Search Volume

What is the search volume?

Search volume is a metric that shows how many people are searching for a particular keyword or phrase over a given period of time. When creating your content strategy, taking search volume into account is vital because it reflects the popularity of the query. Ideally, you want to find keywords with a high search volume and a low rate of search competition. However, finding long-tail keywords that appeal to your target audience with low competition can also be an effective strategy.

Why is monitoring search volume important?

Looking at your search volume can provide you with important insight about the popularity of certain keywords and how it fluctuates throughout the year. Exact match data will tell you precisely how many searches were run each month of the year. Rolling average data, on the other hand, will account for all of the volume for all the searches throughout the year and find you the average. This can be helpful if you are working with highly seasonal keywords, such as “Super Bowl” or “Halloween Costumes.” If you only used the exact match and started to do research in May, it might be a challenge to ascertain the true value of the keyword.

You can use the search volume to make forecasts for search engine optimization (SEO) and content optimization to work out which keywords and search queries you should prioritize for optimization. If you can work out the average search volume per month, you’ll be able to use this data to estimate how much traffic a good ranking position might generate for a specific keyword.

This numbers-driven approach means you’ll also be able to optimize your content and SEO. If you already have a good ranking for a keyword with a high search volume, for example on the second search results page, you could try optimizing your onpage and offpage SEO and content to get even better results.

At the same time, the search volume is only an indicator for search engine optimization and ideally should be compared with other data – such as user intent for a specific keyword. Navigational search queries often have an extremely high search volume because users know exactly where they want to go, e.g. to Facebook or Amazon, but don’t enter the domain name in the browser address bar and simply google it instead. Optimizing for these keywords is not very effective because you can’t expect to generate much traffic from these queries.

The CPC for a keyword can also provide important additional information on how useful optimizing for that keyword might be. If a keyword has a high search volume, a high CPC and the search intent is to obtain information or conduct a transaction, you can assume there is a lot of competition for one of the top ranking positions. Conversely, a keyword with a low CPC might indicate that optimizing for it could generate traffic, but that traffic would not lead to conversions on your website.

In addition, you shouldn’t look at search volumes for a single keyword in isolation. Look at the search volume for a cluster of topics instead. After all, users’ search queries for a specific topic are becoming longer and more detailed. And long-tail keywords account for more than half of the total traffic generated by search engines.

How do you use search volume data?

1. Armed with the data gained from search volume research, you can target optimal keywords throughout the year. Since you will know the value of particular keywords and how their usage fluctuates throughout the year, you will be able to identify optimal opportunities to target them.
2. You will be able to understand historical trends and make future projections. As you compile historical search volume for particular keywords, you will be able to see if drops indicate a loss of value for the keyword or if it is a part of a regular, yearly cycle. This will help you make future projections about the keyword’s performance and inform your decisions about the best keywords to use in your content.

Using search volume can help you begin to compile the keywords that you will use to build a successful website. Understand the difference between the exact match data and the rolling average data and use them as needed to better understand a keyword’s performance.