The World Wide Web was born in 1989. From the clunky beige boxes in CERN, Tim Berners-Lee’s memo ushered the world into a new realm of information.

Alongside the Web came ways to search for these hypertext documents (or web pages) and ways to optimise those pages. Search engine optimisation (SEO) was born. It soon became a multi-billion-dollar industry as businesses adopted tactics to gain exposure to web users.

A key component for both SEO strategy and the Web is the keyword. But as the Web has grown, the value and importance of keywords have changed. Businesses have spent millions of dollars on digital marketing optimising for highly competitive search terms. More monthly search volume means more potential customers, right?

However, high search volume keywords are competitive for a reason. What about keywords with low search volume? Even zero-volume keywords? Where do they figure in the equation?

Should you target low-search volume keywords instead?

This article is not an alchemical solution for your keyword strategy. Low search volume (LSV) keywords come with risks. The primary issue is in the name – they have a lower search volume. There are millions of keywords with less than 50 searches a month. With 5.35 billion internet users in 2024, that’s a minuscule figure.

Those keywords are also long-tail keywords. The longer the tail, the smaller the search volume. Low competition sounds enticing, but it takes a lot of skill to optimise for a five+ word search term without looking like you are keyword stuffing. Most content marketers wouldn’t bother going that far down, and that’s understandable.

What to do with low search volume keywords

But it’s not all high risk. SEO is about finding a balance between metrics like search query volume, trend, and keyword difficulty. In fact, there are many benefits to LSV keywords.

Highly relevant keywords

An indie bookshop is unlikely to rank for a search term like “books”. But “mystery books for ninth graders” might work better. A specific target audience is more likely to search for the long-tail variant than simply “books”.Specificity is crucial for every section of the sales funnel. Google prioritises relevance in its ranking algorithm, and customers want specific types of products or services. Keywords with low search volume fulfilling that desire are more likely to attract organic traffic and convert.

Less competition

There are always bigger competitors in a field (unless you’re one of them). That’s just the nature of business. They have more money and resources to go after the high-volume keywords.

But in doing so, they leave themselves open. A keyword research tool can find terms they still rank for but outside the top 10. There’s an SEO meme that says the best place to hide a dead body is the second page of Google. I’m not suggesting you revive any dead body (proverbial or otherwise), but you can certainly succeed where they have failed.

Think of low-competition keywords as Google search low-hanging fruit.

Great ROI

Say you’re in e-commerce and offer a special on Halloween hampers. They’re niche enough that competition should be low. You might not receive high volumes of users (and they won’t be regular as it’s seasonal). But your chances of ranking are much higher – which means more potential to convert the small number of high-quality users you get.

But say you don’t have time to write a piece of content about these hampers, and you outsource. Hampers start at £50 and go up to £100, and a couple of blog posts cost about £500. That’s 10 sales of the smaller hampers to cover the cost of the blog posts.

If your keywords have search volumes between 50-100, you’re aiming for a conversion rate between 5%-20%.

In short, ignore low or zero-search volume keywords at your peril!

LSV keywords make SEOs even better

The problem with high search volume keywords is that it’s really difficult to improve your rankings. That’s when efforts in link building play their part. But large competitors will usually have more backlinks, Google ads, bigger traffic potential, and better CTRs.

Low search volume keywords are different. There’s a certain buzz from finding a specific keyword in your niche with a low search volume. It’s even better if there’s no competition and you get the right users and traffic. On the flip side, if your content strategy doesn’t perform well for LSV keywords, you know you’ve missed something. Consider the following:

• Have you covered the right search intent?
• Are you conforming to E-A-T guidelines?
• Do you need more internal linking?
• Is there any keyword cannibalisation?
• Could your on-page user experience be better?

Refine, rinse, and repeat. That’s an SEO motto to live by.

SEO as a misunderstood art

In 2005, Ravi Sen wrote an article for the International Journal of Electronic Commerce called Optimal Search Engine Marketing Strategy. In the abstract, Sen described how search engine users trusted links “displayed in the editorial section of the search results page”. However, the sellers neither invested nor trusted the merits of SEO. He advised that they found SEO “more expensive than paid placements [PPC ads]” and “[produced] results that did not justify its cost, and [did not] consistently lead to high search-results rankings”.

The consensus was that SEO was a waste of money compared to ads. Although SEO has come a long way since then, some online vendors don’t see the merits of organic search marketing because “it’s not at the top of the page”.

Why LSV keywords are good for the Web

Keywords with low search volume have value for marketing, but what about the wider Web? After all, online marketing would be dead and buried without it.

Search engines are pyramids of links

Google search engine results pages (SERPs) have changed dramatically since 1998. Organic results reigned supreme until PPC ads took precedence at the top of the page. Then SERP features appeared in the mid-2010s, pushing organic results further down.

Google’s algorithm prioritises the most relevant pages, with 10 per SERP. That leaves 90 links propping up the first page in the top 100. In some ways, it’s like a pyramid of links. There is a larger percentage of “less relevant” links at the bottom and a small percentage of the most relevant ones at the top.

Helping the smaller sites

Everyone jostles for that #1 spot (or Position Zero if available), but hundreds of other links are below. The Web doesn’t discriminate on the content – search engines like Google and Bing do. So, should we ignore those 90+ links or give them a chance?

Perhaps it’s idealistic to think we can fight search engine hierarchies by going against the top 10 links, but it’d make for a more accessible Web. We don’t know for sure whether Google takes CTRs into account for ranking. If nothing else, it gives value to the people spending hours writing content who don’t see the clicks they deserve.

Answering questions to combat fake news and clickbait

A lot of long-tail keywords are questions because users need answers. That was what the Web and search engines were designed for. In an age of fake news and clickbait, everyone writing web content has a duty to answer those questions clearly and informatively.

That goes for headlines as well. We’ve all seen headlines like:

The 10 Wildest Reasons To Eat Avocado You’ll Never Believe!

This Woman Wore A Necklace In The Shower. What Happened Next Will Shock You!

Why I Spent £1 A Month On Underwear & It Changed My Life Forever

It’s all about enticing the user to read. But the power of the headlines often outweighs the strength of the article.

With billions of searches every day, you can’t afford to draw people in and not meet their expectations. It’s unfair and not what the Web was created for.

Keyword tools to help find LSV keywords

It’s great to talk about why they’re important, but where can you find these low-search volume and related keywords?

There are many SEO keyword planner tools – free and paid – to help you locate the right keywords for your site. Whatever your niche, tools like SEMrush, Answer the Public, SEO PowerSuite, ahrefs and Dashword are on hand to show you exactly what users are after.

Conclusion

Information is easier and faster to reach than ever before. Those beige boxes and modems we used for dial-up internet are now slimline slabs of silicon and Gorilla glass. Devices are smarter, and so are their users.

That’s why SEO experts advise targeting keywords with low search volume. They offer more relevance to searchers, provide ways of beating competitors with ROI-rich content, and improve the skills and performance of marketers.

But for the Web as a whole, LSV keyword phrases help fight against content creation to deceive users. They allow content writers to answer those burning questions. You can show appreciation for the time people have spent by clicking on their links and reading their content. After all, low volume doesn’t mean low quality.

For further help with your keyword performance, check out Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report. It gives you a detailed breakdown of your keyword performance and identifies immediate actions you can take to improve your website.

The report is available to all Adzooma users. Try the basic version for free to get a taste of what this report can offer. Not an Adzooma user? Sign up for free.