Key­word research should lie at the heart of your on-page SEO strat­e­gy. How­ev­er, just because a key­word is pop­u­lar and gets lots of traf­fic does­n’t mean it’s worth pur­su­ing. There are more impor­tant fac­tors you should con­sid­er before set­tling on your choice of keywords.

It’s a well-known fact that key­words are essen­tial for SEO. They tell search engines about the con­tent of your web­site, and peo­ple use them to find prod­ucts and ser­vices on offer. It’s real­ly tempt­ing to go “all in” and tar­get high-com­pet­i­tive key­words. We see it often, par­tic­u­lar­ly in com­pa­nies that want quick SEO results.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the harsh real­i­ty is that going after high­ly com­pet­i­tive key­words with sub­stan­tial search vol­umes is a waste of time, espe­cial­ly if you have a rel­a­tive­ly new web­site with low domain authority.

When you tar­get key­words with high search vol­ume, you’ll spend all your time, mon­ey, and effort try­ing to rank on the first page of the search engine, but you might not get there any­time soon. Not to men­tion that those com­pet­i­tive key­words are often too broad and users that use them rarely end up pur­chas­ing prod­ucts or ser­vices they find.

Sure, if you rank for them suc­cess­ful­ly, you’ll def­i­nite­ly receive tons of traf­fic. But will that equate to more con­ver­sions and more mon­ey for your busi­ness? Prob­a­bly not.

You’ll most like­ly get bet­ter results if you go after small key­words or “low-hang­ing fruits.” You’ll get quick­er results, and once you get the ball rolling and start gen­er­at­ing traf­fic and rev­enue, you can tar­get slight­ly big­ger key­words until you’re ready to con­quer the “big guys.”

Why are keywords so fundamental to SEO?

Key­words are an inte­gral part of any SEO strat­e­gy for any busi­ness for two main rea­sons. First­ly, key­words tell Google what your busi­ness’s web­site con­tains when its bots analyse the main top­ic of par­tic­u­lar pages. But that does­n’t mean you have to repeat the exact search term as often as pos­si­ble – SEO has­n’t worked like that for a long time. Care­ful: this tac­tic may even harm your website.

Google cares about the top­ic and con­tent more than how many times a par­tic­u­lar key­word is repeat­ed on a page. You need to focus on cre­at­ing user-cen­tric con­tent that answers user intent.

Sec­ond­ly, key­words give us essen­tial clues about who our users are, their inter­ests, and what they search for. Key­word research tools such as Ahrefs Key­word Explor­er or Sem­Rush can give valu­able infor­ma­tion about what things your tar­get audi­ence is inter­est­ed in or what word­ing they use to find a par­tic­u­lar topic.

This infor­ma­tion can be help­ful when you want to know which top­ics to include in your con­tent plan or how to name a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct or ser­vice you’re about to launch.

Why you’re better off targeting low-competitive keywords?

It’s time to rethink your SEO strat­e­gy and tar­get low-com­pet­i­tive key­words with low search vol­ume. This may sound coun­ter­in­tu­itive, but it is one of the best key­word strate­gies – hear us out. Low-vol­ume key­words are usu­al­ly more spe­cif­ic search terms.

For exam­ple, let’s look at these three keywords:

Key­word 1: Shoes

Key­word 2: Red shoes

Key­word 3: Buy red run­ning shoes

Which of these key­words has the high­est search vol­ume? If you guessed “shoes,” you are correct.

Broad­er key­words tend to be searched for more, bring­ing a lot of traf­fic. The prob­lem is that there is usu­al­ly no clear intent behind that search. A per­son might search for “shoes” to explore the top­ic, see what it’s out there, look for dif­fer­ent types of shoes, see what’s cur­rent­ly trendy, or even learn the his­to­ry of shoes. Evi­dent­ly, it’s hard to guess from a sin­gle word.

Look at the last key­word: “Buy red run­ning shoes.” This key­word is more spe­cif­ic, the intent is straight­for­ward, and there are prob­a­bly few­er peo­ple search­ing for it. The peo­ple search­ing this term are look­ing to pur­chase red run­ning shoes.

If you decide to go after this key­word, your web­site traf­fic won’t be as sig­nif­i­cant as if you go for a broad­er option. But you’ll tar­get peo­ple who already know what they are look­ing for and have a clear goal in mind. They want to buy red run­ning shoes. It’s your job to con­vince them why they need to buy from you, but to do so, they need to see your result in the SERP.

Google pays a lot of atten­tion to what peo­ple are doing on your web­site. Do peo­ple get the infor­ma­tion they are look­ing for? Do they fin­ish a pur­chase? Or do they close your web­site and go else­where? Google will def­i­nite­ly con­sid­er this to eval­u­ate whether your web­site needs to go high­er on the search result page.

Instead of focus­ing sole­ly on search vol­ume, use phras­es with pur­chas­ing sig­nals in them. Don’t tar­get “red shoes,” tar­get “buy red shoes,” “red shoes free ship­ping,” or “red shoes for sale.” These key­words show the buy­er’s intent and are more like­ly to dri­ve sales and con­ver­sions for your web­site. These key­words are appar­ent tar­gets for e‑commerce land­ing pages and prod­uct pages.

Google changes with each algo­rithm update, but it will always be a search engine. Google’s pri­ma­ry goal will always be to pro­vide the most rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion to its users based on their search queries. Users will con­tin­ue to use key­words and phras­es when search­ing for some­thing. AI and voice search may change the terms peo­ple use, but key­word strat­e­gy will always be a sig­nif­i­cant part of SEO.

The benefits of targeting low search volume keywords

Tar­get­ing key­words with low search vol­ume will not only help you out­run your com­peti­tors and dri­ve search traf­fic to your web­site, but it can def­i­nite­ly improve your web­site’s con­ver­sion rate.

Here are some more ben­e­fits of tar­get­ing these keywords:

Key­words with low search vol­ume are incred­i­bly relevant. 

Key­words with low search vol­ume are typ­i­cal­ly long-tail key­words. The phras­es usu­al­ly con­sist of 3+ words and pro­vide more infor­ma­tion to the search engine. The more rel­e­vant the con­tent they land on is, the more like­ly it is for the users to convert.

Key­words with low search vol­ume can help build inter­est around a par­tic­u­lar topic.

These low-vol­ume key­words can help you iden­ti­fy what ques­tions peo­ple are ask­ing in the niche and allow you to be the first one to answer these questions.

Key­words with low search vol­ume can bring great ROI

Key­words with low search vol­ume bring lit­tle but rel­e­vant traf­fic to your web­site. Even the low­est vol­ume key­words can result in sales and improve the over­all con­ver­sion rate of your website.

Key­words with low search vol­ume can bring diversity. 

Yes, low-vol­ume key­words don’t have much traf­fic poten­tial, but these phras­es are rel­a­tive­ly easy to rank for. You can try to tar­get a wide vari­ety of low-vol­ume search phras­es with one piece of con­tent and mul­ti­ply­ing the traf­fic poten­tial of that content.

How to find the right keywords to target

To decide which key­words to tar­get, you need to go way back. Ask your­self, who is your tar­get audience?

For exam­ple, if you sell finan­cial soft­ware, ask your­self what kinds of peo­ple are inter­est­ed in the top­ic and who would buy your prod­uct. What are they look­ing for in a prod­uct like yours? What lan­guage do they speak? What advice can you give them to make their lives eas­i­er? Where can you find them online?

By find­ing answers to all these ques­tions, you will be able to find key­words that will bring you suc­cess. Don’t just rely on your intu­ition of what peo­ple are look­ing for, do your research so you can back your assump­tions with actu­al statistics.

Do you want to learn how to do key­word research the right way? 

Read “How to do key­word research.”

Not all key­words with low search vol­ume have the same poten­tial. You need to be selec­tive. Here are some things you can do to find the best key­words for your con­tent strategy.

Iden­ti­fy which are the “low-hang­ing fruits” in your niche.

When doing key­word research, focus on low-vol­ume search terms. Make a list of all search terms with search vol­ume between 0 and 100 per month, whilst keep­ing them rel­e­vant to your ser­vice or prod­uct. These are the low-hang­ing fruits.

In the SEO world, “low-hang­ing fruit” are called key­words that you believe you can rank for with lit­tle effort from your side. These key­words car­ry min­i­mal risk, and they’re worth includ­ing in your SEO strategy.

Here’s how you can iden­ti­fy the “low-hang­ing fruits.” Look for key­words that are:

• Extreme­ly rel­e­vant to your tar­get audience
• Show user intent to buy a prod­uct or service
• Show signs of infor­ma­tion­al user intent or are ques­tions that users search for
• Your com­peti­tors are not tar­get­ing these key­words yet

Tar­get low-vol­ume key­words with trans­ac­tion­al intent.

Find­ing and tar­get­ing key­words that have the poten­tial to bring peo­ple to your web­site who already have the inten­tion to buy your prod­uct is one of the best key­word strategies.

Key­words with trans­ac­tion­al intent often con­sist of terms such as:

“Best deals for….”

“Cheap­est…”

“Buy …”

“… for sale”

“Offer for …”

“Pur­chase …”

Peo­ple use these types of key­words when they have already done their research. They decid­ed to pur­chase a prod­uct and ser­vice, and they are sim­ply look­ing for the best option and the best price on the mar­ket to deter­mine where to buy from.

If you’re not already tar­get­ing trans­ac­tion­al key­words with your web­site, recon­sid­er it. These key­words may not bring the best traf­fic vol­ume, but they tar­get peo­ple who look for the best deal. Don’t miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be that for them.

Bring the user’s atten­tion to your busi­ness niche

Some key­words don’t have much search vol­ume because users don’t know what the terms mean or haven’t thought to use them before. This can usu­al­ly hap­pen if you offer prod­ucts or ser­vices in a rel­a­tive­ly small niche. If you sell inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts, it’s your job to edu­cate your users about the solu­tion you pro­vide to their problems.

You can do that by tar­get­ing infor­ma­tion­al key­words that relate to the issues your prod­uct or ser­vice is solv­ing. Tar­get “how to…” or “… solu­tion” keywords.

Cre­ate a sol­id con­tent strat­e­gy around edu­cat­ing your users about the solu­tions you can pro­vide. Add ded­i­cat­ed pages and an FAQs sec­tion; you can even include visu­al con­tent. Images and videos are great when you want to present sol­id information.

Tar­get a wide vari­ety of key­words with low search volume.

As men­tioned above, small key­words can quick­ly build up and increase the amount of traf­fic you receive. It’s sim­ple maths. Tar­get­ing five key­words with 20 search vol­ume is equal to tar­get­ing one key­word with 100 search volume.

You can eas­i­ly rank for sev­er­al key­words with a sin­gle piece of con­tent. Of course, these key­words need to be sim­i­lar. You can incor­po­rate sev­er­al syn­onyms and vari­a­tions of the main tar­get­ed key­word on your page, and this will increase your poten­tial for organ­ic traffic.

Try the Key­word Gold­en Ratio Method.

The Key­word Gold­en Ratio (KGR) is a well-known strat­e­gy in the SEO indus­try. It’s used for find­ing long-tail key­words with colos­sal potential.

The ratio is essen­tial­ly the num­ber of Google results with the par­tic­u­lar key­word in the title, divid­ed by the amount of month­ly search vol­ume. The search vol­ume must be below 250.

The Key­word Gold­er Ratio idea was first pre­sent­ed by the mar­ket­ing guru Doug Cun­ning­ham. He believes that if you use the Key­word Gold­en Ratio cor­rect­ly for your key­word, your arti­cle should rank in the top 10 results with­in days.

These are the rules he presents:

• If the KGR index is below 0.25, you should rank in the top 100 when Google index­es your page.
• If the KGR index is between 0.25 and 1, you can still quick­ly rank in the top 250.
• If the KGR index is greater than 1, the tar­get­ed key­word is very com­pet­i­tive and will be chal­leng­ing to rank.

Final thoughts

When won­der­ing what key­words to tar­get, always think of your tar­get audi­ence, what terms they use, and what they’re look­ing for.

It’s not just about rank­ing for any key­word out there. Tar­get­ing rel­e­vant and qual­i­ty key­words can bring bet­ter results to your busi­ness, increase the qual­i­ty of the traf­fic, and improve your web­site’s con­ver­sion rate.