How do I do keyword research when search volume is unknown

[AndyKubrin]

Hi Mozzers!

I do a lot of work in niche areas, and one issue I often confront in keyword research is unknown search volume. That is, I'll be doing keyword research in Keyword Explorer or Gooogle Search Console, and for the most relevant keywords, I find either very low search volumes, null search volumes, or "Data not available."

How do I make good keyword planning decisions when I can't find good data for search volume?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Andy

[AndyKubrin]

Hi Zack,

Thank you, this is very helpful.

I gathered some keywords from the GSC queries section. But can you tell me how you added geo locations to the keywords, pluralization, and other types of basic variations to build out your initial list?

I appreciate your help.

Andy

[BartonInteractive]

Hi Andy,

We just went through this with a client. Here's a little bit of our experience, just in case this is useful.

• For a client's keyword research, we started by putting together keyword research seed lists based initially by going through their Google Search Console "queries". We gathered together those keywords, for each page, and added geo locations to the keywords, pluralization, and other types of basic variations to get to hundreds (or more) of keywords for each page. BUT yes, like you, most of these keywords in our initial seed lists wound up having "No data" for search volume.

• Fortunately, however, we also then  added in Moz ideas, using Moz Pro Keyword Explorer. This brought many  more suggestions in for each page, and while some were highly irrelevant, it did bring many ideas in that we had not thought of, which helped bolster our lists, and with very high search volume keyword ideas to boot.

Hope this helps!

Zack