author: Robbie Richards

How to Find High-Value Keyword Opportunities Using Subfolder Analysis

One of the biggest challenges in keyword research is cutting through the noise to find the most high-value opportunities. In this article, we'll explore how using subfolder analysis can help you do just that. Whether you're running an affiliate website, local service company, e-commerce store, or even a SaaS business, this approach can be applied to any type of business.

Using SEMrush to Illustrate the Keyword Research Process

To illustrate the keyword research process, we'll be using SEMrush in this article. While you can replicate these steps in other popular tools like Ahrefs, we recommend trying out SEMrush with their 30-day free trial.

Local Service Business Model

Let's start with the local service business model. We'll be using the Dolman Law Group website as an example, but keep in mind that this strategy can be applied to any type of local service business.

Hover over the main navigation to see which service drop-downs are most important. Typically, local service businesses will have their most valuable content housed under one of these drop-downs.
Click through to a service page to see where it's housed in the URL. In this case, we can see that all of the service pages are conveniently housed off of the "legal services" directory.
Copy the URL including the subfolder and paste it into the SEMrush SEO Toolkit. Make sure to select "subfolders" from the drop-down.
Click the pages report to see all of the pages or URLs in that specific subfolder that are driving the most organic traffic to the website.
Identify high-value keyword opportunities by examining the keywords associated with each page. Look for keywords that show a high degree of intent and could potentially drive leads and opportunities for your business.

E-commerce Stores

The most valuable keywords for e-commerce stores are typically related to different product names or categories. Let's take a look at Traffic Safety Store as an example.

Hover over the links in the left navigation to see how the products are organized. While they may not have a main products folder, you can see that all of the categories of products are nested under a main subfolder.
Copy the subfolder URL related to the product category that you're interested in and paste it into the SEMrush SEO Toolkit. Make sure to select "subfolders" from the drop-down.
Click the positions tab to see which pages are driving the most organic traffic within that directory. Look for high-value keywords and potentially product page opportunities.

Affiliate Websites

As an affiliate promoting different products, it's important to examine other affiliate sites in your niche to see what's driving the most traffic. Let's use Wirecutter as an example.

Identify where their "best of" type content is housed. This will give you an idea of what's driving the most traffic and which subfolders to focus on.
Use SEMrush to examine the specific subfolders related to those high-value keywords and identify potential product page opportunities.

How to Use SEMrush to Find High-Value Affiliate-Based Keywords

If you have an affiliate website promoting different coffee-related products, you might be wondering which keywords are most valuable to your business. Fortunately, with SEMrush, you can easily discover high-value opportunities by analyzing your competitors and applying various filters to select the most relevant keywords. Here's how you can use SEMrush to find high-value affiliate-based keywords:

Analyze Competitors

A good place to start is by looking at other affiliate coffee sites in your niche to see what's bringing the most traffic. Alternatively, you can analyze larger affiliate players like Wirecutter to see where they're housing all of their best-of-type content. For instance, the Wirecutter Reviews subfolder contains all their best affiliate-based review content.

Drill Down With Subfolder Analysis

Once you've identified the subfolder that contains high-value content for your niche, you can drill down further by filtering out and only pulling in the keywords that are related to coffee. In addition to subfolder analysis, you can layer on different keyword modifiers to help filter your search results further. For instance, you can include keyword containing "coffee" or other secondary keyword variations that describe your niche.

Apply Filters

After you've applied your keyword modifiers, you can apply some minimum volume filters and intent filters to only pull in the most relevant and high-value opportunities. SEMrush even gives you a keyword difficulty filter ranging from very hard to very easy. If you're just starting out, you might want to start with relatively low competition keyword opportunities that are easier to rank for.

Look for High-Value Opportunities

As you scroll down the list of keywords, look for those that are specific to your niche and have relatively low competition. For instance, you might find keywords like "best coffee grinder," "burr coffee grinder," or "bonavita coffee maker." These are great starting points for building out high-value affiliate-based content on your website.

Analyze Your Competitor's Features

If you're working on the keyword strategy for a SaaS website in the CRM space, you could enter a competitor like Copper CRM into SEMrush. Then, look for subfolders containing all their individual features pages. By clicking through to these features pages, you can find more opportunities for high-value keywords specific to your niche.

With SEMrush, you can easily find high-value affiliate-based keywords that can help drive traffic and revenue to your website. By analyzing your competitors and filtering your search results, you can discover a goldmine of potential opportunities tailored to your niche.

How to Find High-Value Keyword Opportunities with Subfolder Analysis

Subfolder analysis is a powerful technique that can help you find high-value keyword opportunities for your website. In this article, we will show you how to use subfolder analysis to identify keywords that you can target to improve your organic traffic and boost your conversions.

Step 1: Gather Data Using Organic Research Report

The first step in subfolder analysis is to gather data from your organic research report. You'll need to identify subfolders that contain related content and grab their features' URL. Once you have the URL, you can drop it back into the organic research report and scroll down on the positions here or the top pages. This will help you to identify the top-performing pages and look at things like CRM task management, pipeline management software, and email tracking.

Step 2: Identify Relevant Topics and Build Relevant Feature-Based Pages on Your Site

Once you have identified the top-performing pages, you can start to look at the different types of topics that you could potentially build out relevant feature-based pages on your site. These could include CRM task management, pipeline management software, email tracking, and more. By building feature-based pages on your site, you can attract more traffic and drive more conversions.

Bonus Tactic: Applying the Subfolder Analysis Approach to Finding High-Value Existing Keyword Opportunities on Your Own Site

One bonus tactic that you can use is to apply this same subfolder analysis approach to finding high-value existing keyword opportunities on your own site. Specifically, you can filter out all of the keywords you already have ranking in the top positions in the organic research report.

Step 3: Filter the Keywords You Already Have Ranking

You can filter out all of the keywords that you already have ranking in the top say four to fifteen positions (bottom of page one top of page two) or even a shorter filter like four to ten. This will help you to identify the highest value opportunities that you can work on to improve your rankings.

Step 4: Identify Pages or Topics to Optimize and Move Higher

Once you have identified the pages or topics that have room for improvement, you can start to optimize and move them higher. For example, a truck accident lawyer may already be on the first page but could still move higher. By optimizing this page, they can drive a lot more traffic to their site and potentially gain more conversions.

Scaling the Strategy

If you want to scale this strategy across a number of competitors, you can use the SEMrush Keyword Gap tool. You can collect subfolders for your competitors and drop them into the tool. This will show you all of the keywords, your competitors have ranking in their high-value subfolders that your website is currently missing. You can then cherry-pick all those untapped opportunities and scale this process across a number of different sites.

InUsing subfolder analysis is a great way to cut through the noise and identify the most high-value keyword opportunities for your business. by examining how other businesses organize their content, you can quickly identify which subfolders to focus on and potentially uncover valuable product page opportunities. with semrush and other similar tools, the research process becomes much simpler and more efficient.
, by using subfolder analysis, you can cut through all the noise and drill into only the most high-value keyword opportunities for your business. Whether you're working with a local service company, an affiliate website, or an e-commerce business, these tactics can help you improve your rankings, attract more traffic, and drive more conversions.