How to Find Low-Competition Keywords (Without Guessing)

TL;DR: A low-competition keyword is a search term that real buyers are typing, but that only a few weak or unfocused listings currently rank for. You find them by pairing a demand signal (autocomplete, search suggestions, trend data) with a competition signal (how many results exist and how established the top ones are), then keeping only the terms that have both. Low competition with zero demand is a dead keyword, so you always need both sides.

When you open a brand-new Etsy or Redbubble shop, you are the smallest fish in the pond. You have no sales history, no reviews, and no ranking authority. If you target a keyword like "t-shirt" or "wall art," you are competing against listings that have sold thousands of units over several years. You will not win that fight, and no amount of clever design fixes it on its own.

Low-competition keywords are the way around this. Instead of fighting for a term that ten thousand established listings already own, you find a more specific term that people still search for but that almost nobody has properly optimized for yet. Rank on the first page for one of those, and you get sales while you are still invisible on the big head terms.

I run a print-on-demand research tool, so I look at this problem every day across four marketplaces. This guide is the honest version: what "low competition" actually means, how to find these keywords for free by hand, and the one mistake that quietly kills most keyword lists (picking terms nobody is searching for).

What makes a keyword "low competition"?

A low-competition keyword is one where the gap between demand and supply is in your favor. Demand is how many people search the term. Supply, or competition, is how many listings already target it and how strong those listings are. When demand is healthy and supply is thin or weak, that is your opening.

The tension is that these two things usually move together. Terms with huge demand attract huge competition. Terms with almost no competition often have almost no demand. The sweet spot is the narrow band in between: enough people are searching that it is worth ranking, but not so many sellers have noticed that the first page is already locked up by strong listings.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

Notice the last row. It has low competition, but it is worthless because there is no demand behind it. That distinction is the whole game, and I come back to it later.

Why low-competition keywords matter more when you're new

Search ranking on every marketplace rewards proven listings. Etsy, Amazon, and Redbubble all lean on sales velocity, click-through, conversion, and age as ranking signals. A new listing has none of that history, so on a competitive term it starts near the bottom and rarely climbs.

A long-tail, low-competition keyword flips the math. The first page for "retro camping shirt for grandpa" might hold a handful of listings, some of them barely optimized for that exact phrase. A fresh, well-titled, well-tagged listing can slot in there quickly because the bar is low. You are not asking the algorithm to trust you over a shop with 20,000 sales. You are just being the most relevant result for a phrase almost nobody bothered to target.

This is why I tell new sellers to build their first 20 to 30 listings almost entirely around long-tail terms. You are not chasing volume yet. You are chasing wins that are actually winnable, stacking small pockets of demand while your shop earns the history it needs to compete for bigger terms later. If you want the marketplace-specific version of this, the best keywords for Etsy breakdown and the Etsy SEO guide go deeper on how Etsy in particular ranks new listings.

The 3 signals of a good low-competition keyword

Every keyword worth targeting passes three checks. Miss any one and the keyword is not worth a listing.

1. Demand exists

Someone has to be searching the term. This is the signal people skip, because "low competition" sounds like a win on its own. It is not. A keyword with zero searches is not low competition, it is no market. You confirm demand through autocomplete suggestions, search volume tools, and trend data (more on the free ways to check below).

2. Competition is thin or weak

Either few listings target the exact phrase, or the ones that do are old, poorly titled, or clearly not optimized for it. Thin competition is a low count of results. Weak competition is a normal count of results where the top ones are generic and beatable. Both are opportunities.

3. The intent is real and buyer-worded

The best low-competition keywords sound like something a shopper types when they are close to buying, not browsing. "Gift for a chess-loving dad" carries more buying intent than "chess." Buyer-worded phrases are naturally longer and more specific, which is also why they tend to be less competitive. Intent and low competition often come as a pair.

How to find them for free (the manual way)

You can do real keyword research for free. It is slow and a little imperfect, but it works, and it teaches you what good demand actually feels like. The core idea is simple: use the marketplace itself to reveal what people search, then eyeball how strong the competition is.

Start with autocomplete. Type a seed word into the search bar on Etsy, Redbubble, or Amazon and watch what the marketplace suggests. Those suggestions are ranked by real search behavior, so they are a direct demand signal. Type "camping" and note every phrase the box offers. Each one is a candidate.

Then read the results page for each candidate. How many listings come back? Are the top ones from big, established shops with thousands of sales, or are they scattered and generic? A results page full of polished, high-review listings is crowded. A results page where the top listings barely mention your exact phrase is an opening.

You can layer in free general-purpose tools too. Google autocomplete and "people also search for" reveal adjacent phrasing. Free tiers of tools like Ahrefs' keyword generator or Google Trends give you a rough sense of whether interest is rising or fading. None of these are marketplace-perfect, but they help you separate a live term from a dead one.

Here is the free signal I would check first on each marketplace:

Work through a seed word this way and you will build a shortlist in an afternoon. For platform-specific tactics, the Redbubble keywords, tags and SEO guide and the roundup of the most searched keywords on Amazon show how autocomplete and tags behave differently on each site.

The honest catch: doing this properly across all four marketplaces, for dozens of seed words, is genuinely hours of manual work. Autocomplete gives you phrases but not real numbers. Eyeballing a results page tells you competition is "crowded" or "thin" but not by how much. It is a solid free method, and it is also exactly the tedious part that pushed me to automate it.

How to tell demand from saturation

This is the part most people get wrong, so slow down here.

There are two failure modes, and they look opposite but they are both fatal. The first is high demand plus high saturation: a term everyone wants and everyone already targets. You rank on page nine and never get seen. The second is low competition plus no demand: a term with a wide-open first page that nobody searches, so ranking first earns you nothing. Beginners chase the first and accidentally land on the second.

The way you avoid both is to validate against what is actually selling, not just against search counts. Search volume tells you people type the words. It does not tell you they buy. A keyword can have steady searches and still convert badly because the shoppers are browsing, not buying, or because the demand is seasonal and you are looking at it in the off month. The reliable read comes from the listings that already rank for the term: are the ones near the top clearly moving product, and is that movement recent, or is it a graveyard of stale listings coasting on old sales?

I will keep this at the principle level on purpose, because the exact traversal I use is the thing my tool automates and I would rather not hand out the full manual recipe. But the principle is enough to work with: a keyword is worth a listing when real buyer demand is visible in what is currently selling AND the competition for that exact phrase is thin or beatable. Demand without competition data is a guess. Competition without demand data is a trap. You need both sides on the table before you commit a design to it.

Doing it faster

Everything above is doable by hand, and I think every seller should try it manually at least once so the signals become intuitive. But once you are shipping listings regularly, the manual loop becomes the bottleneck. Checking autocomplete, counting results, judging listing strength, and doing it across Etsy, Redbubble, Amazon Merch, and TeePublic is a real time sink, and you still end up estimating.

That gap is why I built Trendlytic. One search scores a keyword for demand and competition together, shows a 12-month search-interest trend so you can catch rising terms and skip fading ones, and runs a live USPTO trademark check so you do not design around a phrase you legally cannot use. It covers Etsy, Redbubble, TeePublic, and Amazon Merch in a single run, so the four-marketplace check that took an afternoon takes about 40 seconds. It is $5 a month for 100 searches, and there is a free trial with no card required. If you work mostly on one platform, the Etsy keyword research view is a good place to start.

The tool does not replace the judgment. It just removes the tedium so you can spend your time on the designs, not the spreadsheet.

Common mistakes

A few patterns come up over and over. Avoiding them puts you ahead of most new shops.

Chasing head terms. New sellers gravitate to "t-shirt," "mug," "sticker" because they feel big and safe. They are the least winnable terms on the whole marketplace. Go narrow first.

Keyword stuffing. Cramming ten keywords into one title does not help you rank for all ten. It dilutes relevance and reads like spam to both the algorithm and the shopper. One clear primary phrase per listing beats a title salad.

Ignoring trademark. A phrase can have great demand and thin competition and still be a registered trademark. Designing around it risks a takedown or worse. Always check before you commit. This bites people on trending phrases especially, where the low competition is low precisely because the term is protected.

Picking low-competition-but-no-demand keywords. The trap from earlier. An empty first page feels like a gift until you realize it is empty because nobody is looking. Confirm demand before you celebrate low competition.

Copying a niche without checking freshness. A keyword that was hot last year can be saturated or dead now. Trend direction matters as much as the current snapshot. If you are researching jewelry, for example, the seasonality is real, and the jewelry keywords breakdown shows how much a term's demand can swing across the year.

FAQ

What is a low-competition keyword?

A low-competition keyword is a search term that real buyers use but that only a few weak or unfocused listings currently rank for. It has genuine demand on one side and thin or beatable competition on the other, which makes it realistic for a new listing to reach the first page.

How do I find low-competition keywords for free?

Use the marketplace search bar's autocomplete to surface phrases people actually type, then look at each phrase's results page to judge competition (how many listings, and how established the top ones are). Layer in free tools like Google autocomplete and Google Trends to sanity-check demand. It is slow but it works.

Are low-competition keywords worth it?

Yes, especially when your shop is new and has no ranking authority. They are the fastest path to your first sales because you can realistically rank for them, unlike broad head terms that established shops already dominate. As your shop earns sales history, you can start competing for bigger terms too.

What's a good keyword difficulty score?

For a new print-on-demand shop, aim for the low end of whatever difficulty scale your tool uses (roughly the bottom third), as long as the term still shows real demand. The exact number matters less than the pairing: low difficulty is only useful when demand is present. A low score on a term nobody searches is not an opportunity.

Do low-competition keywords still get sales?

They do, and often better than head terms for a small shop. Long-tail, low-competition keywords tend to carry stronger buyer intent because they are specific ("gift for night shift nurses" rather than "shirt"). Fewer searches, but a higher share of those searchers are ready to buy, and you can actually reach them.

How many keywords should I target per listing?

One clear primary keyword per listing, supported by a few closely related variations in the tags. Trying to rank a single listing for many unrelated keywords dilutes its relevance and usually means it ranks well for none of them.

Conclusion

Low-competition keywords are the single best lever a new shop has, because they are the only terms you can realistically win before you have any ranking history. The method is not complicated: find phrases with real demand, keep only the ones where competition is thin or weak, and confirm demand against what is actually selling before you commit a design. The manual version is free and worth learning. The automated version just gives you the afternoon back.

What seed word are you researching right now, and what is the most surprising low-competition phrase your marketplace's autocomplete has handed you? I would love to hear what you are finding.