How to Find Quick Win Keywords

What’s better than a win?

A quick win.

Combine this with SEO and you’ve got yourself some quick win keywords.

In this article I’ll walk you through how to use APIs + spreadsheets to find keywords you can results from FAST.

But first:

WTF are quick win keywords?

Sometimes they are referred to as low hanging fruit keywords or even striking distance keywords.

But the point remains the same:

Keywords you can make a few tweaks to and see noticeable improvements quickly. Hence the name.

I’ve classed quick win keywords as terms you rank on the first/second page for (average position of 5-20) but not within the top positions.

So how do I find them?

By analysing the keywords you are ranking for.

You want to look for keywords hovering between the bottom of the first page and top of second page of the SERPs. Like I’ve said, keywords with an average position of between 5 – 20.

Basically any rankings not within the top positions.

Now there’s a couple of ways you could get this info:

  • You could filter by position in Ahrefs, SEMRush, Serpstat etc.
  • You could export your rankings from a rank tracker and analyse your positions.
  • You could comb through Search Console data.

Or, you can just make a copy of my spreadsheet and let it do the work for you:

👉Get yourself a copy of the quick wins keyword sheet here.👈

Yeah yeah, but what about the results?

Okay, I can hear you:

This tool/google sheets thingy sounds great, but does it actually get results?

Yes. Yes it does.

Working as a digital marketing consultant, when starting to work on new sites for the first time, I always like to check for quick wins.

Here’s some results:

Client Results #1

B2C & B2B client targeting competitive London keywords:

Client Results #2

B2C Client targeting buyer-intent keywords:

Client Results #3

B2B client targeting really niche keywords:

How it works & setup instructions

First things first:

Go grab yourself a copy here.

To get it working, you only need 3 things to get the tool setup:

  • Google Sheets
  • Search Console Add-on
  • And a website (with GCS setup obviously*)

*If you haven’t setup Google Search Console for your site, why not? Go and watch this GSC Setup guide then come back.

There’s two ways to use this tool:

  • Automated via Search Console – This method uses an API to pull in GSC data and then wrangles it in an easy to understand sheet
  • Manually via a rank tracker – This method allows you to copy and paste existing rankings in and find your quick wins. Particularly useful for projects where you perhaps don’t have access to a client’s Search Console.*
*SIDE NOTE: Funny story. I once requested access to Search Console for a clients site back when it was called Webmaster Tools. The client refused me access because and I quote “We pay you to do SEO, we aren’t paying you to be a webmaster as well.” 🤔🤷‍♂️ But I digress.

Pick which method you’d like use, and follow along below:

Automated via Search Console

1) Install this add-on to pull in Search Console data: searchanalyticsforsheets.com

2) Authorize your sheet by going to Add-ons >>> Search Analytics for Sheets >>> Open Sidebar

⚠️Make sure your Google account is authorized to use the Search Console property you want to back up!⚠️

3) Choose your site. Make sure to add Query & Page to the Group By box:

4) In Results Sheet, select ‘RAW DATA’ (If you don’t select the RAW DATA tab, it won’t work. 👎)

5) Now request data. This will get the spreadsheet goblins working and you should see your quick win keywords! 👍

Manual via Rank Tracker of your choosing

1) Export your rankings from your tool of choice.

2) Tidy up your export: you only want 3 columns of data: Keyword, URL and Rank.

3) Paste these 3 columns into the MANUAL tab.

4) Once you’ve pasted your keywords, your data will populate in Quick Wins [Manual] 👍

Go forth and tweak…

But what kind of tweaks?

So you’ve got your list of quick win keywords. But now what?

Often, getting results from quick win keywords is just a matter of either improving a page or updating a page.

Here’s a few things you can try:

Do more (or better) keyword research

Going after the right keywords can make or break an SEO campaign.

So sometimes it’s worth a refresh.

It’s far beyond the scope of this article to tell you how to improve your keyword research, so here’s some useful guides you should read to up your keyword research game.

Further Reading:

On-page SEO

Make sure your pages are optimised. If you know what keywords you are going after (see previous section) this is easy.

You’ll want to make sure your keyword are in:

  • Your title tag
  • Your URL
  • In Your H1 tag
  • And variations of keyword used throughout your page.

Sometimes a page won’t be ranking as well as it could be simply because it is not targeting a specific keyword effectively.

Just make sure to get the balance right between optimized for a search engine vs optimized for a user.

Further Reading:

Improve content

With quick win keywords, you don’t necessarily have to create brand new content.

It can be a case of reworking what is there, rewriting sections or adding in additional sections. Relevancy is key here.

As the the 21st century philosopher Missy of Elliot proposed:

“Is it worth it? Let me work it. I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it”

Either write it yourself or hire a content marketer. It doesn’t really matter which, just produce useful and topically relevant content.

If you want a heads start in content marketing, go read anything by Jimmy Daly @ Animalz, but start here with his awesome post about core content marketing concepts.

Internal links

Grab a list of the most linked pages of your site (HINT: in Search Console).

Add links on those pages back to the pages you want to rank higher. Make sure to take care with your anchor texts.

To find internal link targets, use this search operator:

Site:websitehere.com “keyword”

Keep anchor text, amount of links and the actual pages you link to in check. Don’t over do it. Oh, and go read this internal linking guide.

Link building

Link links links.

Some people have pretty strong feelings about linkbuilding. Instead of overthinking it, I like to just go build them.

Point them at the URLs you want to rank higher. Don’t overdo it with exact match anchors and try to be natural with it.

There’s loads of ways to build links. Some are scaleable, some aren’t. Some will work for a long time, some will be out of date next week.

Use your noggin and build links that make sense for your website.

Further Reading:

Wrapping up

SEO is all about ROI.

If you are spending too much time and money on getting the right traffic to your site, you’re not going to have a good time.

I’ve always subscribed to the ‘do more of what is working’ school of thought.

I call it lazy efficiency.

That’s why I built this tool. To speed up SEO & keyword prioritization for me.

Less time spent analyzing and prioritising keywords means more time spent creating content, building links and getting away from a screen. All important parts of an SEO campaign IMHO.

That’s it. Get yourself a copy of the Quick Win Keyword Finder and optimize away.

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