Easy to rank keywords are searches where a site can reach Google's top results with little work, either because the pages already on page one are weak or because the site is already close to page one.
SEOs often call them low hanging fruit. Most guides treat them as a filter you set in a tool: keyword difficulty under a certain threshold, and you take whatever is left. We checked how well that method holds up on four UK results pages. Not very well.
Two kinds of easy keyword, and the second pays off more
Two different things end up under the same label.
The first is the new keyword with a weak results page: none of your pages picks it up, but the sites on page one answer it badly, are out of date or are about something else. You find it with a keyword research tool and confirm it by reading the results.
The second is the keyword you're already visible for, usually somewhere between position five and twenty, with plenty of impressions and few clicks. You find it in Google Search Console and it's the one most people ignore: Google has already decided your page is relevant, it just needs a push to climb.
Ahrefs' numbers show the difference. In their study of 1 million URLs and 1.3 million keywords (international sample, updated in August 2026) only 1.74% of recently published pages reach the top 10 within a year, down from 5.7% in 2017. 72.9% of the pages on page one are more than three years old, and the average page in first position is five. A new page starts uphill even on an easy keyword, and the problem gets worse on a new website. A page that already exists, with its history, doesn't.
The test: four UK results pages and keyword difficulty
On 10 October 2026 we pulled the keyword difficulty of four UK searches from DataForSEO, then read the top ten Google UK results for each one, one by one. DataForSEO calculates KD on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100, looking mainly at the link profiles of the top ten pages. The best-known tools work on the same principle.
| Keyword | Searches/month | KD | Who's on page one | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| how to find keywords for seo | 90 | 0 | AI Overview at the top, then a Reddit thread and the tool pages of Semrush, Google Keyword Planner, Wordtracker, WordStream and Keyword Tool, a Zapier list of tools and an Ahrefs guide | Hard. Five organic results out of eight are tools |
| what is keyword research | 70 | 0 | AI Overview with the definition and three tools (Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, Semrush), then small agency blogs from the UK, Switzerland and Australia, dated between 2020 and 2025 | Easy to rank, little to win. The AI Overview has already answered |
| how to find low competition keywords | 20 | 22 | Outrank (May 2026), Senuto (2024), a Medium post from 2022, SEO PowerSuite, a SaaS agency, a Quora thread, two YouTube videos from 2020 and 2022 | Easy. Half of page one is videos, Quora and a 2022 post |
| easy keywords to rank for | 10 | n/a | The KD checkers of Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz, a two-year-old Reddit thread, a Zapier list of tools, guides from Brafton (August 2025), Medium (2024) and SEO PowerSuite | Mixed. Tool vendors hold half the page, only three results answer the question |
The two keywords with KD 0 are not the easy ones on the list.
"How to find keywords for seo" gets 90 searches a month and zero difficulty according to the tool, but page one is mostly tools where you type a seed word and get a list back. The searcher wants a tool, not something to read. We've seen the same pattern in Italy first-hand: our guide to AI detectors sits in position 64 for "rilevatore ai" (AI detector), a query with 14,800 searches a month and a KD of 0 on Google Italy, where page one is made entirely of detection tools.
"What is keyword research" has KD 0 and, above everything, an AI Overview that gives the definition and names three tools. The low KD is accurate: the pages underneath are small agency blogs with few backlinks, one of them from 2020. You could probably rank. The KD doesn't tell you that the reader already has the answer before reaching you.
The two longest searches are the ones actually within reach. For "how to find low competition keywords" page one mixes a 2020 YouTube video, a 2022 Medium post and a Quora thread: Google has no good answer and takes what it finds. For "easy keywords to rank for" Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz put their own checkers there and Zapier a list of tools, but only three pages explain how to find these keywords.
Then there's coverage. Of the 95 Italian keywords for which the Visilay site appears in the top 100 results, 72 have no difficulty score in DataForSEO's database, "rilevatore ai" included. And "b2b significato" (B2B meaning) gets KD 11 in one report and KD 1 in another from the same provider. The UK database covers more, but not everything: of the 30 keywords we checked for this article, 6 had no score, including "striking distance keywords" and "low hanging fruit seo". On small volumes the number is often missing or shifts, which is why the real work is still reading the results page. How these scores are built and where they go wrong is covered in our guide to keyword difficulty.
Method 1: keywords where you're nearly there
Start with Search Console, the only source with real data about your own site rather than tool estimates.
- Open the Performance report, select the last three months and switch on clicks, impressions, CTR and average position.
- In the Queries table add a position filter: greater than 4 and smaller than 21.
- Sort by impressions, highest first. At the top you'll find the searches where Google shows you often and people rarely click.
- For each query open the Pages tab. If two different URLs take turns, there's an overlap to fix before you optimise anything (we cover it in the article on keyword clustering).
- Search the query in a private window and look at who's ahead of you and with what kind of page.
A word on the number you're filtering. Google calculates average position by taking the highest position the site held for each search and averaging across searches. A query at average position 8 can be a page bouncing between 3 and 15 depending on device and location: we explain how it works in our guide to Google Search Console. The 5-20 band is a starting point, not a ranking.
Why that band in particular. In Backlinko's study of around 4 million Google results (updated in April 2025, market not stated) the first organic result has an average CTR of 27.6%, the second 15.8% and the tenth 2.8%. The top three together take 54.4% of clicks, and only 0.63% of people click anything on page two. Moving from 12 to 6 looks like very little in a monthly report. In clicks it's the difference between nothing and something.
Method 2: new keywords with a weak results page
Here the tool builds the list, it doesn't make the choice. The process we use in keyword research: 4-6 seed words from the sector, pull out the long tail variations, drop those whose search intent differs from yours, and only then use KD as a first sieve.
Use the sieve knowing what it measures. Semrush labels the 0-14 band as very easy and 15-29 as easy. Ahrefs bases its score on the number of sites linking to the top ten pages: a low KD means few backlinks on the results page, nothing more.
Long keywords are almost all of them. In Ahrefs' US database, searches made fewer than 10 times a month are almost 93% of the total. The UK market is smaller than the US, and many of these searches don't appear in tools at all: in our test, four of the variations on "easy keywords" averaged 10 searches a month and two had no data. Finding that the best keywords have almost no recorded volume is normal.
Then you open the results page. These are the signals we look for, strongest first.
| Signal | What you see on page one | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Off-topic results | Pages answering a different question, tool lists for another channel, freelancer adverts | Google has nothing better and uses what it finds |
| Old content | Dates between 2019 and 2022 on topics that have changed since | An up-to-date page has a real advantage |
| Forums and videos near the top | Reddit, Quora or YouTube in the top five positions | Nobody has written an orderly answer |
| Titles without the query | No result uses the phrase in its title | Nobody has made it their main topic |
| Small domains above big ones | Personal blogs and niche sites ahead of the big portals | Domain strength carries little weight on that query |
| Wrong format | Product pages for an informational question, or the other way round | Whoever gets the format right jumps the queue |
Two or three signals together are enough, one on its own usually isn't. And if page one is only interactive tools or product pages, as for "how to find keywords for seo", the keyword isn't easy whatever the score says: it calls for a different format. How to read a SERP result by result is covered in a separate article.
When an easy keyword isn't worth the effort
Easy doesn't mean useful. There are three cases where we leave it alone.
When the whole answer is in the AI Overview. In an Ahrefs study of 300,000 keywords (aggregated Search Console data, desktop CTR, December 2025, market not stated) the first organic result on queries with an AI Overview fell from a CTR of 7.3% to 1.6% in two years, a 58% drop. Questions that can be closed in one line are often easy to rank for and nearly worthless to win. There's more on this in our articles on zero-click searches and AI Overviews.
When the keyword has nothing to do with what you sell. 96.55% of the pages in Ahrefs' index get no traffic from Google (study of around 14 billion pages, updated in August 2026). Publishing on easy topics far from your own market is a quick way to end up in that percentage, or to bring in visitors who don't buy.
When it calls for a format you can't build. If the results page wants a configurator, a calculator or a catalogue, an article won't get in, however well it's written.
What to do once you've found them
For method 1 keywords you almost never need a new page. The fixes, quickest first:
- rewrite the meta title so it contains the search phrase and gives a reason to click;
- add a section that answers the exact question, if the page only touches on it in passing;
- add internal links from pages that are already strong, with anchor text close to the search;
- if the query has a different intent from the page that ranks, create a dedicated page and link it to the first one.
The case of Macropix, a Milan manufacturer of custom LED screens, shows what happens on small commercial keywords in Italy. In 2020 the site was already present but far down: position 88 for "monitor pubblicitario" (advertising monitor, 390 searches a month), 73 for "schermo pubblicitario" (advertising screen, 480), 46 for "schermo led wall" (LED wall screen, 260), 31 for "totem led" (LED totem, 260). By 2025 the same four were in positions 2, 2, 1 and 3 according to Semrush on Google Italy. None of them goes over 500 searches a month, and they're among the ones that bring in the most qualified enquiries. The full five-year project is in the article on SEO for manufacturing and in the Macropix case study.
Method 2 keywords do need a new page, and it's worth allowing for the time it takes: how long SEO takes to show results depends on the domain's history more than on the keyword. On a young site even a weak results page takes months.
The source no tool can see
The easiest keywords we find in B2B projects don't come from tools or from Search Console. They come from customer emails and from the questions the sales team gets asked on the phone: "can you do it in stainless steel?", "what's the minimum order?". They show no recorded volume, so no competitor has ever looked at them, and for the same reason the results page is nearly always empty. The people typing them usually have a project in hand already. That's why, when we set up an SEO project, we start there: before opening a tool, ask the sales office for the last twenty questions they received.
Frequently asked questions about easy to rank keywords
It depends on the site and on the tool. Semrush treats 0-14 as very easy and 15-29 as easy, but in our test on Google UK two keywords with KD 0 had a page one full of keyword tools or already answered by an AI Overview. Use KD to rule keywords out, and decide by reading the results page.
They are searches where a site is already visible, usually between position five and twenty, without being in the top results. You find them in the Search Console Performance report by filtering on average position and sorting by impressions, and they are often the quickest to move up because the page already exists.
It depends mostly on the page. A page that already exists and has some history starts ahead, because Google considers it relevant and a change to the title or internal links builds on that. A new page starts behind: according to Ahrefs only 1.74% of recently published pages reach the top 10 within a year.
Yes, if the intent matches what you sell. Many real searches fall below the threshold of keyword tools, which show them as zero or no data. Search Console reveals them through impressions, and they are often the closest to an enquiry.
Yes. Search Console for the keywords where you are already visible, then Google's suggestions, the People also ask box and a direct read of page one to judge the competition. Paid tools speed up collecting ideas, but assessing the results page is still manual work.
