"Blood in the Water" SEO Technique

I want to build an SEO keyword research tool based on a strategy called “Blood in the Water.”

Core idea: instead of traditional keyword research, find large authoritative websites that rank for many keywords with weak, under-optimized individual pages. These are “accidental rankings.”

Example: a DR 70 domain ranks #3 for a keyword, but that specific ranking URL has 0–3 referring domains, poor keyword targeting, weak content, and few/no optimized backlinks. The page may rank mainly because the domain itself is strong.

The hypothesis is:

If a generic page on a strong domain can rank without deliberately targeting a keyword, a purpose-built page may be able to outrank it.

Workflow

1. Find a weak SERP

Start with a seed keyword or niche.

Weakness signals:

forums/Reddit/UGC ranking
broad category pages ranking
pages with very few referring domains
keyword missing from title/H1
outdated/thin content
weak intent match

2. Find a “weak broad competitor”

Identify a domain that:

has strong overall authority, appears for many keywords in the niche, but whose individual ranking pages often have weak page-level SEO.

The opportunity appears when a strong domain ranks with weak individual pages.

3. Mine its organic rankings

Retrieve as many ranking keywords/pages as possible.

For each collect:

keyword
ranking URL
position
search volume
estimated traffic
KD if available
CPC
referring domains/backlinks to URL
domain DR/authority
title/H1
URL
search intent
SERP competitors

The competitor becomes our keyword database.

4. Detect accidental rankings

Find keywords where:

competitor ranks well, ranking URL has few referring domains, page isn't closely optimized for keyword, intent match is weak, other SERP results are also weak.

Bonus signals:

Reddit/forums/Quora in top results
old/thin pages
multiple low-link URLs ranking

5. Expand into clusters

When one opportunity is found, find adjacent opportunities:

product + review
alternatives
X vs Y
best [category]
[category] for [use case]
related products/entities
long-tail variants
other rankings from the same competitor

The goal is to find clusters, not isolated keywords.

6. Opportunity scoring

Create a transparent score from 0–100.

Positive factors:

meaningful search volume/traffic
commercial intent/CPC
competitor ranks top 10
ranking URL has few referring domains
poor title/H1 alignment
weak SERP results
large related keyword cluster

Negative factors:
many strong referring domains
SERP dominated by dedicated optimized pages
strong specialist sites
difficult intent
poor organic click opportunity

Do NOT rely only on KD.

The score must be explainable, e.g.:

Score: 86
+20: URL has 0 referring domains
+15: keyword absent from title
+10: forum in top 5
+12: 2,400 monthly searches
+15: commercial intent
+14: 12 related opportunities

LLMs may help with clustering, intent and classification, but core scoring should be deterministic and inspectable.

Output

Produce a table:

Then generate:

top keyword opportunities
keyword clusters
recommended pages to create

For each page:

primary keyword
supporting keywords
title
URL slug
intent
competitor to beat
why SERP looks weak
internal linking suggestions

Final Notes

Most important: this is NOT just a keyword difficulty tool. It should specifically discover:

keywords where authoritative domains rank using weak, under-optimized pages, then use those rankings to uncover entire clusters of unusually attractive SEO opportunities