Araminta says: “Low-volume, high-ROI keywords typically have under 50 searches a month. But the people who are typing them up and researching them are purely indicating that they're ready to buy.

High-intent keywords often have lower competition, they're quite easy to rank for, and they can bring in a decent amount of leads sales customers compared to other types of keywords.”

Should keywords that have less than 50 searches per month actually be the initial focus? Or if a business is just getting established in terms of SEO, should they still be thinking of their core pillar keyword phrases that can potentially bring in a lot more traffic?

“It depends on the company's goal. If you're an established company, maybe you've already invested quite a bit into content. If you've got a pretty strong website, but are looking to get more results out of your content, more leads, more sales, and more business results, then go ahead and invest in low-volume, higher-ROI keywords.

If the website is relatively new, low authority domain, then I wouldn't start with those because it's going to take a while right to rank for anything. Maybe you could do a couple, because why not? You'll get them ranking eventually.

But I definitely do a wider range of keywords, if you're just starting out and the website is relatively new.”

What's your perspective on targeting zero-volume keywords?

“I love them as well. They’re similar to no-volume, high-ROI keywords. The only thing is, it can be harder to prioritize because a lot of keywords have zero volume. So it makes it a bit harder to prioritize which wants to go after.

I typically would go after a zero-volume keyword if I know if it comes up in quite a few places. If it comes up in Google suggests, as a related keyword, or it comes up in few tools, and if I really know that people are searching this up, maybe because I've heard it in sales calls or it's come up quite a few times, then I would definitely go after it. But if it's a zero-volume keyword where I'm not really sure, I might pause on it and decide on that later.”

If a client has a bit of SEO knowledge, and they say to you, ‘These keywords don't have any volume at all, why are you targeting them?’ How do you push back on that?

“That happens a lot and we ask, ‘Is your objective to get more traffic, or to get more business?’. Typically, they hire us to get more business, so we say, ‘We can focus on traffic and get you 500 more sessions a month, or we can get you more business, which one's more important to you?’. If the answer is business, then we'll say it's a no-brainer to go after the low-volume, high-ROI. If the goal is traffic, then we would say, ‘Okay, fine, let's go after the traffic one’. But that hasn't happened yet.

Is Google Suggest the primary online resource that you use to identify these opportunities?

“No, we use the same SEO tools as everyone else: Semrush, Ahrefs and Majestic. Typically, we start off by going through conversations with the sales and product teams to try and understand customer research and find keyword ideas.

We then go through transcripts of those conversations, which is how we put together a list of ideas. From there we put them through an SEO tool and see what comes up in terms of search volume. If it's very low, even zero, you might still go after it. But what's really important is to start it off with what we're hearing from customers or from the people who talk to customers.”

Is that a transcript between a salesperson and a prospective customer?

“It could be that or what we do is we interview the salespeople asking them questions about their target market. It's questions like, ‘Who are your best customers? Which customers are bringing the most amount of revenue? What are the pain points? What indicates that their pain point that you that the product really solves for this pain point?’

There's a lot of these questions that we can ask to get a good understanding of what does an ideal customer look like, what would they be searching for online and what would they be using Google for? Recording those conversations and transcripts is useful because then you can go over it word by word and look for any keywords in there.”

Is there an opportunity there to use AI to analyze the transcripts, and then perhaps generate keywords or potential keyword opportunities?

“We haven't used it, but it's definitely something that someone could try to do. I feel this part of the process is where content marketing issues are more of an art than a science, because this is where you need to put yourself in the shoes of a customer or prospect. What are they typing on Google? What are they searching for? What are the problems? What keeps them up at night? Can an AI really parse that through a recording? I don't know… maybe.

But this is where a human can do a good job by thinking deeply and being empathetic, putting yourself in the shoes of the customer. So far, we still do it ourselves. AI can maybe help with ideas, but I definitely wouldn't do it fully with AI at the moment.”

Do you try to get their perspectives on keywords that perhaps aren't actively being used in conversations at the moment that aren't actively being used on webpages by the business to identify opportunities that haven't been utilized?

“Yes, and sometimes we just straight up ask the salesperson, what are some words that you've heard people describe your product that aren't necessarily correct. That's really an interesting one because maybe your target market uses the word software and actually you're more of a web app, but the customer doesn't know that.

It's still worth going after the keyword even if you're not the actual product, or they use a different word to describe it, because someone typing it up that way could be a good customer.”

How do you know if keywords are likely then to have a high ROI?

“You never know 100%, but the way that we think about it is that each keyword that we go after is kind of a hypothesis, especially at the beginning, where we've got maybe four or five different low-volume, high-ROI keywords that we think could bring in a good amount of leads or sales. We'll start by targeting each one, and once you've done that for a few months, you start to see results.

Maybe people using the keyword software bring in really good results. That's really interesting. Then, we'll probably start looking at and targeting more software-related keywords.

When you're just starting out, it's kind of hypothesis testing, and then, as you get more data and more information, you can use that to be more targeted, and you can also know better what's going to work and what isn't.”

Could you use this data to perhaps even change your brand strapline as well. For instance, if you offer SEO software, is it a platform or a tool? I guess the answer is it's how your customers describe it.

“You need to know what keywords your customers will use. You can't be too protective of your messaging because ultimately, if a different word helps a customer or prospect understand your product better, why not use it?

We get this a lot in the payments industry where they don't want to use the words ‘embedded finance’, because that's not what they do. But we say to them, ‘I understand, but that's the word that your customers are using’. So it's still worth targeting that keyword. Then in the article we’ll explain that we don't exactly do embedded finance, we do this, but we can still help solve your problems, because we know someone typing in ‘embedded finance’, is also looking for what our client does.

There's an educational element here which is why we're content marketers, and why we'd like to target those keywords with content, because then you can really explain to the reader and take them through a journey of what it is that your product does.”

So talking about an educational element, perhaps there's an internal educational element here too where the SEO team take their findings from an exercise like this, and go to the brand team and try and encourage them to change the way that they go about doing things as well.

“If sales are doing really well in the business, maybe not. It's mostly the salespeople who are saying, ‘I don't know, the messaging, the positioning isn't resonating, it's not working’, then it doesn't make sense for an SEO to go to probably the sales team and the brand team and say, ‘Look, these are the words that people are using, maybe it makes sense to change that’.

But I think this is more of a positioning and a messaging exercise. So it's multiple different teams have to work together on this to really decide on what keywords and what phrases to use when communicating the product.”

You've talked a little bit about the conversations that you may have with salespeople. What about customer research directly? What would be your ideal way of doing this? Is it sufficient to have some kind of online survey that customers fill-in, or are you looking to have some kind of focus group and talk to customers directly?

“We don't do a lot of this because we work with B2B, high-ticket companies. So, typically, salespeople are really good at this. But if you can talk to customers directly, definitely emailing customers and prospects and setting up a call is a good place to start.

I'm a big fan of going to conferences and doing fun interviews. So you just go to conferences, chat to people, and ask the questions that you're trying to get answers to because that way, it's a bit more awkward to set up an interview with your prospects because it doesn't always make sense for them.

It's a mix of setting up interviews with people who agreed to do it, talking to people at conferences, and also surveys. I mean, if you can do that, why not? Sites like Reddit, Quora, or the typical stuff are also really good places for getting information.

I think you're always doing research; you're always interested in what people have been talking about things. That's a good mindset to have because then you pick things up like that.”

How often should you revisit the keywords that you're targeting? Because I would imagine that with low-volume keywords, the popularity of certain terms can change quite significantly as months go by. So how often do you review that?

“I would say, maybe two or three times a year, but it depends on how deep you're going when you're doing that keyword research. When we do it, it takes a long time and it's quite deep. We spend multiple hours interviewing the salespeople, and then one or two hours going through the recordings, and then one or two hours, then going through the SEOs tool, so that's quite in depth. If you're going to do it that way, maybe twice a year is enough.

If you're more surface level, maybe just doing it two or three times a year might be enough. It depends a bit on how often you're trying to publish content, how your capacity is, and if you run out of keywords. Obviously, that's a good indicator that it's time to do some more research.”

You talk about targeting keywords with in-depth content. What do you mean by that? And is it appropriate just to target one keyword phrase per page?

“Yeah, that's how we do it. Imagine you're targeting the keyword ‘accounting software for freelancers’. We would target that with an article and that article is an in-depth overview of whatever we think the person is looking for. It could be a list post, it could be focused on the product, could be focused on use cases, whatever it is.

We then go after just that one keyword; we don't go after multiple; our sole focus is to rank for that one. Eventually, it will rank for other keywords as well, and that's great. But the focus is that one keyword, to try and keep it simple and streamlined.

We also use a tool like Clearscope to ensure that we're getting the right keywords in place. But the focus is always on creating a great piece of content that will educate the person and hopefully help them take action. The Clearscope SEO stuff is just to make sure that we rank highly for that keyword.”

What's something that's seductive in terms of time, but ultimately counterproductive? What's something that SEO shouldn't be doing in 2024?

“I think it can take up a lot of time trying to get one article or one piece of content ranking for a lot of keywords because then you're having to add keywords in the article itself, and you end up making it really long or adding sections that are unnecessary.

If your focus is generating leads, sales, customers, and you want to go after just one keyword that will bring in those customers, then I would just go after that one keyword and avoid trying to optimize it for many others. If there's another keyword that you think would be interesting to go after, then create a separate piece of content. Don't try and use one to go after a lot, because it takes a lot of time, and I'm not sure if the ROI is there.”

Araminta Robertson is managing director of Mint Studios, and you can find her over at mintcopywritingstudios.com.