When your goal is to write content that attracts traffic, your first instinct might be to start churning out page after page of content for your top keywords

But unless your website is already considered authoritative and you’re working within a highly structured, long-term SEO plan with a proven history of huge wins, it’s going to be a huge uphill battle.

Seriously. Going straight for those super competitive short-tail keywords will have you running in place for months or years–and you may never even get them.

You can use what’s called “low-hanging fruit keywords” to start driving traffic to your site RIGHT NOW and help you build up to those super competitive keywords.

What are Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords?

Low-hanging fruit keywords are keywords or phrases that are less competitive but still offer a ton of value to your SEO efforts. These keywords are typically lower keyword difficulty but still have enough volume to drive quality traffic to your website.

Plus, a lot of low-hanging fruit keywords have SERP features like featured snippets, sitelinks, video previews, or image previews that are easier to earn.

How Do Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords Benefit Your SEO Writing Strategy?

Scoring low-hanging fruit keywords is the gateway into more traffic (sometimes even better traffic), and eventually ranking for more difficult keywords.

If you can earn SERP features for low-hanging fruit keywords, you begin establishing relevance and authority with search engines. Once you’ve proven your value to Google in one area, it’s far more likely you’ll rank higher for your other keywords.

Think of your SEO writing strategy as a pyramid