Low Search Volume Keywords Have Value

Today I’m talking about keywords with (seemingly) no search volume and why you should go after them.

Most of the time when I have conversations with people about keywords they are focused on short-tail keywords.

Short-tail keywords are attractive for their search volume, but most of them lack clarity and have a lot of ambiguity.

Most companies have no business ranking for short-tail keywords because they can’t fulfill the majority of the intentions behind those searching.

Take a look at this graphic, for example:

According to WordStream, the majority of search engine traffic to websites actually comes from long-tail keywords.

And while you can do keyword research to collect keywords and eventually generate good content to fulfill the long-tail intentions, your keyword research is always based on past search history, not the present or the future.

Between 16% and 20% of all annual Google searches are new.

You can’t do research on keywords that people haven’t searched for.

And the data often won’t show you keywords with low volume (generally less than 10 searchers per month).

But, there are often hundreds or thousands of those keywords within any given topic that seem like they aren’t being searched for.

So while you won’t find evidence of “how to make dog food at home for a shitzu,” if you believe that there are indeed shitzu owners that could want to make dog food at home, then make sure to help them with content designed for them.