How do I find out what low-volume keywords are best to target?
-
Since many of our products and services are purpose-built for a niche community, I find that many of the keywords I am researching are all low-volume. Data on the Keyword Difficulty Tool show '0' under Bing Search Volume (exact match). I know what my competitors are targeting based on their title tags and web content, but I'm not sure if they did their keyword research homework, so I don't want to assume.
Is there any other way to determine which keywords I should be targeting?
-
Hi There - all superb answers so far - thanks guys! Can you give an example of any of your keywords? I have seen some long tail keywords be ultra high competitive, and others not. I have also seen some "long tail" with very low search volume but are only short 2-3 word phrases. There are transactional and information long tails. A little more specifics would help with some suggestions
-
over time, try to use them in blog posts titles without getting junky and spammy. If you have ever tried to go through Yext local SEO providers and google for the local listing brand + add business search, you will notice that Yext has done a nice job of having a landing page for these and I would suspect these are not very high volume keywords at all.
Do use ubersuggest and keyword planner a lot and also never underestimate the instant search choices when typed into google search bar or chrome. This is about the best and cheapest way to go on these research affairs. Also, checkout yahoo answers and twitter for those phrases, you can get a good idea of what people ask, even if you have a bunch of 0s and 10s coming from google numbers. this will be a nice real world confirmation especially if you see your competitors using it.
one last way, do exact match searches for those keyphrases and see what is the competition like, who is ranking for them and how well those pages are built, or if they have lots of comments, shares, or other social signals.
tedious i know, but hey, this is the core SEO, tedious research and analysis for a solid base, and then move on this base to create the content and code that should fare well over time and various devices.
-
This really isn't a direct answer, but it is how I approach the problem.
The difficulty with long-tail keywords is that there are SO MANY OF THEM. It is impossible to target all of them.
Building specific landing pages for each of them would be really time consuming if done properly with content and would make a very spammy site if done quickly.
So, what I do is draw upon my knowledge of the products or topics that I am targeting and write the following types of content.
-
The questions that people most frequently ask.
-
The things that they don't ask but need to know to be succesful
-
The things that would surprise them - like misconceptions, extremes and WTFs.
If you have a lot of #1 content on your site it will pull in a lot of these long tail keywords. These pages should be substantive in length and detailed in information. That will put a lot of diverse words on the page that will match many long tail queries. These will pull in traffic.
Content in the #2 and #3 category, if written with substantive length and detail, will also pull in a lot of long tail... but in addition, these are the types of pages that people will link to, share and recommend. They are the astonishment topics that people enjoy and share. In general, these are some of the most successful pages on my websites. My site is mostly factual and serious topics... but I get tons of traffic on these types of topics through links on reddit, stumbleupon, cracked, FB, etc.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Keywords
i have found proper keywords for my site. The site is www.anavasis.gr what is the proper way to have them in my site? Make articles in my site and link them from the homepage like: www.anavasis.gr/keyword-article and put all those links in the footer of my homepage? Which is the best way? thanks in advance
Keyword Research | | anavasis0 -
Keyword ranking by word order
If we have a keyword with 2 words like "SSL Audit". Will it rank in the same position the other way "Audit SSL" ?
Keyword Research | | Cistrust.com0 -
How to finalize the keywords for SEO?
Hi, I use the following method for keyword research: Create a long raw list of keywords. Use Google AdWords Keyword tool to find monthly searches. Find raw competition. Find direct competition (via allinanchor: search operator) Calculate KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) Calculate KOI (Keyword Opportunity Index) Is there any other (better) way to execute the keyword research? Or is finalizing/selecting the keywords only on the basis of monthly searches sufficient? In short, how to select the best keywords from a long list? Thanks & Regards
Keyword Research | | IM_Learner0 -
SEO beginner- How to decide what keyword to go after?
I started a website called Think and Grow Entrepreneur. I'm not sure where to start with Keywords and which ones to go after. Should I input the same keywords over and over my blog to rank in those or should I look at every post as a single entity and try to rank different keywords in each blog. Ideally I would like to rank for the keyword Entrepreneur, but there are already very powerful companies with the same keyword. How should I go about this situation? I appreciate any feedback. Thanks!
Keyword Research | | johnmoon60 -
What makes a highly competitive keyword anyway?
Hello guys, so I'm still wet behind the ears and am currently reading SEO an Hour a Day, as well as going through the Moz tutorial. But I do have a question that's been confusing me a bit. I've been doing keyword research here and there and I will get a "Highly Competitive" keyword (61%) at times. So then I try to go through each of the top 10 pages to see the anchors that they've used and how many backlinks there are to that page. A lot of the times the page with have 0 backlinks and a very low page authority (like 1) but it will still rank in 2, or 3. So what exactly makes it competitive? I know I must be missing something super simple here! Maybe I'm not accurately assessing the anchor/backlinks to that specific keyword. I use backlinkwatch, opensite explorer and the keyword difficulty report. Thanks guys!
Keyword Research | | seochump0 -
Help finding some decent keywords
Anyone care to help a SEO Newbie find a couple of key words that would be easier to rank for for my website that provides kayak fishing information? mysite: yakangler.com The key words that I've identified are as follows: best kayak
Keyword Research | | mr_w
fishing from a kayak
fishing kayak review
fishing kayaks
kayak and fishing
kayak fishing
kayak for fishing
kayak reviews
kayak rigging
kayak weight limit
kayaks fishing
kayaks for fishing But I'm worried I'm missing the point, I don't see hardly any traffic from most of these. I've really tried to rank for "kayak fishing" but seem to be totally lost in the Google Panda abyss. Any advice on a different word or strategy would be greatly appreciated!0 -
Ok so i've done all my keyword research and have a good list of keywords, now what do I do???
Ok so i've done all my keyword research and have a good list of keywords and phrases, now what do I do???
Keyword Research | | senreview0 -
How to get started with Keyword research
I am planning on a new self help site in German language. I almost died from a skin disease and had to learn how to heal myself. I now I teach that to anybody interested. I am tech savvy but internet marketing is new to me and I need some practical help in how to research my market niche and the best keywords. Thank you for your help, Guido
Keyword Research | | Guidowalter0