Should I be targeting broad or niche search terms / keywords?

When starting any search engine optimisation (seo) project, the most critical step to success is almost certainly in the search term research. Now, reams and reams have been written on the best way to research and select the best keywords and search terms for your website promotion, however one area often overlooked is deciding whether to target broad keywords or far more specific, niche search terms.

Common sense will tell you that broader search terms will attract much higher search volumes, but are naturally more difficult to target, due to the increased competition, whereas niche search phrases might be easier to target, but search volumes are often tiny. So decision made. Some broad. Some niche, right? Well, maybe… but maybe not. What if your business deals almost exclusively in niche markets?

Every market differs

One of the most important statements to make before continuing is that any decision will undoubtedly be strongly influenced by the exact nature of your business.

Take, for example, a large multi-national high-technology company, supplying specialist equipment to blue chip manufacturers, such as defence contractors, aerospace or automotive subcontractors etc. Broad search terms do exist, but they don’t accurately describe the product or service in question. Equally, it is understandable that ‘ultra-compact mesh-type nebulizer’ does not attract much traffic. Some traffic, but not much. So what’s the answer?

Search term conversion

By looking at which search terms actually convert into enquiries, you can start to investigate which type of search terms are the best to target. This seems pretty straightforward, but there are a couple of caveats.

1. The search terms that result in enquiries may just be the search terms you are successful with on Google, not the search terms that are best for your business.

2. Any resulting enquiries may differ significantly in terms of quality, when comparing broad or niche search terms.

So where to start?

The first thing to do is make sure your web stats can report on conversions. To do this, you will need to be able to identify your ‘goals’, whether it be sign up for a newsletter, download a file, make an enquiry, purchase a product or service, etc. Once you can identify your various goals, it is a fairly straightforward procedure to configure your web stats to track successful (or abandoned) goals. Incidentally, different goals will have different success rates, influenced by many factors, but that is a whole other topic in itself. All that needs to be said is that each goal is unique and cannot be directly, or easily compared with another goal (i.e. you cannot compare search terms resulting in newsletter subscriptions with those resulting in product orders). Still, analysing individual goals will allow you to objectively evaluate the search term conversion and thus, start to make an assessment of which search terms to begin to target.

Broad keywords vs. niche search terms

So now you are reporting on which search terms convert for a specific goal, you can begin to understand what search terms bring the best response and are therefore the right ones to target. Broad search terms offer the potential of higher search volumes, so you will need only a small percentage to convert to provide justification for the increased difficulty in getting to the top of Google. Whereas the search volumes of niche keywords will be small, but the conversion ratio will certainly be significantly higher. But as already mentioned, a final conclusion can only be drawn if an objective ROI can be calculated. “Enquiries” as a result of broad keywords, may be more general than those as a result of niche search terms. If no further analysis is performed, one may incorrectly conclude that a broad enquiry is identical to a niche-derived enquiry..

Summary

Now that you are tracking and reporting on search term conversion, your keyword research can continue in earnest, armed with the knowledge that niche keywords offer “X” referrers per month, with “Y” % conversion, and broad search terms offer… well, you get the picture. By researching, targeting and reporting on both your broad and niche keywords, an objective evaluation can be made, meaning you can decide how best to allocate your resources to generate the greatest return on investment.

Since every business differs, there is no ‘one size fits all’, but you will probably find that…

1. Broad search terms offer the potential of significant search engine traffic, costs/time required to attain those rankings will be higher, bounce rates will be higher, but conversion volumes should, or may appear satisfactory.

2. Niche search terms offer tiny search volumes, but bounce rates will be low, search terms will be easy (in relative terms) to target and conversion rates will be good, if not excellent.

All you need to do is get the balance right.

Tags: broad, conversion, keywords, niche, search engine optimisation, search terms, seo, targeting