale up and scale down, depending on the need.
But you must be deliberate with your actions. You continue to open your ears to listen for content demand so that you can immediately deliver the desired content.
Using your brush, you can then add more colors, wash away some of the tints, perhaps add some more birds if that is what your audience wants?
Updating your content is necessary because some new information might have surfaced that makes your assumptions obsolete.
The goal is to make your post the best available resource on the topic to force Google to sit up and take notice.
Believe us; there is a method to this madness.
7. Proper Keyword Placement
In the early days of SEO, marketers found a hack to outrank in the SERPs. They simply flooded their content with keywords, and the result was a heap of nonsense.
Strategic placement of your target and competition keywords, especially in high-value areas (Title, Meta, H1, body, URL), correlates with improved search rankings. Prioritize high search volume phrases where possible, and diversify with related variations.
Thankfully, we have come a long way since then. Google constantly updates its algorithms to make sure that the results would be most relevant to the search.
Google constantly moves the goalpost, so marketers are always playing catchup. It is the primary reason why it is difficult to rank these days.
Now, Google does not want you to pepper your blogs with relevant keywords. In fact, that is the fastest way to get flagged.
The operative term for your SEO campaign is proper keyword placement.
It is a rule that Google continues to impose despite changing its algorithm as many as nine times a day.
- Your unique keywords should be placed on top of your article. The idea is to assure your audience, and Google spiders as well, that they are reading the right content.
- The keywords should be on your Title Tag, Meta Description, and the body of your article.
- Ideally, the keywords must also show up on the URL.
- Internal linking would provide some heft to your keywords.
- Synonyms may be employed on the Subheadings.
Lastly, avoid clickbait.
8. Write compelling content
It is incorrect to assume that to rank high for “money” terms; you need to put out multiple blogs per day.
Compelling content is rooted in addressing user search intent—supported by insights from your keyword research tool. When content aligns with user questions and interests, it naturally drives engagement, shares, and rankings.
You may have found the competitive keywords with the potential to rank high, but nothing substitutes for compelling content.
You do not need to post twice a week to keep your website current. What your audience will look for are consistency and congruity.
Simply put, stick to what you are good at in search engine optimization.
In this way, there is marked confidence in each word you write because you know what you are talking about. And the audience will pick up on this.
Ask yourself this question: Why do people use search engines?
A myriad of reasons come to mind, but the most common are:
- They are searching for information
- They want to answer a question
- They want to read a review before purchasing something
- They want to accomplish a task
You can achieve more gains from your marketing strategy if you can answer the pain points.
The good news is that you can outsource the task to an SEO agency if you are not yet confident of your ability to produce consistent quality content.
9. Optimize your keywords
After establishing your keywords, you need to optimize them to make sure they meet the desired goals.
Crafting a landing page for competitive terms means balancing visibility (via high search volume) with feasibility (via manageable keyword difficulty). Use this balance to guide whether you target exact matches or broader semantic variations.
First off, you need to create a landing page for your competitive keywords to direct the audience to your sales funnel.
Optimizing your keywords involves using the exact match on your Title Tag, which is the most important component of your content.
You can also use relevant keywords and similar words on your H1 and H2 subheadings. Google will reward your effort of using semantic terms to optimize your keywords.
Finally, your keywords must appear on the body and the meta description. Do not insert the keywords for the sake of reaching the desired density. Use them sparingly and organically so that they will appear naturally on the page and not stick out like a sore thumb.
If you optimize your keywords well, you may very well be able to capture the coveted position zero for your desired term.
10. Analyze and tweak
Even if you think that you have produced content you are proud of, do not stop there.
As you monitor performance, use keyword research again to explore emerging opportunities or shifts in search rankings. Adapt content (or pivot to underserved queries) to maintain momentum.
You have to analyze and scrutinize your content if:
- It is ranking — What are the best practices you can replicate for your future campaign? How can you build on the success to maximize the returns?
- It is not ranking — What are the possible reasons why it is not ranking as expected? What are the areas you need to improve on?
You can use several software solutions for analytics so that you can determine the bounce rate, conversion, page visits, page speed, lead generation, visit duration, etc.
The analytics results will be critical to making sure you produce consistent quality content in the future.
11. Ranking in LLMs & AI Search with Object-Level Targeting
As AI-driven platforms and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews evolve, the traditional playbook of keyword/page-level optimization is no longer enough.
Object-level targeting means structuring your content around discrete, machine-readable entities—people, places, products, events—rather than just keywords.
These objects are linked via semantic relationships in a knowledge graph, making it easier for AI engines to surface your brand as a trusted source for specific concepts, not just specific terms.
For example, instead of focusing only on high search volume keywords like “keyword research” or “search rankings,” you’d ensure your content explicitly defines and connects those terms to related concepts (e.g., tools, processes, metrics) in a structured format. Schema markup, detailed FAQs, and explicit entity linking all improve your discoverability in AI search results and search engines.
By aligning search intent with object-level targeting, you’re positioning your site to be cited directly by AI models—similar to how authoritative sources are linked in Wikipedia or scientific literature. In the coming years, these citations will be as valuable (or more) than traditional search rankings.
Why Ranking in Top Positions is Critical
We can impress you with all the data. Consider these statistics:
- Only 3 in 10 businesses have an SEO strategy in place
- More than 8 in 10 people will first search online before deciding to make a purchase
- More than 7 in 10 marketers still believe that content marketing is the standard for an SEO strategy
- Nearly 8 in 10 never go to Page 2 of the SERP
- Half of the online searches are done through mobile
- Over 90% of web traffic is organic
- Voice search popularity is increasing, although it still makes up 10% of the total searches
- Combining both organic search and paid ads will result in 27% more revenues
- Half of the searchers will likely click on the website if it shows up multiple times on the SERP
- eCommerce companies with over $1 million in revenues spend 81% of their budget for marketing on SEO and PPC
- Multinational ecommerce businesses with $100 million in revenues allocate 39% of their total marketing budget on SEO and PPC
You may think that established brands like Nike, Amazon, or Apple never bothered with this stuff. After all, they are the most recognizable brands on the planet.
But they know that the moment they slip for just a second, another brand will come to replace them on top of the totem pole.
You need to take this whole SEO thing seriously.
Conclusion
Competitive keywords serve as a beacon for audience demand.
You do need to invest some money into it, especially if you have no idea how to rank for your keywords.
But you also have to ensure a good foundation, and it means auditing your website to determine if it is optimized for SEO.
Google has excellent advice for this: create your website for the audience and not for search engines.
Remember, your competitors are spending thousands of dollars to make sure they outrank you. Most of the time, they hire the pros to do it for them.
If you have not yet launched your SEO marketing, yesterday was the best time to do it.
Frequently Asked Questions: Competitive Keyword Ranking
1. What is competitor keyword analysis, and why is it important?
Competitor keyword analysis is the process of identifying which keywords your competitors are ranking for, how they’re using them, and where their content is outperforming yours. By conducting competitor keyword analysis, you can spot valuable low competition keywords that are driving results for others in your niche. These insights help you decide whether to target the same competition keywords directly or focus on easier wins with less resistance. Effective competitor keyword analysis can reveal both your rivals’ strengths and weaknesses, giving you an edge in search rankings.
2. How do I find low competition keywords for my site?
Finding low competition keywords starts with a keyword research tool that shows search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitive density. Filter for terms with decent traffic but lower keyword difficulty scores—these are your low competition keywords. You can also use competitor keyword analysis to uncover low competition keywords they might not be targeting well, giving you a chance to capture rankings quickly.
3. Should I target only low competition keywords or also go after competition keywords?
While low competition keywords are often easier to rank for, a balanced approach works best. You should target a blend of low competition keywords for quick wins and competition keywords for long-term growth. Using competitor keyword analysis can help you identify where to focus your short-term and long-term efforts.
4. How do I choose the right specific keyword for my content?
Choosing a specific keyword depends on your audience, search intent, and competition level. First, conduct competitor keyword analysis to see if your target specific keyword is dominated by authoritative domains. If so, consider a related low competition keyword variation to start building topical authority.
5. What’s the best way to optimize for competition keywords?
Optimizing for competition keywords requires creating comprehensive, high-quality content that offers more value than what’s currently ranking. Use data, unique insights, and multimedia to stand out. If the competition keywords are too competitive at first, work on ranking for related low competition keywords and then build your way up.
6. Can low competition keywords still bring significant traffic?
Absolutely. Many low competition keywords have high enough search volume to bring steady traffic while avoiding the steep uphill battle of competition keywords. They’re especially useful for new sites or when entering a new market.
7. How often should I repeat competitor keyword analysis?
You should run competitor keyword analysis at least quarterly to keep up with shifting SERPs. New low competition keywords can appear as trends change, competitors pivot, or algorithm updates re-shuffle rankings. This ongoing process ensures you’re never missing fresh opportunities.
Tim holds expertise in building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.
When he's not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach...preferably in Hawaii.
Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
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