When it comes to building sustainable, profitable online income and impact, small businesses need a good SEO strategy every bit as much as big businesses.
As you explore and unpack the various SEO principles that you can leverage to build and grow your online presence, keyword research data is where all quality SEO strategies begins - specifically with exploring the data around keyword search volume and keyword difficulty.
A good keyword search volume to aim for will be determined by several different factors, including:
- Competition
- Relevance
- Your digital marketing goals
- Your business
- Your industry
- Your website’s domain authority
With such a wide range of possibilities and influencing factors, you want to ensure that you’re not exclusively focused on the keyword search volume for a single page or post, but rather, considering your keyword volume as one part of a a holistic SEO strategy that supports your overall organic marketing ecosystem.
As an SEO consultant for small businesses, my passion is empowering digital entrepreneurs to translate your overall business values and dreams to actionable online tactics that will bring engaged customers to your digital doorstep in ways that help them become happy, long-term members of your community.
So I’m going to get right to the heart of it with a hard truth about good keyword volumes. And if you only absorb one SEO tip from this article, let it be this:
The most important aspect of keyword research is keyword difficulty, not keyword search volume.
Yes, you read that right. When it comes to keyword research data, keyword difficulty is a far more important factor than keyword search volume.
Why?
As the old SEO joke goes - it's because the best place to bury a dead body is on the second page of Google results.
Because nobody goes to the second page of Google search results.
So the name of the game is getting on page 1 and, ideally, in the 1-3 slot on page 1. And whether or not you'll rank has far more to do with keyword difficulty than keyword search volume.
Leveraging Holistic Keyword Research To Determine Your Organic Content Strategy
There are three primary pieces of data to focus on when conducting keyword research.
- The keyword or query (aka, the words folks are typing into Google)
- Keyword difficulty (aka, how hard it would be to be in the top 10 results on a scale of 0 to 100 with 0 being easiest, 100 being hardest)
- Keyword volume (aka, how many times on average people are searching for these keywords or phrases each month, averaged from the data collected about the previous 12 months)
When it comes to thinking about keyword search volume, we always have to examine it through the lens of how hard it is going to be to rank for that term.
If you want to maximize the impact of your organic SEO strategy, you don’t want to begin with or exclusively focus on the keywords that are going to be the hardest to rank for.
Low volume is often considered less than 250 per month, but lower volumes can be your best target for both visibility and increasing your revenue if the query strongly matches the search intent of your ideal client or customer and the keyword difficulty is also low, which gives you the opportunity to rank more quickly.
Said another way: it's better to have 50 of your perfect-fit potential clients on your digital doorstep than 150 folks who are lukewarm to your offers.
Getting really specific with the queries you're researching and prioritizing low keyword difficulty keywords over high search volume keywords will serve your overarching organic content strategy well.
A Good Keyword Search Volume Calculator
My keyword research tool of choice is Ahrefs because of their robust data set and UX.
Even if you don’t want or need the granularity of their professional (aka paid for) version, their totally free version gives you an excellent starting point to do research for both keyword volume and keyword competition.
It's a great free way to put your finger on the pulse of some of those keywords that you are trying to find.
Going back to keyword competition, remember that the more specific the question that you are asking, the fewer people are going to be asking it.
So if I were to enter the term “keyword research,” that is going to give me a much higher search result. Aka it will show significantly more volume.
However, it's going to be extremely hard to rank for it.
So if I type in something more specific like “What is a good keyword search volume?” I’ll have fewer results, but it's going to be a lot easier to rank.
It also makes creating an article or video around a keyword much easier because you can meet your audience with a more specific answer to their specific questions.
As I’m writing this, “what is a good keyword search volume” has a keyword volume of 80.
Now, is it worth it for me to tackle something that only has a volume of 80 right now?
Well… are you one of the 80 who asked the question?
You tell me.
Is it worth it to you to have this answer?
I hope so - and that's precisely why I created this post.
At the end of the day, we have to remember as business owners that when we are doing keyword research or anything around the SEO strategies, it is always in service of reaching another human.
It is always in service of connecting with someone else who has a question.
Furthermore, think about this...
Me writing a post or uploading a video on keyword search volume does not mean that only 80 people a month are going to get this information.
Here’s why...
The Long-Tail Effects Of Strategically Selecting Low Difficulty Keywords
Do you know the movie Galaxy Quest?
If you've never seen it, I highly recommend checking it out.
The cast is incredible. The script is hilarious. It's a parody that is a quality movie in its own right - a tough act - and they nail it.
Spoilers if you've not seen this 90's gem, but - at the end of the film - the good guys are battling the bad guys and good guy Captain Taggart flies his ship through a minefield in a seemingly evasive maneuver.
But as he does, he instructs the pilot to fly closer to the mines. Close enough to activate them.
The ship activates a few mines. Then those mines' activation creates a ripple effect throughout the mine field until the ship dragging not just the few mines they had activated, but all of the chain-reaction activated mines as well.
Taggert drags this hidden payload behind his ship. Then, in a climactic moment, turns his ship around, flying full force at his enemy while delivering the line: “What you fail to realize is that I am dragging mines.”
They fling the mines into the enemy ship's engines to win the battle.
Boom.
The same thing can happen with profitable SEO keywords.
Both in my own SEO business and in the SEO clients I help, aiming for a keyword with low difficulty and search volume per month means any post that has success will bring related queries along for the ride.
You can rank for different variations that, even as an expert in your field, you could have no idea they existed.
Or if you're more into Titanic, the iceberg analogy works too:
You can see 10%, but there's 90% under the surface.
In other words, if you are meeting search intent by coming to people with information that is quality and helpful, then what you can do is bring other keywords that you didn't even know were there along and help answer people’s other questions too.
However, if you ignore keyword difficulty and focus exclusively on volume, it won't matter. Because no one will see what you shared.
You have to start small with keyword difficulty - even if that means having lower keyword search volumes, particularly with newer websites that don't yet have contextual backlinks.
What Keyword Search Volumes Should You Target?
If you have a newer website or a website with a single-digit domain authority, aim to find a keyword difficulty that is under 10 in the Ahrefs system.
If you have a more established website with lots of content but this is your first time layering in an SEO strategy, aim for keywords with a difficulty lower than 25 in Ahrefs.
I wouldn't go higher than that because what happens is a snowball effect. Either for the good or the bad. And your overall domain authority (AKA, how much Google trusts you and starts sending industry inquiries your direction) will be affected.
Remember, Google doesn’t care if your business succeeds. It cares if you’re delivering content that people engage with or come back to regularly.
So help out Google and Google will help you out.
Think of it this way…
If you found this article because you searched a particular query around “keyword search volume” and you were helped by the info I shared, know that from my vantage point, I chose to write it knowing only 80 people a month were going to see it.
When I did the keyword research based on my experience as a solopreneur using only free, organic research methods, I had a sense that probably more of you would be here.
But it didn't mean that if I could only help 80 people, it wasn't worth it to create this piece.
If it helped you - the individual person reading this now - then I am beyond thrilled that I created it. And if you can think of ways to be empathetic and helpful in your content, you never know who you're going to help… or how they may choose to engage with you.
Want To Learn More About SEO...For Free?
SEO is difficult and I'm on a mission to help other entrepreneurs and small business owners master it so they can spend less time generating inbound leads and more time engaged in the work they love most.
There's a lot more than just understanding keyword search volume that goes into getting your website found in Google, but it's hard to know what you're aiming for if you aren't sure of where you're starting.
Knowing where your organic traffic numbers are starting from and identifying ways you can improve what already exists is the perfect first step if you're new to SEO.
To help you do just that, I have a free 3-part mini course called the DIY Website Audit.
In it, I share free SEO tools to support your organic SEO marketing journey from wherever you’re starting, then offering help towards growing your website’s traffic in ways that uplift your business and life goals.
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Share your name and email address below and I’ll send you the course immediately so you can discover more ways to improve your website's visibility in organic search.