Keyword Research Question

Hi Warriors,

Ok, I've been polishing my keyword research skills and have been reading related threads here.

But I'm having trouble with my keyword research for a particular project and I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or these really are the results.

This is for an offline project and one of the niches I'm researching is nutrition coaches.

First, I go to Google's External Keyword Tool and get these results:

1. Nutrition coach -- 2900 monthly searches
2. Nutrition coaching -- not enough data

and everything else is not enough data either.

If you just go to Google and start typing in "nutrition coach" you'll see some suggestions that others have obviously been searching and are popular searches:

1. nutrition coaches
2. nutrition network
3. nutrition jobs
4. nutrition certification

...etc.

Google's External Keyword Tool says 'Not enough data" for the term "nutrition coach marketing" and returns phrases like "nutrition centers" and "nutrition jobs" or "personal fitness trainers", keywords people are obviously typing in but not the coaches themselves. and obviously, putting something like "marketing" next to the target market isn't working since no one is searching that specific term. More specific terms like "Florida nutrition coach" say "not enough data."

Ok, the next obvious step is to find groups or associations which nutrition coaches belong to. There IS a "Nutrition Coach Network" which is perfect. Other combinations of "nutrition coach association" or "nutrition coach network" returns unrelated results or results for individual nutrition coaches.

I'm just not getting the results I'd like. It looks like the nutrition coaching market isn't as well organized as say, the fitness training or personal training markets. It's easier to find groups and associations for them.

Am I missing anything here? I think I've done my homework here, but I just want to double-check with you all.

Obviously, this would be for me if I were targeting nutrition coaches.

If I had a nutrition coach as a client, that would be a bit different.

"Nutrition coach" is search 2900 times a month Other related results say "Not enough data." Grrr!

However, other terms are searched more frequently:

1. "Nutrition" -- 13,600,000 (obviously too broad)
2. "Health coach' -- 27,100 (seems like a better term than "nutrition coach")
3. "Nutrition advice" -- 3,600
4. "Nutrition professional" -- 4,400

This is just an example, but for those Warriors doing projects or research for clients in specific niches with results like this, I thought I'd bring it up.

Is this research sufficient? Am I missing something?

If I had a nutrition coach as a client, I'm not sure I'd know how to proceed. It doesn't seem like there are many searched terms which would be appropriate. "Nutrition" is too broad -- we're looking for people who specifically want help and a want a nutrition coach. "Health coach" seems like a better term. And if I do a geo-specific term, like "Florida health coach" or "West Palm Beach health coach", forget it.

Obviously, there are tons of ways to drive traffic and get business from a Web site, not just SEO. But keyword research is still vital and with a niche like this, I'm not sure how to proceed.

And there are lots of different niches which would be similar. If you have a client in a niche like this with this type of keyword research results, what would you do? Am I missing something? Do I need to do something else?

I have Keyword Elite, but haven't used it much. Other than giving me more results from all of the major search engines, I don't see how it would do much more.

Thanks,
Michelle