In this article I’ll describe how to use RankIQ for keyword research so you can simplify this process and write traffic-generating articles for your website.

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Quick Summary of what RankIQ is:
RankIQ is a beginner-friendly software designed to help new blogs show up on the first page of Google so you can get people reading your articles.
It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to scan the top 30 articles already ranking in Google and returns a list of words and phrases that these top results commonly use.
To have the best chance of ranking well, your article should also contain those words and phrases.
Below is a screenshot from RankIQ.
It is a report that RankIQ generated for the keyword “popular tourist attractions in NYC”.
I typed in “popular tourist attraction in NYC” as my target keyword, and this is some of the phrases that RankIQ said the top Google results for this keyword have in them.

I just did this an example to show you how RankIQ works, but if I was actually writing an article on this keyword then I’d want to include these phrases as well.
I’d want to have things like “Empire State Building”, “Statue of Liberty”, “Times Square”, “Coney Island”, etc… in my article.
An important part of ranking well in Google is choosing to write articles about keywords (topics for your article) that you actually have a chance of ranking for.
These are called low-competition keywords.
RankIQ features a database of low competition keywords organized into niches.
You scroll through the list of keywords in your niche, select a keyword to write about, click the “Run Report” button and RankIQ gets to work.
(Want to see the list of niches in RankIQ? Click here)
Want to know more about RankIQ? You can see my full RankIQ review here.
Let’s look at how to use RankIQ for keyword research.
How to use RankIQ for Keyword Research
Unlike other keyword research tools where you have to spend hours discovering good keywords on your own, RankIQ subscribers get access to a hand-picked list of good keywords in the RankIQ Keyword Library.

These “good” keywords are curated by the RankIQ founder and his team. More on this below.
NOTE: doing RankIQ keyword research involves going through the list of pre-selected keywords and selecting ones you like. There isn’t an option to use the tool to find other keywords from the web. That is the big difference between this and other SEO tools.
Is RankIQ a good option for new bloggers?
You may have heard the advice that new bloggers should write articles on low-competition keywords.
But where do you find these low competition keywords?
You can use an expensive keyword research tool like AHREFs or SEMRush, but the high monthly costs and complexities can be overwhelming to some newbies.
You can get so bogged down looking for article ideas that you forget to actually write the articles.
RankIQ on the other hand makes it simple.
RankIQ has a database of keywords handpicked by the RankIQ founder and his team of SEO experts that are perfect for new blogs.
It’s like you have an expert team of keyword researchers working for you.
They have chosen these keywords because their research has shown that these are low competition keywords.
What are low competition keywords?
Low competition keywords are keywords where your little site has a chance of ranking well if you write a well-crafted article.
The top Google results for that keyword are NOT completely dominated by big media brands and established websites.
By finding these low competition keywords for you, the RankIQ team has given you a chance to leapfrog many of the common hurdles that new bloggers face.
Many new bloggers either:
- Just write whatever comes to mind
- Don’t know what low competition keywords are
- Don’t know how to find them or…
- Write articles on highly competitive keywords and wonder why their site doesn’t rank on Google
Now I’ll show you how to use RankIQ to find those keywords that will give your new blog a fighting chance of getting readers from Google.
A look at the RankIQ Keyword Library
There are thousands of low competition keywords selected by the RankIQ founder and his team in the Keyword Library section of RankIQ.
The keywords are organized into topics: also called niches.
There are hundreds of niches listed in the drop-down navigation menu. (I believe over 500 niches at this time.)

When you first use RankIQ you should click on this menu and carefully scroll down the list of niches.
Do you see your niche or related niche on there?
Click on your niche.
This will display the pre-selected, low-competition keywords related to your niche.
Some examples of Niches within in the Keyword Library

There are thousands of pre-selected keywords in the keyword library and they’re organized into hundreds of different niches.
These niches are further grouped into larger topics such as:
- Food
- Travel
- Mom
- Parenting
- Arts/Crafts
- Beauty
- Fashion
Below is an example of how they’re displayed.
Fitness: Back.
So, Fitness is the larger topic and Back is the niche or subtopic. This niche currently has 433 keywords listed related to fitness and back muscles, back exercises, etc…
Other examples include:
- Fashion: Maternity Maternity (currently has 249 keywords related to maternity clothes & fashion)
- Fashion: Sunglasses (currently 679 keywords in this niche)
- Home: Smart Home (currently has 1067 keywords related to smart homes)
Want to see what niches are in the keyword library? Click here to see the list.
If you find a keyword that you’re interested in writing an article about you have two choices:
- Run the AI-report on that keyword right from this screen by pressing the green “Run Report” button on the right side of the screen
- Save the keyword for later by clicking the checkbox to the left of the keyword and then pressing the blue “Add Selected to my KWs”. This saves the keyword into a place called “My Keywords” that you access by pressing the “My KWs” tab button on the top menu of the page.
How to find and filter the RankIQ Keyword Library Options
Once you’ve found your niche and clicked on it, RankIQ displays a big list of keywords.
You could scroll through this list, just browsing to see what’s there, or you can target certain kinds of keywords using various filter and sort options.
In this section I’ll describe the various ways you can hone in on the best keywords for your site.
Search and Filter by Keywords (basically search for a keyword in the list)

This feature allows you to search for keywords within a niche. It is the “Search KWs” filter box on the left. (Note the label changes to say “Include” once you’ve typed something into this field.)
This means you want your results to include the word you’ve typed in.
The photo above shows an example where I’m looking at keywords within the sunglasses niche.
But, I don’t want to scan through the entire list of 679 sunglass-related keywords.
I want to see if any of those 679 keywords in the RankIQ sunglasses niche contain the word Oakley. (As in Oakley brand of sunglasses.)
So I type in “oakley” in the filter box titled “Search KWs”.
Then the keywords within the sunglasses niche that contain the word oakley show up in a list below.
How does this features help a new blogger?
This feature can help you save time. You can hone in on winning keywords by filtering the results to include just the keywords you want.
Filtering by Keyword Type (search intent)

When you’re doing keyword research there are times when you want specific kinds of keywords.
For instance, sometimes you want “question” keywords where someone types a question into Google and is looking for the answer. Your article would be the “answer” to their question.
Or sometimes you may want to write a review article for a particular product in your niche.
When RankIQ was first released you just had to scroll through the list of keywords and try to find ones that worked for your needs. It was a bit a time-consuming.
But now there are more filtering options so you can target keywords that suit your criteria.
Filtering Keywords by the Keyword Type (or search intent)
There is a drop-down menu on the right side of the screen labelled “KW Type.”
At this time (July 2023) there are 4 options of keywords in this menu. You can filter by the following Keyword Types:
- Questions (What, Who, How, Where, When)
- Vs (Comparision) – so comparing one thing to another
- Review (where the word “review” is right in the keyword. Like “Air Jordan shoes review”)
- Best (this is often called a “buyer intent” keyword where someone is looking for the best option within a product category so they can buy something. Like “best sunglasses for fly fishing”)
These keyword types reflect different intentions of the searcher (the person typing these keywords into Google). What is the searcher looking for?
Do they just want an answer to a question? (A “question” keyword.)
Or are they looking to buy a product or a service? Are they looking for the “best” product in a certain category?
Are they looking for a “review” of a particular product or service?
Or do they want to compare one product “versus” another product.
How can this feature help a blogger?
The option to filter the keywords by these different keyword types allows bloggers to focus on writing either informational content (question keywords) or “buyer intent” content.
The buyer intent content is where the person is actively searching the internet looking for a product or service to fit their needs and/or solve a problem.
Your articles focusing on “best”, “review” and “comparison” can help them find the solution to their problem.
And since people pay to have their problems solved, you as the blogger can make money.
You can make money through affiliate marketing (getting a commission recommending someone else’s product or service), or even making the product or doing the service yourself.
There are massive opportunities to make money on the internet but first you need people to see your articles.
You need traffic to your website, and writing a good article focused on a keyword can help bring that traffic from the search engines.
Filtering by Competition level

The keywords within the keyword library are all have a perceived competition score between 0 and 30. The lower the number means the lower the competition, so greater the chance of your site ranking.
If you have a brand-new site, or if your existing site doesn’t have much domain authority, then you may want to start by going for the really low competition keywords.
RankIQ gives you a drop-down filter to choose between keywords with difficulty scores between 0-20, 21-25, and 26-30.
Filtering Keywords by “Estimated Time to Rank”

This is an interesting feature of RankIQ.
With each keyword in their keyword library they have an “Estimated Time to Rank” metric.
This is an estimated time on how long it will take your well-written article to rank in the top Google results.
They categorize the keywords into “Ultra Fast”, “Very Fast”, “Fast” and “Average”.
One of the main reasons new bloggers quit is because it takes time to see any results from their hard work.
At a regular job you work and get the money from those efforts on your next pay day. But with blogging, you have to put a lot of work in and you don’t know when or if you’ll make any money.
You could use this “Estimated Time to Rank” feature to try and achieve rankings and results faster.
Filter Keywords by estimated “Visits per Year”

This filtering option allows you to select keywords based on how many readers the RankIQ team estimates a well-crafted article on this keyword would get in a year.
Other SEO tools usually use a “Monthly Search Volume” tool that estimated how many times per month a keyword phrase is searched for in Google. So, an individual keyword’s search volume.
RankIQ does it differently.
They estimate how many visitors your ARTICLE would get in a year.
The Estimate: An article I wrote last year based on a RankIQ report had an estimated number of visits per year as between 1,200 and 2,400.
The Reality: my article got slightly more at 3,000 clicks from Google.
This is pretty close to the estimate.
The Estimate: Yet, another article I wrote based on a RankIQ keyword report had an estimate of between 9,200 and 10,400 visits per year.
The Reality: my article has had 3,700 clicks from Google in the last 12 months.
This is about 1/3 of RankIQ’s estimated visits per year.
All in all, I don’t have enough data to say how accurate this metric of “estimated visits per year is.”
Filter OUT Keywords (Keywords to exclude)

RankIQ also gives you the chance to narrow the results by eliminating some keywords from the list of displayed keywords.
For instance, if you are a party-planner and want to search for any keyword phrase that has the word “plans” in it, you put that into the “Search KWs” field. But you notice something. You notice that a lot of the keyword phrases it comes up with are about “DIY plans for ____”.
You don’t want to write about DIY plans for building a garden shed or anything like that.
And instead of having to scan the entire list trying to ignore these “DIY” keywords, you can simply use the “Exclude Keywords” filter.
In this example you’d type “DIY” into the “Exclude KWs” field. This will get rid of any keyword phrases with “DIY” in it, just leaving other options that have the keyword “plans” in it.
How this can help a blogger
This feature of being able to exclude certain keywords helps a blogger narrow down their list of target keywords to ones that are best suited to their audience and their website.
It saves time. Less time searching for a great keyword, and more time to write.
Searching the entire Keyword Library database (and not just one niche)
You do NOT have to choose a specific niche from the drop-down menu before using the above filtering options.
This allows you to search for keywords in the ENTIRE keyword library and not just in your selected niche.

In the photo above you can see I’ve left the “Select a Niche” drop down menu blank.
And then I can still use all the filtering options to look for keywords.
In this example I’ve typed the word “fish” into the “Search KWs” field.
So it will go through its whole keyword database and return all the results that include the word “fish” in the keyword.
The resulting keyword list may have results related to the fishing niche, fish aquarium niche, or even the food niche.
I use this method of searching the entire keyword library a lot.
Part of the reason I search the entire keyword library is because sometimes you’ll find a keyword phrase that is related to your niche, but the RankIQ team has put it a different category.
For instance, lets say you’re in the sunglasses niche, but you discover that the keyword “best eco friendly sunglasses” is categorized into the “Eco friendly” niche and not the sunglasses niche.
If you didn’t search the entire keyword library, you never would have found that little gem of a keyword. (This is an example I made up…not directly from RankIQ. But hopefully it gives you the picture.)
Sorting through the keyword results

Once you’ve filtered the keywords to narrow in on appropriate keywords, you can sort the results.
RankIQ sorts the results alphabetically by default, but you can also sort them by competition level, Visits per year and Time to Rank.
I like this feature. If I want to write an article about something that I hope to rank really fast, I’ll sort by the Time to Rank feature.
What are the drawbacks to RankIQ’s Keyword Library
The most obvious drawback of RankIQ’s curated list of low competition keywords is that all RankIQ subscribers have access to this same list of keywords.
And if a couple hundred RankIQ subscribers are in the same niche, choosing the same keywords, then there will be more websites competing for the same keywords.
I don’t know how often this happens. It isn’t public knowledge which blogger is a RankIQ subscriber and who isn’t.
But it stands to reason that if other RankIQ subscribers are in your niche and seeing the same list of pre-selected keywords, then some of them will write articles focusing on the same keywords as you.
Thank you for checking out this article on how to use RankIQ for keyword research.
I hope I’ve been able to answer some of the questions you had about this topic.
Do you want to start using RankIQ for your blog?
If you want to see the ways I use RankIQ, you can click here for my article about the 3 main ways I use RankIQ. (Including how I use it along with ChatGPT.)


I’ve compiled the list of niches in RankIQ.
Click here to see if your niche is in there.
Thank you.
Tim from LearnAlongWithMe.com
Tim worked in construction for a few years before going to university. Then he worked in a pharmacy for 10 years and now works as a full-time writer and online publisher. He has experience in several different, far-reaching lines of work.
“I sincerely hope you find the articles helpful and informative.”
Tim from LearnAlongWithMe.com