NOTE: This post has more to do about audience building than SEO. However, the same principles apply either way, and itʼs important for you to understand this during your niche selection process.
If youʼre currently doing niche research, trying to decide which niche you want your site to target, hereʼs something you might want to consider.
Should you go low competition high search volume keyword targeted?
What does going high search volume keyword targeted mean? It means diving one step deeper AFTER you select your niche.
When youʼre going high search volume keyword -targeted, youʼre choosing your target AUDIENCE.
An audience is any small subset of people within your niche.
Hereʼs an example
Instead of just saying: Oh, Iʼm going to target the nutrition niche with my site…
You would instead go one step deeper and target something like a nutrition blog for moms who want the best, healthiest foods for their families.
Instead of just saying: Oh, Iʼm going to build a site around productivity hacks…
You would instead go one step deeper and target something like a productivity blog for college students who want to get the most out of their college experience – both in and outside of the classroom.
Instead of just saying: Oh, Iʼm going to build a parenting blog…
You would instead go one step deeper and build a parenting blog focused just on dads.
Why do low competition high search volume keyword targeted?
The reason you would do this is to differentiate your blog from the sea of others out there. By zeroing in on who youʼre targeting, you can more easily build a loyal audience of people.
Think about it, if youʼre a college student, are you going to be more inclined to read a general productivity blog or an high search volume keyword-targeted productivity blog built SOLELY for college students?
By going high search volume keyword -targeted, itʼs easier to stand out from the crowd and build an audience of loyal readers.
As an SEO, you must do this carefully if you decide to go this route.
When you go high search volume keyword-targeted, youʼre cutting out a large portion of people who donʼt fit into the category of your target audience. For example, if you build a nutrition site for moms, youʼre cutting out everyone else who isnʼt a mom. You donʼt want to go high search volume keyword-targeted in a niche thatʼs already tiny.
As an SEO strategist, the best way to make this work profitably is to do in a vertical thatʼs really large. Verticals like personal finance, health, and nutrition, marketing, careers.
Tackle big industries with a unique twist
The most profitable way to use the “high search volume keyword-targeted” strategy is to find big industries, and think about how you can differentiate yourself by targeting a site dedicated to a unique audience.
In the examples I gave above these were nutrition, productivity, and
parenting. These 3 are all huge industries.
Trying to build a general nutrition site targeted toward everybody, and talking about everything related to nutrition is a huge task. One that would require a large team of writers to cover the large breadth of content in that niche.
But by targeting just moms who want the best, healthiest foods for their families, youʼre going high search volume keyword-targeted while still working in a huge vertical and having a lot of room to grow a large audience.
Here are some examples:
#1. WELLNESS MAMA
Hereʼs the link to their site: https://wellnessmama.com
Wellness Mama is a huge nutrition blog. However, they donʼt just target anybody and everybody interested in nutrition.
They target just moms.They do a great job in identifying their target audience in their about page:
And by doing so, theyʼve become the go-to resource for all the moms interested in nutrition and wellness for themselves and their families.
Are they losing a ton of traffic by targeting only moms?
Maybe, yes. Men wouldnʼt really be loyal readers of this site. All their content and messaging is toward mothers.
But because theyʼre targeting such a huge industry, nutrition, theyʼre still able to drive a ton of traffic – over 4 million readers per month.
Thatʼs very difficult to do if youʼre just another “general” site about nutrition. Email marketing and list building is a whole other beast that I dive into in a different post. But it becomes much easier to build a loyal email list of buyers when you have a targeted audience.
#2. COLLEGE INFO GEEK
Hereʼs the link to their site: https://collegeinfogeek.com/
College Info Geek is a productivity and self-improvement blog just for college students.
And because they were able to zero in on their target audience (college students), they were able to build a giant, targeted email list of 150,000 email subscribers.
Both Wellness Mama and College Info Geek arenʼt the biggest sites in their industries.
Remember these are giant industries – health & nutrition for Wellness Mama and productivity & self-improvement for College Info Geek.
By going high search volume keyword-targeted, they reduced a little bit of their potential readership in exchange for something extremely valuable – a loyal, TARGETED AUDIENCE.
Wellness Mama has 1.2 email subscribers and over 4 million visitors per month.
Again, that might be lower than other giant websites in their niche. However, their readers are all extremely targeted. Theyʼre mothers interested in nutrition.
In the case of College Info Geek, theyʼre college students who want to improve themselves and be more productive.
Having a targeted audience makes it so much easier to build an email list, sell products, promote affiliate products, and attract high-paying advertisers which leads us to example #3.
#3. FATHERLY
Hereʼs the link to their website: https://www.fatherly.com
Fatherly is a parenting blog thatʼs targeted at just fathers.
There are a ton of parenting blogs online. But most of them are directed at mothers. But Fatherly decided itʼs time to build a parenting blog at dads, and executed their vision perfectly.
By building an extremely targeted audience of just fathers, theyʼve built an audience of readers that advertisers are willing to throw their money at.
So they must be getting tens of millions of visitors right? Wrong.
Thatʼs tiny compared to other parenting blogs in the space.
So why are advertisers spending $5.2 million to advertise on their site?
Itʼs because theyʼve built an extremely targeted following of readers. By advertising on their site, brands can be guaranteed that theyʼre reaching the exact audience that they want to reach.
So should you go high search volume keyword?
Going high search volume keyword-targeted isnʼt for everybody. Because our goal is to build a massive site with SEO, you have to execute it right.
The industry you target has to be big enough, and you need to choose an audience that would make sense AND makes it easier for you to grow your site. For some sites, it wonʼt make sense.
For example, it wouldnʼt make sense to go high search volume keyword-targeted if youʼre trying to build a review site about the best backpacks. Itʼs already a tiny niche, and you donʼt need to further target an audience within that.
But consider a blog like RANKXL.COM, my site in the online marketing industry. Online marketing is huge. If I built a general site about internet marketing? RankXL would be nowhere right now. Nobody would care about my site.
WHY?
Because itʼs just too general and broad of a topic. If one day I wrote about Facebook ads, then the next day SEO, then the next day content marketing, then the next day how to build iPhone apps… it just wouldnʼt work.
It wouldnʼt be targeted at all, and nobody would become a loyal reader of my site.
They might like an article or two, but the theme of my site isnʼt something they would follow and subscribe to.
On the other hand, my site is targeted toward SEOs. But I go even further. While I talk about SEO, itʼs targeted toward people who are interested in doing SEO for their own online businesses. Iʼm not targeting people who work in agencies, Iʼm not teaching agency owners, Iʼm not teaching SASS companies on how to get leads.
Yes, some of these people still read my content, but my main focus is on people interested in SEO for building out their own content businesses.
In my case, the audience targeting was differentiated through intent and goal. My content is for everybody – all ages, all genders, all races, all anything. But differentiation is the REASON WHY they want to learn what I teach.
Conclusion
This lesson was to make you think about more options during your niche research. Itʼs NOT something that you MUST DO. Itʼs something that you should consider and think about.
If youʼve avoided niches like finance or marketing or health simply
because they seemed too competitive try segments that industry into a tiny audience.
You might be surprised by what you come up with.