How to find untapped keywords for SEO

Executive overview

Most keyword research fails because people pick seed keywords at random, surfacing the same competitive terms everyone else targets. Better seed keywords produce better, less competitive results.

The process has three steps: build a strong seed keyword list, generate keyword ideas from those seeds using a tool, then filter by competition, search volume, and revenue potential.

The quality of your seed keywords determines the quality of every keyword idea that follows.

Building seed keywords

• Brainstorm topics customers search for that relate to your business
• Check "searches related to" at the bottom of Google results — these come straight from Google, so popularity is confirmed
• Click a related search, then scroll to the bottom again to find a second layer of less obvious terms
• Search Wikipedia for a broad niche term and scan the table of contents for subtopics — these are often high-value keywords that are hard to find elsewhere
• Click internal Wikipedia links to reach adjacent entries and expand the list further
• Use SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool with a seed term to surface outside-the-box variations
• Browse relevant subreddits and look for threads with high comment counts — recurring topics signal real search demand

Generating keyword ideas

• Enter each seed keyword into SEMrush Keyword Overview
• Ignore metrics at this stage — the goal is volume of ideas, not evaluation
• Click "related keywords" to surface both close variations and unexpected terms
• Repeat with each seed keyword until you have a broad pool to evaluate

Choosing five keywords to target

Evaluate candidates on three factors only:

• Competition (KD): New or low-authority sites should filter for "very easy" or "easy" — early traction matters more than targeting big terms
• Search volume: No universal minimum — 25K/month is big in B2B, unremarkable in B2C fitness; sort by volume and pick what's strong for your industry
• Revenue potential: Check CPC in SEMrush as a proxy for commercial intent; a $10 CPC keyword outperforms a few-cent one even at similar traffic; also assess product keyword fit — whether the searcher is plausibly your customer

Applying the three factors

• High search volume + low competition = strong candidate
• Indirect keywords (not directly about your product) can still convert if they reach your target customer
• No formula produces a perfect answer — treat it as an art with three guardrails
• Five keywords is enough to start; they can be replaced later if they underperform