YouTube SEO Tutorial: Find Low Competition Keywords with VidIQ Keyword Research Tool

You can use InfraNodus AI knowledge graphs to uncover patterns in the most popular search keywords gathered through the VidIQ YouTube analytics tool.

One of the most useful features of VidIQ is the keyword research functionality that shows the keywords related to your channel's topics or your customers' interests. However, it presents it in a table format, making it difficult to find patterns within. 

Using InfraNodus, you can export this data from VidIQ as a CSV file, then import it and visualize patterns of keyword co-occurrences as a knowledge graph, where you can see which combinations of keywords tend to be used more often by your audience to find the content they need. 

Using the InfraNodus' filtering feature, you can reveal the low-competition, high-search-volume keyword combinations on the graph and target those for optimal results.

You can also use the built-in AI to generate content ideas (or YouTube video titles) as described in this support article: How to Generate Content Ideas for YouTube Videos using Keyword Search Topics. 

Here is how you can use this feature step by step:

Step 1: Generate Keywords in the VidIQ Keyword Research Tool

Think of a search query, for instance, "youtube keyword research", and generate a table of related search terms using VidIQ:

The table will contain the keywords people use when they search for this query, as well as the monthly search volume, competition score, and other meta data.

Then export this table as a CSV file.

Step 2: Import the Keywords Spreadsheet to InfraNodus

To to the https://infranodus.com/apps page and upload this CSV file. 

a) Choose the column with keywords and the search volume column as the columns to analyze

We will use those keywords to create a graph of keyword co-occurrences that will help us see which combinations of keywords are used most often. 

b) Choose search volume and competition as the columns to use as filters. 

We will use these as filters to find low-competition, high search volume keywords:

Step 3: Build a graph of keyword co-occurrences with InfraNodus

InfraNodus will build a graph from VidIQ keywords, which will show the combinations of words which appear more frequently together. The bigger the words, the more influential they are, the words that are closer and have the same color belong to the same cluster. We use text network analysis algorithms to identify these insights and they are shown in the analytics panel:

From this image, you can already see that the main word combinations are "keyword research tool" (the light green cluster) and "youtube vidiq" (the pink cluster). 

The main topics are 

- Video growth

- Keyword secrets

- Vidiq insights

- Digital strategy

Actionable insight #1: from this information we know that if we want to create videos for YouTube on the topic of keyword research, we should include the idea of "video" and "channel growth", as well as mention VidIQ as it's one of the most popular tools out there. 

Pro tip: you can hide the words from the original search query: "youtube", "keyword", and "research" to see the context around them to get to the more latent keyword patterns underneath:

You will see that the terms "seo" and "find low competition keywords" come up as the more relevant ones, indicating that those terms are also in demand when people are searching for "youtube keyword research".

If you click on "find low competition" nodes in the graph, you will see the statements where they occur:

Actionable insight #2: include "find low competition keywords" and "seo" in your video content / tags / description to increase exposure

Step 4: How to Find Low Competition Keywords 

Now that you have a general overview of the main search patterns, it's time to focus on low-competition, high-search-volume keywords. 

In order to do that, you can use the filtering feature in InfraNodus:

a) open the filter panel (top left)

b) the tags column shows the filters you selected when you imported the CSV file. 

c) choose a low competition range (e.g. 3.19 to 23.3)

d) choose a high (but not the highest) search volume (e.g. 5253 to 1412923)

The graph will then show the only the statements that have EITHER low competition OR high search volume.

The important step to do here is to 
e) Apply the "Intersection" filter to only show statements that have BOTH of those filters (AND instead of OR). 

Then the graph you will get will only contain the search queries that have both low competition and relative high search volume:

Actionable insight: If we're making a video for YouTube about keyword research that is supposed to reach our intended audience, we need to focus on talking about concrete "tools" as there seem to be not so many recent videos on this topic but the search volume is quite high.

You can now go back to filters and iteratively change to the lower search or higher competition to view other keyword combinations you might be interested in:

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That's it! You can try this approach at https://infranodus.com

To sign up for VidIQ, you can use https://vidiq.com/noduslabs — we will get a small commission from them, but we were not paid for this article or video, we're simply recommending this product because it's the best we have found and we use it ourselves. 

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Here are some more workflows where you can use InfraNodus together with VidIQ to grow your YouTube channel:

1) The "competitor channels" functionality is available to the Boost subscribers. It shows what other channels your own subscribers subscribed to in the last 30 days. It's a great way to discover what else your audience is watching. You can then add those channels to your "competitors" list and use InfraNodus to analyze the content of these channels one by one using our YouTube Channel Analysis feature. It will show you a graph of the main terms used by similar channels in their video titles and give you a better idea of what content you should target in order to cater to your audience's interests. 

2) Pay particular attention to the content niches: what your customers are searching for but do not yet find. You can also discover new niches by comparing your channel to the "competitor" ones to see what relations of keywords they're using that you are not. You can then target those relations to get that audience to also watch your channel.