It’s so easy to find new keywords for large businesses. There is a vast ocean of broad search terms with high search volume just waiting to be targeted by your SEO and content marketing teams.
If you're in a niche business vertical, however, or you target a smaller audience, this situation is quite the opposite. Discovering what keywords to target can be like finding a needle in a haystack — nearly impossible!
In this guide, we’ll help you overcome this problem once and for all with a complete workflow for conducting niche keyword research where you will discover:
First, we need to start with some basics about these super specific keywords you wish to target.
When SEOs talk about niche keywords, they are typically referring to highly-specific phrases relating to a narrow industry.
One of the common characteristics of such keywords is low search volume. That’s the factor that deters many brands from considering those keywords as target keywords.
Because of their high relevance to a very specific buyer however, niche keywords offer a great opportunity to align a brand along their customer’s journey and connect with highly-targeted buyers.
Let's say a fashion brand is selling untucked shirts. It’s niche-specific, and its laser focus on a single product category affects the company’s potential to target broad phrases.
Now, they might still target those keywords, but I’m sure you’ll agree that doing so wouldn’t deliver any significant results for the brand.
Targeting niche keywords, or phrases relating to their specific industry, product and target audience, on the other hand, would.
Let’s use the company as an example to illustrate the process of finding the right target keyword to reach your audience — the niche keyword research.
A quick note before we begin. I’ve used our SEO platform in the walk-through. There are, however, plenty of free tools available to conduct similar research. A couple of my favorites are:
Recommended Reading: What Are the Best Keyword Research Tools?
seoClarity is the only SEO platform to provide users with the give you the ability to filter, slice, dice, and analyze data in a way that helps users find the key insights they seek. We now boast 30+ billion keywords and counting in the largest and freshest keyword dataset you'll find anywhere.
You know your industry better than anyone else. You know what products you’re going to sell, too. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean that you can find head terms easily.
Your product might be too niche to uncover any relevant phrases through traditional research methods. Or you might struggle to identify keywords that relate to your industry only and not the ones used in other verticals.
seoClarity’s Topic Explorer offers the option to research the industry, going beyond actual keywords.
Instead of trying to come up with specific phrases to target, you can start the research process by evaluating all phrases related to your industry.
In Topic Explorer, start with an industry search, and select your target industry. Below, I've selected to search the dataset for keywords about clothing.
The tool reports nearly 1.9 million terms and phrases directly related to this specific industry with a staggering total search volume.
Note: Search volume numbers are from Google's Keyword Planner. Google's numbers are a monthly search volume, usually updated between the 15th and 20th of the month with the previous month's data.
I can then filter this report in a variety of ways, such as by topic, by terms that trigger the answer box, and even keywords my competitors are targeting within my industry.
I will need this information to complete the next step.
Recommended Reading: How to Use Topic Explorer More Effectively: A Topic Cluster Tool
The platform reported 1.9 million keywords in the Clothing industry. Not all of them relate to my product, of course. I can select "shirts" from the filters in the sidebar to narrow my focus on associated keywords.
Clicking on the shirts filter shows results by that topic only — but it doesn’t stop there.
Topic Explorer not only displays keywords relating to that particular topic, it breaks it into subtopics, too. This makes it easy for me to identify the most relevant phrases.
And, sure enough, my exact product category — untucked shirts — is there, too.
From here on, I can review the top industry keywords and do an analysis on the user intent behind them.
With the latter, I can tell whether searchers use the keyword to find information or products to buy.
The report above tells me that all keywords in my industry have commercial intent. However, some exhibit informational intent, too.
Based on this insight I know that my pages must feature the product and give users the ability to buy it, but I will have to expand some of them with additional information to deliver what users are searching for too, or create a blog post to offer information.
I can even see who my top competitors are in the industry and evaluate with which domains I will be competing with over the rankings.
This process, insight, and analysis provide me with new keyword ideas I may not have already considered and helps me to prioritize phrases to target first (or which ones require my further research).
Companies with niche sites or products struggle with finding the right keywords, as they're unable to identify target phrases among high-search volume keywords.
Niche keyword research helps such companies discover phrases to target in their SEO and marketing strategy, from head terms to long-tail keywords.
The process itself requires having the ability to review all industry-related keywords, select categories or topics that pertain to the company’s specific product or niche, and use those keywords as the basis for their search engine optimization strategy. With niche keyword research, and using keywords appropriately, you'll find your site in the search results.
Editor's Note: Our products are always growing and advancing, and this post has been updated to reflect enhancements in our platform.