The High Volume Keyword Conundrum
If you own a website, you consistently look for traffic. And there thousands of ways to develop traffic.
When we work with clients, we are typically look at traffic development from a natural search first perspective. So we are looking for the right set of keywords that will drive traffic to the site. We look high and low, and end up with a list that ranges from very broad terms, like “electronics” to very granular terms like”buy a 46 inch tv with a blue remote”. The first word, “electronics” has a HUGE search volume (In March 2009, Google recorded 45, 500,000 queries for “electronics.) Conversely, “buy a 46 inch tv with a blue remote” has search volume that is too low to be measured. So which word would you rather have great search positioning for?
Well, the obvious answer is “electronics”, but I want to share an anecdote with you. At a client’s direction, we put a huge effort into getting prominent placement for the highest volume keyword in their category. (It has a search volume of approximately 1 million in the average month.) We did, in our humble estimation, a terrific job getting our client from #41 to #3 in Google rankings for that word. The net result is that the client was thrilled. It was an obvious keyword, and it definitely has branding value. But from a results perspective, we’ve been less than thrilled. The word has definitely generated traffic (about 10K visitors per month) but the revenue generated from that word was pretty low. In fact, words that had 15% of the volume were generating more revenue.
Why doesn’t search volume always equate to revenue volume? It is simple, actually. Higher volume keywords are much broader in intent. To go back to our “electronics” example, it is almost impossible to discern the intent of the searcher when they type “electronics” into their favorite search engine. They could be searching for electronics parts, electronics schools, electronics experts, consumer electronics, information about electronics design, or any of a million other things that are associated with the query. The salient point here is that although a word is high-volume, it may not express enough intent to help you generate revenue. If you are #1 for an incredibly high volume keyword, it stands to reason that only a small portion of that swarm will be interested in your products or service. In some respects, it is, as they say, like trying to drink out of a firehose. You do get a drink, but there is a lot of wasted water, too.
Now, our smaller volume keyword “buy a 46 inch tv with a blue remote” has a really small search volume, but I can practically guarantee if you have a 46 inch TV with a blue remote available, this searcher is going to buy it! But you can’t generate enough volume from all of these very specific queries. That is a problem. Unlike a firehose, this is like trying to drink out of a straw the size of a human hair. Sure, you can get a drink, but never enough to satisfy.
So what do you do? Do you target the high volume words and get all wet? Or do you target the low volume words that are high-intent, and die from lack of water? The answer truly lies in the middle. From electronics to our blue remote exampls, there are thousands and thousands of words in between that have varying levels of search volume and intent. The best way to insure that you get all that you want to drink is to engage across all of those keywords to create a portfolio of high volume and high intent keywords that help you get the right visitor, but also the right number of the right visitor.
Don’t be blinded by the sex appeal of high rankings for high-volume keywords. They might be great for your branding, but they won’t always fill up the coffers.