The Keyword Nobody Searches For

Volume is the wrong first question

Keyword tools lead with volume because it is the number they have.

So the natural approach is to sort by it and work down, which puts the broadest terms at the top.

Those are also the terms where the searcher is least likely to be about to buy anything, and where competition is heaviest.

Which means the default method points a small business at exactly the terms it cannot win and would not benefit from winning.

What intent looks like

• A place name attached.
• Cost, price, or quote in the phrase.
• Near me, or an area.
• A specific problem rather than a category.
• Urgency: emergency, same day, tonight.
• A brand or model being named.

Each of those narrows the audience and raises the proportion who want to hire somebody. A phrase containing a town, a price word, and a specific problem might have eleven searches a month and convert better than anything else on your site.

The arithmetic that settles it

Since this can be worked out rather than argued about.

Four thousand searches, of which you might reach the first page for one in fifty attempts, at a click rate of a few per cent, and a conversion rate near zero because the searcher was reading.

Twenty searches, where you can plausibly rank first, at a high click rate, with a conversion rate that might be one in five.

The second produces work and the first produces a chart.

Do that calculation on the two or three terms somebody is proposing to you, since it takes two minutes and frequently reverses the recommendation.

A worked example

A business was advised to target a broad category term with several thousand monthly searches.

Eighteen months of effort produced a page on the third page of results and no enquiries.

Looking at what had actually produced work, three enquiries had come from a phrase combining their town, a specific fault, and the word cost.

That phrase had a reported volume of under thirty a month, which is why nobody had suggested it.

They wrote four pages in that shape, one per common fault, each naming the area and giving a price range.

Those four now produce more enquiries than everything else on the site combined.

Reported volume is unreliable at the bottom

Which is worth knowing, since it makes these terms look worse than they are.

Tools group similar phrases and round small numbers, so a term reported at ten a month may represent several variations totalling considerably more.

Anything below about fifty is reported roughly and sometimes as zero when it is not.

So the long specific phrases are systematically undercounted by the tools people use to evaluate them.

Your own search console is the better source, since it reports what people actually typed to reach you, including phrases no tool would have suggested.

Read that list rather than a keyword tool for anything specific.

Where the good terms come from

And it is not usually a tool.

Your search console, which shows the real phrases already bringing people.

Your enquiry messages and call notes, in the customer's own words.

The questions you answer repeatedly, phrased as they ask them.

And the searches that produced nothing on your own site, which tell you what people expected to find.

All four give you phrases grounded in what customers actually say, which is where the intent lives.

One page per intent, not per phrase

A structural point that prevents the obvious mistake.

Ten variations of the same question are one page, not ten, and building ten produces pages competing with each other.

Write the page to answer the question thoroughly, using the natural variations within it, and it will pick up the variants without separate pages.

Which is why four pages worked in the example rather than forty.

Group the phrases by what the person wants, and write one page per group.

Some volume is worth having

Since the argument has a limit.

A term with two searches a month cannot support a page, however good the intent.

Somewhere around twenty or thirty is the point below which the effort stops making sense for most businesses, unless the job is worth a great deal.

For a trade where a single job is worth thousands, that threshold drops considerably, which is why this is a per-business calculation.

Work out what one job is worth and how many enquiries it takes, and the threshold falls out of that.

Check what already ranks before writing

A step that saves the effort being wasted, and it takes two minutes per term.

Search the phrase and look at what occupies the first page: if it is four national sites and a directory, a new page from a local business is unlikely to displace them.

If it is thin pages, forum discussions, or nothing that answers the question properly, that is an opening.

Also look at whether the results are answering the question you thought they were, since a phrase can mean something different from what you assumed.

Doing that before writing is the difference between a page with a reasonable chance and one written on hope.

The counter-case

Broad terms have a role.

Recognition matters, and appearing for a category term builds familiarity even when the click does not convert.

Larger businesses genuinely can win those terms, and for them the volume is worth having.

And a business with no traffic at all sometimes needs the broad page to have anything ranking at all.

Read your search console rather than a keyword tool, judge terms by intent, and write one page per question rather than per phrase.

What to do

1. Open your search console query list.
2. Find the phrases that already convert.
3. Look for place, price, and problem words.
4. Ignore reported volume below fifty.
5. Group phrases by what is wanted.
6. Write one page per group.
7. Include a price range on each.

Step two is where the answer already is, since your own data contains the phrases that produced actual work and no tool will ever suggest them.

The version of this for a category nobody knows exists is covered in advertising a trade nobody searches for.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.