We’ve all been there. We think we’ve found the perfect keyword; it is incredibly topical to our business and aligns with what we are hearing from our customers. But when we check in an SEO tool, we are quickly disheartened to see that the monthly search volume is zero or near zero.
But before you give up on this potential keyword, know that it can make sense to target zero search volume keywords, especially if you are in a highly technical industry or one where the keyword difficulty for other keywords is much more difficult.
Over the years, I’ve driven hundreds of thousands of visitors to my websites from zero-volume keywords. In particular, when I built a website in the developer space, a significant portion of our traffic came from zero-volume keywords, given that visitors were most often searching with supporting long-tail search queries.
I like zero-volume keywords because they are often accessible to rank for, missed by competitors with less knowledge of the space, and can be high intent and valuable.
What is a Zero Search Volume Keyword
A zero search volume keyword shows no search volume in a keyword research tool like Positional, Ahrefs, or Semrush. In Google Ads, this same keyword might be labeled as low search volume.
As it turns out, “zero search volume” is a zero search volume keyword. Now, that’s a little crazy, considering you’ve likely landed on this webpage from a search engine.
Source: Positional’s Keyword Research toolset.
While a keyword research toolset might show a keyword as having zero search volume, that doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t getting any searches.
There might be several reasons the keyword isn’t showing up in a keyword research tool. For example, if the keyword is very new or just starting to be searched, keyword research tools likely won’t have data for that specific keyword yet.
Also, we need to remember how keyword research tools get their data, typically from clickstream providers that track users' search results via browser extensions, such as a free horoscope Chrome extension. SEO tools will then try to predict or extrapolate out search volumes based on this sample population of searchers.
If you are in a niche or technical market, your customers are likely not as well represented in the sample population from which keyword research tools extrapolate. For example, engineers are notoriously underrepresented in clickstream datasets.
Suppose your potential readers search with long-tail phrases because you are highly technical. More data for a keyword research tool might be needed to detect the search volume.
My advice to our customers is to trust your gut.
For example, if you repeatedly hear the same question from your customers or during the sales process, that is a good topic to write about, even if a keyword research tool shows zero volume.
One thing to keep in mind is that if you are searching within a keyword research toolset using very long-tail phrases, you might just be missing out on what is a more popular, shorter keyword within the topic space. More on that later.
Why I Love Zero Volume Keywords
The word is getting out on zero-volume keywords, and many more SEOs are discussing the opportunity here. While we certainly don’t want to dedicate our entire editorial calendar to zero-volume keywords, reserving a chuck of content creation capacity and budget for content targeting zero-volume keywords makes a lot of sense.
There are a few reasons why I love zero search volume keywords.
Other SEOs Miss Them
It takes more knowledge and expertise within a topic space to even think of a zero-volume keyword.
Frankly, an SEO agency or consultant that just doesn’t know your industry or customers as well as you do isn’t going to be able to identify a zero-volume keyword through traditional keyword research processes, for example, by looking at the keywords competitive websites in the industry are ranking for.
In short, it takes a lot more work and intimate knowledge of a topic space to know which zero-volume keywords might be getting searched. You can use this knowledge to your advantage and generate traffic from keywords your competitors will likely fail to spot.
You can get a little creative with tooling, though. For example, if you are looking for zero search volume keywords, you might want to use Google’s People Also Ask SERP feature. You could also look at Google’s autocomplete suggestions for ideas.
If you look at the autocomplete keywords for a keyword like “keyword research,” you might see some interesting suggestions:
For example, “keyword research tool for youtube” is allegedly getting zero searches per month, but this seems like a pretty good keyword to target.
They Are Easier to Rank for
If you are just getting started in SEO, and you're in a competitive industry as I was when I first started in SEO, you might need to focus on lower search volume keywords initially.
For example, for a startup just starting in the customer relationship management (CRM) industry, targeting a keyword like “CRM software” would be incredibly difficult given its keyword difficulty or competition:
However, if we can get a little more specific, we might be able to find some keywords that are more relevant out of the gate.
For example, “CRM software for B2B” is a zero search volume keyword, but likely still pretty valuable for a startup who is just getting started with SEO:
Or, for example, “CRM software for charities,” while it isn’t technically zero search volume, it is close and might be a good one if you are targeting this very specific type of buyer with your software:
You might have noticed that these more specific keywords are much easier to rank for and categorize when examining the competition score for each of them.
When you are first getting started with SEO, I’d suggest picking some specific keywords like this, even if they have lower search volumes. This will allow you to start driving traffic to your website faster, help build topical authority, and eventually allow us to target more competitive head terms.
They Can Be Valuable and High Converting
Zero search volume keywords can be incredibly valuable from a conversion standpoint.
Remember, not all traffic is worth the same. In some cases, you might be much better off targeting low volume keywords with very high purchase intent versus targeting very high volume keywords that are two or three stages removed from actually getting to that conversion.
I was chatting with a SaaS startup the other day, and they mentioned to me that they created comparison web pages, or alternative pages, for all of their competitors, both large and small. Their goal was to own the bottom of the funnel from a keyword perspective.
Most, if not all, of these keywords were coming up with zero search volume in the keyword research tools they were using, but it didn’t matter because even 10-20 visitors a month to one of these very high-intent webpages was worth a lot to the company given they sell six-figure enterprise contracts.
If we are going to allocate budget to creating content for low or zero search volume keywords, I would start first with topics that are very close to that final conversion.
Being First on the Scene Helps Over the Long-Term
Did you know that 15% of all Google searches have never been searched before?
Suppose you are in a very new topic, such as artificial intelligence. In that case, the keywords you want to target are very new and getting missed by traditional keyword research tools due to the time delay in processing data.
Or you might want to bet that while a specific keyword isn’t getting that much search attention today, that might change dramatically over the next few years.
In SEO, being the first on the scene can be helpful. I’ll give you an example. At my first company, we reviewed and compared different financial products. Whenever we saw an interesting new financial product launch, our team would scramble to evaluate the product quickly and then publish a review.
While no one was searching for reviews of a new product on day 1, we were making the bet that they would be over the next few years as the rest of the company’s go-to-market rollout happened.
If we were the first website to target a particular keyword, we noticed that over the long term, Google seemed to give our website preference even as many other websites started targeting the same keyword. We also noticed that by being the first on the scene, our web pages would often accumulate backlinks.
In short, if you are in an emerging industry with emerging keywords, you can bet that these keywords will become more popular over time. By targeting them early, you’ll notice that your web pages will continue to rank highly even as competition becomes more fierce.
One Quick Gotcha
When conducting keyword research, you should double-check that the keyword in question is the right keyword to optimize.
There are two types of long-tail keywords: supporting and topical.
A supporting long-tail keyword is a keyword that a webpage for different primary keyword will serve. In contrast, a topical long-tail keyword is unique, a primary keyword in its own right, and will be served with a more specific webpage targeted to it directly.
When you spot a zero search volume keyword, you’ll want to check to see if it is either a primary keyword and that we should target it with a webpage directly or if that keyword is supporting another primary keyword and that we should instead optimize for it within a large piece of content.
I’ll give you an example. For “long-tail keywords strategies and tips,” you’ll see that this is a zero search volume keyword:
However, if you go a bit broader, for example, “long-tail keywords,” we actually see quite a bit of search volume here, 2.4k monthly searches per month as of this writing:
The thing is that the first keyword I presented, “long-tail keywords strategies and tips,” which is getting zero search volume, is actually a supporting long-tail keyword to “long-tail keywords.”
You'll notice that the search results are substantially identical if you check the search results for these two keywords. That would indicate that the same webpage should serve these two keywords, but “long tail keywords” is a much better primary keyword to optimize for within those critical elements of your webpage, such as your H1, URL slug, and in your introduction.
You can use a keyword clustering tool to do this grouping and splitting analysis for you, or you can do it manually by comparing the search results of two different keywords.
I guess what I’m getting at is you want to make sure that your zero search volume keyword is actually a zero search volume primary keyword and not just a supporting long-tail keyword for a much more popular head term.
Final Thoughts
Know that just because a keyword research tool says that a keyword has zero search volume doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t still use it.
There are many reasons a keyword might have zero search volume. For example, it might be a very new topic, or the searchers you want to target are just not as well represented in the sample population of searchers that tools use to extrapolate predicted volumes.
These keywords can be incredibly easy to target, and very valuable from a conversion point of view, and if you target them early, you’ll likely see sustained rankings even as these keywords become more popular over time.
But before you target that zero search volume keyword with a new webpage on your site, make sure that it is, in fact, a topical long-tail keyword and not a supporting keyword to a much more popular primary keyword.
