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Keyword strategy for low-volume non-established terms

by Tom Arne Danielsen
3 replies
Hi.

I am writing here to hopefully get input on how to go about SEO for low-volume search words, in an application area with very little established terminology. How does one go about keyword research here? At least in a semi-scientific manner.


We are currently in the process of ramping up our web strategy, including SEO.
We have had some freelance consultants do SEO and keyword research for us, but the results always has low or vague relevance.

The message I have been getting in the past is that SEO for the long-tail keywords I am looking for is not smart, due to the low traffic. But we have a high-priced product, so we can justify investing in low-volume relevant keywords.


Prior to the latest analysis I outsourced I made a table of three dimensions. In an attempt to understand possible long-tail keywords. Use-cases, technologies, and context. Use-cases are similar to the vague results we get from the SEO analysis, mixed with some good-old-fashion biased assumptions.

Simplified example:
Use-case: Polish
Context: After car-wash
Technology: Car

Here I would care about the use case, but only in combination with context of technology. By itself, traffic from use-case alone is of low relevance as it can relate to a myriad of other things.

Out of the ~900 resulting long-tail words from my matrix, apparently I could only get data from Google on 2... And that is perhaps not a solid foundation to start building a content cluster strategy on...

Anyone has experience from a similar journey, that are willing to share?
#keyword #lowvolume #nonestablished #strategy #terms
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    I think you are overthinking this. If they are truly that low volume, they are probably also extremely low competition. Just target those phrases and do basic keyword optimization. You won't need links, you won't really need to do a whole lot at all. You'll probably rank quite well for those obscure phrases with little effort and certainly will not have to worry about building a "content cluster" around them.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kurt
    Originally Posted by Tom Arne Danielsen View Post

    Hi.

    I am writing here to hopefully get input on how to go about SEO for low-volume search words, in an application area with very little established terminology. How does one go about keyword research here? At least in a semi-scientific manner.


    We are currently in the process of ramping up our web strategy, including SEO.
    We have had some freelance consultants do SEO and keyword research for us, but the results always has low or vague relevance.

    The message I have been getting in the past is that SEO for the long-tail keywords I am looking for is not smart, due to the low traffic. But we have a high-priced product, so we can justify investing in low-volume relevant keywords.


    Prior to the latest analysis I outsourced I made a table of three dimensions. In an attempt to understand possible long-tail keywords. Use-cases, technologies, and context. Use-cases are similar to the vague results we get from the SEO analysis, mixed with some good-old-fashion biased assumptions.

    Simplified example:
    Use-case: Polish
    Context: After car-wash
    Technology: Car

    Here I would care about the use case, but only in combination with context of technology. By itself, traffic from use-case alone is of low relevance as it can relate to a myriad of other things.

    Out of the ~900 resulting long-tail words from my matrix, apparently I could only get data from Google on 2... And that is perhaps not a solid foundation to start building a content cluster strategy on...

    Anyone has experience from a similar journey, that are willing to share?
    I would probably set up accounts at Adwords and Bing and run some tests. In this specific example, I would probably make a campaign with every keyword I could find and think of and see if ALL of them can generate any traffic. If so, you can divide and eliminate the losers.

    You can probably find out everything you need to know in a week. If you get traffic, optimize for the keywords that are worth the effort for an SEO campaign. If not, there are marketing strategies other than SEO to explore.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tom Arne Danielsen
    Thank you Dave and Kurt for the input, very helpful. I had not thought about the alternative of using ads to get this sort information.

    Kurt, the reason for the cluster strategy is not only SEO. But I agree in what you point out.
    Since this is an application area with unestablished terminology we see clustering as a potential way of leading the way in establishing these terms. Because this is a field we expect to see growth in, thus also web searches (subset of big-data/digitization) And the cluster pilar is optimized for our term. The satellite pages are the assumed problems people are looking to get answers to, and we would like to tell them that what you are looking at now is actually a part of a larger concept called "blablablah"

    I agree that these are likely low-competition words and not hard to do SEO for. The few pages we have made rank high immediately. But having hundreds of potential angles to cover in blog-posts, I want to at least make sure that we don't spend tons of resources on topics that has absolutely no traffic.
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