Finding low-DR sites DOMINATING on Google

In this email, I’m going to reveal the workflow I’ve been using lately to find sites like this:

And this…

I’ll be using the travel niche in my walkthrough below, but the same process works in any niche.

Let’s jump in!

Step 1: Find low difficulty keywords

In ClearSERP (the best keyword research tool on the planet 😉), I do a keyword search for “best *”.

I set the result ordering to Difficulty > Lowest First, search volume to at least 100/mo, and keyword difficulty to at most 1.

This will show “best of” roundup keywords that get searched at least 100 times per month and are low difficulty (based on the backlinks ranking results have).

Step 2: Bulk analyze the keywords to find low authority sites

I selected the 100 top keywords from my search in step 1, and analyzed them to see the actual top 10 results for every keyword, including the authority of each ranking site.

From here, I picked the site with an authority of 10 ranking for “best areas to stay in paris first time” to use in step 3.

Step 3: Find more low difficulty keywords relevant to a specific domain

This is where the real magic is.

In the Domain Research mode in ClearSERP, I entered the domain I chose from step 2 (destinationdreamerdiaries .com), and kept the search volume and difficulty filters from before (min volume of 100, max difficulty of 1).

The results were keywords in the same niche as the destinationdreamerdiaries .com website. Not necessarily keywords it ranked for; but rather keywords that are highly relevant to it based on what it ranks for already.

This feature sets ClearSERP apart from every other keyword research tool. It’s the only tool that shows you relevant keywords based on a domain.

I analyzed those keywords, and then looked through the SERPs column and found lots of low authority sites in the travel niche.

Such as this site, which has a DR of 3.3 and gets over 17,000 monthly visitors (and growing) according to SimilarWeb:

And this site, which also gets over 17,000 monthly visitors and has a domain rating of just 6:

And this one, which gets 26,000 monthly visitors (though falling), with a DR of 8!

Those were just a few of many I found.

Why you want to find low authority sites like these

Three big reasons:

1. To find niches or sub-niches with low competition (sites with high traffic and low authority are good signs the niche isn’t too competitive, though this isn’t always the case!)

2. To find competitors you can beat. Do this in your own niche: find low authority sites, plug them into the Competitor Research mode on ClearSERP, and instantly see all their top keywords by traffic (which you can now target).

3. To study what these sites are doing differently than most. The fact that they’re ranking well despite the low authority is a great sign they’re doing something right in Google’s eyes.

Why these low authority sites are doing well (imo)

Looking through these low authority, high-ranking sites, I noticed a common theme:

They all appeared to be very authentic, with photos the site owner actually took rather than stock footage, and content that was written in a very personal way. Nothing appeared generic or AI-generated.

This observation is definitely not revolutionary or new. It’s what I’ve been seeing for successful, low authority sites ever since the 2023 HCU.

I should also mention here that I still see some obvious AI sites ranking still, but it’s becoming more and more rare.

Using the same workflow in a MUCH harder niche

I wouldn’t say travel is an easy niche. In fact, I think it’s on the harder end of the spectrum. But there are TONS of travel-related keywords, so it’s not too hard to find some that are easy.

So, as proof the process I shared above works in MUCH more difficult niches, I decided to find low authority sites in the “life insurance” niche, one of the toughest in the world (and with far fewer keywords available to target than in the travel niche).

It only took a couple minutes to find this life insurance niche site, which has an Ahrefs DR of 0 and gets and estimated 1,900 monthly visitors (according to SimilarWeb)!

That’s not a lot of traffic, but it doesn’t take much in high value niches like life insurance to make a decent income!

And here’s another one, in case you weren’t convinced:

2,100 monthly visitors, with a DR of just 6.

Pretty wild.

There are opportunities in every niche, and with ClearSERP, you can easily find them in minutes. Go try it out yourself!

Thanks for reading,

Ian