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
-
German Keywords
Hi I wanted to check the volume of a keyword in German but unfortunately, it shows no data available.?
Keyword Research | | Raymonda
Is this actually possible to research German keywords with your tool?0 -
No SERPs contains my keyword phrase
Hi! I have a question that is the best described by an concrete example: When I use Google UK and search for a keyword "wood floor" why the top 100 search results show pages for "wood flooring" instead? Is it because that keyword is simply more popular and pages are in general better optimized for "flooring"?
Keyword Research | | KAN-Malmo1 -
Potential Keyword Cannibalisation
Hi, I am concerned that our website's rankings are currently being affected by KW cannibalisation. We don't rank too badly for our target keywords but they could, of course, be better, especially as the niche is very competitive! One thing that is bothering me is that our internal pages do not rank well for these KWs and instead it is the homepage appearing in the rankings. This is despite the fact that the internal pages are optimised for the different keywords. Basically the HP is also targeting these same keywords and I was wondering if this is affecting our rankings overall? I am not keen to risk changing the homepage in case our rankings suffer massively and we drop out of Google completely. If anyone could offer some advice then that would be great. Is it simply a case of trying to get external links pointing to these internal pages? Would internal linking to them prove effective as well? Cheers Tom
Keyword Research | | National-Homebuyers1 -
How to do a comprehensive SEO Keyword Research
Hi, What are the best tools and techniques to do a comprehensive keyword research on all the relevant search engines? There are times when there are no stats available on the Google keyword planner tool, in that case what do you suggest? Thanks
Keyword Research | | LaythDajani0 -
How do I find what keywords competitors are ranking for?
I am just starting out doing come SEO research. I seem to remember a tool that would tell me which words my competitors are ranking for and what kind of traffic they are getting. Thanks, Lisa
Keyword Research | | lisarein0 -
Keyword difficulty report - am I stupid??
Hi, Im a programmer but SEO newbie and I am trying out Moz Pro. To be honest I feel really disheartened right now, I find the world of SEO very difficult and full of conflicting information. Anyway, I am trying to get my head around the Keyword difficulty tool in order to determine what keyword I want to go after and what I would need to do in order to outrank the competitors. The website with the highest PA, most external links to the domain (4000 versus around 80-90), the most linking root domain and the best on page optimasations ranks nr 5. The website that ranks 1 is the only one with good social signals. All of the websites has the keyword in the page title. What am I missing? This makes no sense to me. Is this Keyword tool reliable? VERY grateful for any help from you guys.. /Emma
Keyword Research | | EmmaGrey0 -
Ranking for more keywords - Noob question
Hi, I've noticed recently that our site is ranking for a fraction of the keywords that our competitors are ranking for. In terms of increasing the number of keyword rankings per page would it simply be a case of adding optimised copy to each page? Thanks, Dan
Keyword Research | | Sparkstone0 -
Which is best for keywords; plurals vs singular
Hello! This is my first question so I hope it will be a good one and everyone finds it useful; I have found many conflicting views and need some clarification. Question: When it comes to optimising for specific keywords, which is best; plurals or singular? Example: Should I optimise for 'conveyor' with medium competition and a larger local [exact] traffic volume, or go for 'conveyors' with a higher competition and a slightly smaller local [exact] volume of traffic? Obviously this example is a bit of no brainer as I would tend to sway towards the lower competition with a good volume of traffic to be more competitive, but when the terms are so closely linked, would it be wise to cover both grounds now and go for 'conveyors'? What is general consensus out there? Thanks in advance! Richard
Keyword Research | | BlandyDoes0