--- title: "Search Content Strategy: How Marketers Choose Between High Volume and Niche Topics" url: "https://marketermagazine.co/qa/search-content-strategy-how-marketers-choose-between-high-volume-and-niche-topics/" author: "Marketer Magazine" published: "2026-09-28" updated: "2026-09-28" --- # Search Content Strategy: How Marketers Choose Between High Volume and Niche Topics ## Search Content Strategy: How Marketers Choose Between High Volume and Niche Topics Big search numbers can attract attention, but they do not always bring the right readers or customers. Focused topics often create stronger opportunities by matching real questions, buying intent, and product fit. This article shares practical insights from experts on choosing topics that support traffic, trust, and revenue. ### Prioritize Existing Fractional CFO Queries I take the narrow topic when the site can already answer it. On an accounting client, Search Console showed about 500 monthly impressions for fractional CFO terms sitting at position 60 to 90, against 48 for local bookkeeping. We built around the CFO page because it existed and the demand was real, rather than chasing a bigger term with nothing behind it. Volume tells you how many people are looking, not whether any want you. *— [Bryan Philips](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanphilips), Head of Marketing, In Motion Marketing* --- ### Serve Readers at the Right Moment We changed our thinking after resisting a popular topic despite strong interest from readers. The existing search results already explained the basics well and added little value for us. Instead we waited until we found a sharper angle with clearer purpose for readers. We focused on the practical choices people faced after their first round of research. The article attracted fewer visits than a broad guide might have earned at launch. Even so it stayed useful because readers returned when they needed trusted guidance again. They explored related pages with clear intent and continued meaningful conversations around the topic. We learned that fresh value often comes from serving familiar topics at the right moment. *— [Vaibhav Kakkar](https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8F%86-vaibhav-kakkar-494b0b3), Founder and Group CEO, Digital Web Solutions* --- ### Weigh Efficiency Against Revenue Ceiling Chose a narrow, low-volume topic over a considerably higher-volume alternative, betting that concentrated qualified traffic would outperform broader reach, and the lesson that emerged was about opportunity cost rather than whether the bet itself was wrong. The narrow topic performed exactly as hoped, ranking within about six weeks given minimal competition, and converting at nearly triple our typical content conversion rate. What we hadn't weighed properly was ceiling. That narrow topic's total addressable search volume was small enough that even perfect performance generated modest absolute traffic and revenue, considerably less total impact than a mediocre performance on the broader topic would have produced simply through volume. The lesson wasn't that narrow topics underperform, this one clearly succeeded by every efficiency metric. It was that efficiency and total impact are different questions, and evaluating a topic bet purely on expected conversion rate without weighing the topic's actual ceiling led us toward a technically successful piece contributing less to overall business results than a less efficient broader bet would have. *— [Faizan Khan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/faizan-khan-96073b170), PR and Content Marketing Specialist, Ubuy Singapore* --- ### Map Content to Buyer Readiness Years ago, I quit obsessing over search volume. A keyword that draws 10,000 prospects who don't convert is worse than a keyword that draws 200 prospects who are ready to buy. When I'm up against two topics competing for a review slot of content, I evaluate intent first and volume second. I ask myself, "Is this person trying to learn about something or is this person trying to figure out how to solve something for which I can be paid?" Almost every time, the more targeted the subject, the better it will score in my planning. For example, I had a B2B finance client who wanted to go after a broad head term with huge volume but generic and nearly impossible to rank for without undeniable authority. I pushed the issue and sold them on a cluster of narrower, bottom-of-funnel questions that their actual buyers were typing. That focus on qualified demand is what led to a +1,118% lift in organic keyword rankings for one of our lead-gen clients, simply because we mapped content to intent rather than raw traffic. The takeaway: Once I let a high-volume topic win out purely by hunch and because I expected it to boost brand awareness. The topic ranked, traffic came, and zero leads followed because we brought in readers without purchase intent. Since then, I consider search volume a tiebreaker, rather than a deciding factor. *— [Aaron Whittaker](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronrwhittaker/), VP of Demand Generation & Marketing, Thrive Internet Marketing Agency* --- ### Exploit Low-Competition Openings I once passed on a high-volume topic because it looked too competitive to realistically rank for within a reasonable timeframe, and went with a narrower angle on the same broader subject instead, expecting a modest result at best. That narrower piece ended up ranking within weeks and became one of the highest-converting pages on the site, since it answered a specific question competitors hadn't bothered addressing at all. The lesson wasn't really about volume versus specificity in the abstract, it was that competition level should weigh as heavily as search volume when choosing where to place a bet, since a lower-volume topic with a real opening beats a high-volume topic buried under ten established competitors. *— [Tristan Harris](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristanjharris), Sr. VP of Marketing, Next Net Media* --- ### Align Teams Around Focused Questions The wrong way to choose is by treating search volume as a vote of confidence. Large numbers often reflect early curiosity, while narrow searches can signal a buyer trying to avoid a costly mistake. We map topics against decision stage, margin potential, and the organization's ability to give a genuinely useful answer, rather than publishing wherever demand appears largest. One bet centered on a detailed comparison question that had modest volume and several intimidating incumbents. The content did not create a traffic spike, but it became a recurring reference point in conversations with highly relevant prospects. It also revealed where internal explanations were inconsistent. The clear lesson was that focused content can improve operations as much as acquisition. When teams align around the same customer problem, execution becomes more credible and market presence compounds. *— [Marc Bishop](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwsmarcbishop), Director, Wytlabs* --- ### Score Valuable Actions Over Visits I would choose the topic that best matches a real buyer question and a clear next step, not the one with the largest search volume. Compare intent, competition, the site's ability to offer original expertise, and the value of a qualified visit. A broad 'digital marketing tips' guide may attract many readers with no immediate need; a narrower page explaining how a local service business should compare SEO and paid search can bring fewer visits but more relevant enquiries. That is an illustrative comparison, not a claimed campaign result. The lesson is to score content by qualified actions and assisted conversions as well as rankings and traffic. Start with the narrow, high-intent asset, then build broader educational content around it when there is evidence the topic deserves more investment. Update both as questions, products and SERP formats change. *— [Bowen He](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bowen-he-43b58a150), Director, Webzilla Digital Marketing* --- ### Demand a Plausible Next Action I come to this decision by thinking about the reader at the bottom of the page and asking one simple question: what action do they take? If the honest answer for a high-volume topic is close the tab, that loses to the narrower topic where the answer is book a call. Search volume tells me how many people show up, the next action test tells me how many people will ever matter to the business, and those two numbers are massively different. So when I create content, I outline it backward from the conversion, not forwards by a keyword. The narrow, qualified topic will get the spot over a broad one because the path to becoming a customer is foggy, if it exists at all. For example, a lead-gen client in the legal space I work with had a menu of broad informational topics with lots of traffic. I was trying to push them toward the narrow, decision-stage questions potential clients are asking right before they need a firm, because those are easy to convert readers, since those questions are the natural actions to take next. That focus on topics that everyone knows have the next action of contacting the business is what drove a +1,067% increase in leads and a 95% decrease in cost per lead for that client. The traffic wasn't higher, just the intent. The bet that taught me the lesson worked the other way. I was once a proponent of a broad, high-volume topic and quietly assumed the next action would find its own way. It did not. Readers arrived, skimmed, and left without taking action and with no leads. This failure is precisely why I now demand a plausible next action before any topic goes on a calendar. *— [Brandon George](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-george-1b85976), Director of Demand Generation & Content, Thrive Internet Marketing Agency* --- ### Match Searches to Product Fit We look at the intersection of search demand, relevance to the product, search intent, and how naturally we can move the reader from the content to what we offer. One bet that taught me this was choosing between broad AI and marketing topics with much higher search volumes and narrower topics around agentic AI for e-commerce and AI-led product content. The broader topics looked more attractive from a traffic perspective, but they also had more competition and a much wider audience, many of whom weren't potential users. We started investing more in narrower topics that were much closer to the problems Yarnit solves, for example, how AI agents work in e-commerce workflows or how product information needs to change for AI-led discovery. The potential traffic pool was smaller, but the content gave us a much clearer path to relevant landing pages and product use cases. The lesson for me was that traffic potential and business potential aren't the same thing. I'll still use high-volume topics for awareness and topical authority, but when prioritizing the calendar, I give more weight to topics where search intent overlaps strongly with the audience we actually want to reach. *— [Jyotirmoy Dutta](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotirmoy-dutta-57b8b715), Founder & CEO, Yarnit* --- ### Target Ranking Gaps, Not Head Terms I always ask who is ranking for a topic before asking how many searches there are because search volume is linked to the sites that have page one, not the ones interested in it. If it is a huge head term, dominated by national brands and Wikipedia, then the traffic is there, but it is not for me, and what I will do is concentrate only on topics where someone already ranks, and where I can beat whoever is already ranking. The competitive gap is my first filter. For instance, if I look at page one for a narrow topic, and the only offerings I see are thin, archaic, or generic, this is my invitation to act, and I would prefer smaller quality audience I could reach rather than a huge audience that I know I can't. As an example, a home-services client we work with was obsessed with a broad category term dominated by directories and big aggregators, and I had to reframe the plan towards their customers' questions that lacked answers. If we worked on addressing these gaps, instead of the broad head term, that was the targeting behind a much +763% increase in leads for one HVAC client in 90 days. I learned a lot from a bet that I didn't take the competition column into consideration. Once, I picked a topic simply because of the search volume, checked SERP, and was met with established authorities everywhere, but I went after it anyway and spent months working on it, and couldn't get anywhere. *— [Jimi Gibson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimi-gibson), VP of Brand Communication, Thrive Internet Marketing Agency* --- ### Calculate Opportunity Costs Across Calendars I think about content planning more like a portfolio than a wishlist. Some slots go to safe qualified bets that are profitable quickly, but some go to big volume shots on moon shots that I'd be okay waiting on. One writer; one calendar; limited hours. If some open topic pulls a month of production away from all other topics, then I want to know what qualified traffic I gave up before zeroing in on the new topic. The need for this kind of framing pushes the comparison to be a question of cost, instead of appeal. A high-volume topic isn't free because the traffic estimate is huge. It costs me the three tighter, buyer-ready topic pages that I didn't post that month. For example, an insulation contractor we work with had limited content bandwidth and a desire list of broad home-improvement topics with big search numbers. I directed most of that budget to tight, service-and-location intent pages where the searcher was already close to hiring someone. This kind of thinking about expenditures on qualified topics is how you end up +40% in conversion rate with that client because the traffic we bought converted. The whole idea stems from throwing caution to the wind and massively overspending in the other direction. I once blew an entire quarter content budget on one ambitious, high-volume topic and put all of my eggs in one basket expecting that the whole category would be anchored through this topic. It eventually ranked and got visitors, but unfortunately all of those leads cost me the steady stream of qualified pages generated throughout the whole quarter. I now size every topic by what it costs me elsewhere before green-lighting the topic for actual time to write the copy. *— [Timothy Clarke](https://www.linkedin.com/in/timclarkefromrockville), Senior Reputation Manager, Thrive Local* --- ### Solve Expensive Niche Pain I'd rather write for a marketing director's one weird problem at 2AM than assume the whole world is looking for generic video tips. We had the opportunity to focus on "B2B video case study scripts for complex SaaS" instead of "video tips." That attracted fewer leads, sure, but those clients paid 4x the retainer. Fixing a tiny niche's expensive pain beats being arguably useful to everyone. *— [Emma Sansom](https://linkedin.com/in/emmasansom), Managing Director, Flamingo Marketing Strategies* --- ### Refresh Commercial Pages for Pipeline When clients push for the biggest search volume number on the spreadsheet, the expensive bet is publishing a thin overview that ranks for a crowded head term and converts almost nobody. We choose narrower, more qualified topics when the query maps to a buying stage we can serve, even if absolute volume looks smaller. The bet that taught us a clear lesson was declining a high-volume "what is SEO" style brief in favour of rebuilding and expanding a mid-funnel page that already attracted people comparing service scopes and budgets. Traffic looked quieter at first. Pipeline quality did not. The lesson for agency clients is that impressions are a vanity metric when the SERP intent does not match the offer. Depth on a qualified page beats length chasing a head term. We measured 18,400 refreshes and saw a median traffic lift of 47.3 percent, with full underperformer rebuilds delivering around 84 percent. That is why we would rather refresh and deepen a page that already sits next to commercial intent than chase a new high-volume topic with no path to a briefing call. *— [Christopher Coussons](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriscoussons), Director, Visionary Marketing* --- ### Let Purchase Signals Set Priorities I choose by intent and eligibility first. Search volume is close to the least useful number on the planning sheet. The bet that taught me this involved a client set on a high-volume informational term, thousands of searches a month, the kind of keyword that looks great in a pitch deck. The narrower option was an unglamorous cluster of pages built around a specific service and the way people actually search for it when they are ready to act. We put the budget on the narrow cluster. The informational piece eventually ranked. It pulled traffic and produced almost no inquiries, because someone researching a definition is not someone ready to become a patient. The narrow pages ranked lower in raw volume and drove the actual phone calls. Here is the lesson I kept. A high-volume topic tells you a lot of people type the words. It tells you nothing about whether any of them will do business with you. There is a second cost people ignore. On a regulated healthcare site, a pile of broad informational content can blur what the site is even about, and the pages that should convert lose authority to the ones that never will. I would rather own the term with 90 searches and clear buyer intent than sit eighth on the one with 9,000. Volume is an input, not a target. *— [Trevor Gage](https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-gage), Director of Marketing, Webserv* --- ### Find Empty Rooms in Search I stopped asking which topic has more search volume and started asking which topic has less competition from people who actually know what they're talking about. High-volume topics are usually crowded with polished, well-funded content already. Narrow topics often sit wide open because nobody serious has bothered writing about them properly yet. We once skipped a huge, obvious topic in our space, as twenty established sites already owned it thoroughly. Instead, we wrote a detailed piece on a specific edge case our competitors had ignored completely, one that seemed too small to matter to them. That single page now ranks first with almost no ongoing effort, simply because nothing else was competing for that specific phrase. The lesson was that volume tells you how many people are searching, but it says nothing about how many good answers already exist. Sometimes an empty room matters more than a crowded one. *— [Fahad Khan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mefahadkhan), Digital Marketing Manager, Ubuy Kuwait* --- ### Answer Decisions With Practical Expertise When planning SEO content, we do not choose a topic based on search volume alone. We first ask what decision the reader is trying to make and whether we can provide a useful answer from our experience. For example, a broad topic such as "digital marketing careers" can attract early-stage readers. A narrower topic such as "how to choose a performance marketing course" usually attracts people who are closer to taking action. We decide between the two based on the purpose of the content, the competition in the search results, and the quality of examples we can provide. At Digital Academy 360, we have found that a focused topic becomes more valuable when it includes practical details such as assignments, tools, campaign work, and skills learners can expect to develop. Our biggest lesson is that a low-volume topic is not automatically small or irrelevant. If it answers an important question for the right audience, it can generate more meaningful engagement than a high-volume article that remains too general. *— [Tejaswini Abhinandan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejaswiniabhinandan), SEO Executive, Digital Academy 360* --- ### Audit SERPs Ahead of Keyword Tools My first move is always the SERP, not the keyword tool. I search the term myself and look at what's actually ranking. Who owns page one? Huge publishers, directories, or small studios like mine? What format is Google rewarding: guides, service pages, listicles? That tells me more about intent than any volume number. Then I check the numbers in Ahrefs: search volume, keyword difficulty, and what the top pages rank for beyond that one term. High volume with a KD of 60+ usually means fighting sites with years of backlinks, for traffic that might not even want what I sell. A narrower term with low KD and clear buying intent brings fewer visitors, but better ones. My filter comes down to three questions: Is the person searching this close to needing what we do? Can we realistically reach page one in the next few months with our current authority? Can we build a cluster around it, not just one post? The bet that taught me the most was for my own studio, Echo. The obvious play for a design studio is broad terms like "web design" or "website redesign". Huge volume, but the SERP is wall-to-wall agencies, directories and big platforms, and the difficulty is brutal. When I dug into Ahrefs, I found the "ux audit" cluster instead. Around 700 searches a month, KD of 1. Tiny compared to the broad terms. But look at who's typing it. Someone searching "ux audit" already knows their site has a problem. They're not browsing for inspiration, they're looking for someone to diagnose it. That's basically a warm lead typing into Google. So that cluster became the priority over the big terms: a core service page, supporting articles around specific audit questions, and internal links tying it together. The lesson: volume is a vanity number if the searcher isn't your buyer. For a small studio, one qualified visitor who's ready to hire is worth more than a thousand people who wanted a free template. I still watch the bigger topics, but I treat them as long-term authority plays, not the thing that pays the bills this quarter. Same logic applies to clients. With a contemplative education platform I work with, we found a high-volume philosophical term already sitting on page two. Tempting, but the first question is always whether that searcher could become a student, or if they just want a definition. *— [Rinn R](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rinnr), Founder and Creative Director at Echo Studio, Echo Omni Studio* --- ### Prevent Cannibalization, Match Wholesale Demand I'm Charles Liu, founder and Marketing Director of Cubic Promote and I'd love to share my insights. The first thing we look at is cannibalisation. If we already have a strong page covering a topic, creating another page targeting the same intent can make our own content compete against itself. After that, we focus heavily on how qualified the keyword or topic is. That is especially important for us because we are a wholesaler, yet some high-volume keywords we appear for have strong retail intent. We have had pages attract plenty of traffic from broader terms, but the visitors were looking to buy one or two items rather than bulk branded merchandise. The traffic looked good on paper, but it was not the right audience for our business. That taught us to favour narrower topics that better match our offer, even if the search volume is lower. Terms around bulk quantities, custom printing, branded merchandise and business use are usually more valuable to us because the intent is closer to an actual enquiry. My main lesson is that search volume alone is not enough. The topic has to align with your positioning, and you also need to make sure you are not creating pages that compete with content you already have. Charles Liu Founder and Marketing Director Cubic Promote *— [Mr Charles Liu](https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-liu-042b9124), Marketing Director, Cubic Promote* --- ### Build Niche Authority for Therapists When planning content for organic search, I prioritize narrower, qualified topics that build niche topical authority for the audience I serve. I made a deliberate bet to focus our agency blog exclusively on marketing for therapists instead of chasing broader, higher-volume marketing topics. That shift resulted in our content being picked up by AI engines and in most of our clients coming through SEO. The lesson was clear: focused topical authority draws more qualified traffic and converts better than pursuing volume alone for a specialized practice. *— [Natalia Maganda](https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalia-maganda-b1b15850), Website Design and SEO For Therapists and Private Practice, Natalia Maganda* --- ### Displace Weak Results With Better Answers We stopped choosing on volume and started choosing on what the existing results look like. Volume tells you how many people ask. The results page tells you whether anyone has answered them, and that second question decides whether a smaller site can win at all. Our rule: if the first page is held by publishers with real authority and adequate articles, the topic is off the list regardless of how big it is. If the first page is forums, Reddit threads, a closed bug report and one off-topic result, we take it — because that composition is the search engine telling you it could not find a good match. The bet that taught us this. We had a broad, high-volume topic in our field and a narrow diagnostic question almost nobody was writing about. The broad one lost to pages we had no realistic chance of displacing. The narrow one had results made almost entirely of user forums, and we could answer it properly by reading the platform's own documentation and release history rather than restating other blogs. That page became a reference: it answers a question that has a correct answer, and being correct is durable in a way that being comprehensive is not. The lesson underneath: for a low-authority site, topic selection is mostly an exercise in finding unanswered questions, not big ones. A big topic with ten adequate articles has no room in it. A small topic with zero adequate articles is an opening, and the traffic it brings is more qualified because the person searching has a specific problem you just solved. Two honest caveats. Narrow wins are individually small — this is a portfolio strategy, not one lucky page. And be careful about judging any of it early: our slowest-reporting work took over a month to show anything, and we once cut a perfectly good line of work because we looked at the numbers before they had finished arriving. The question I now ask before commissioning anything: if we write the best version of this page, what does it displace? If the answer is a Reddit thread, that is a good bet. If the answer is an established publisher's dedicated guide, it is a hobby. *— [Richard Meadows](https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-meadows-12177934a), Head of Content, Streamrise* --- ### Choose Precise Topics for Sales Talks Our rule is to weigh search volume against how close the searcher already is to being a real fit for what we do, not just how many people are searching. High-volume topics tend to be broad and early in someone's thinking, useful for visibility but weak for actual pipeline, while narrower, more specific topics attract people who already understand their problem well enough to ask a precise question, which usually means they're closer to being qualified. The bet that taught us the clearest lesson was choosing to write about a fairly niche topic, the specific gap between platform-reported ROAS and CRM-verified pipeline, over a much higher-volume, more generic topic like "how to improve ROAS." The generic topic had far more search volume on paper, and if we'd chased it purely for traffic, it would have looked like the obvious choice. We went narrow instead, and the traffic numbers were predictably smaller. But the leads that came from that narrower piece were dramatically more qualified, people arriving already understanding their attribution was broken, not people early in a general research phase. The lesson was that chasing volume without accounting for buyer intent optimizes for a vanity metric, traffic, while the narrower bet optimized for the metric that actually mattered, qualified conversations. Since then, we default to the narrower, more specific topic whenever the choice is between broad visibility and a smaller audience that's already further along in recognizing the problem we solve. *— [Ankita Pathak](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankita-pathak-648208192), Founder, OneMetrik* --- ### Reject Generic Visitors That Misfit My rule is simple: volume tells you how many people are searching, not whether they're the right people. Before committing content resources to a topic, I look at whether ranking for it would actually reinforce the sales narrative for a link-building agency, not just pull in traffic. The clearest lesson came from a bet we made in paid search that reshaped how we now plan organic content too. We built out a broad set of niche-vertical keywords, aviation, real estate, travel, fashion, and similar, purely because the volume looked attractive. Over 180 days that campaign pulled 138,000+ impressions and 1,456 clicks, and produced zero conversions. High volume, real traffic, completely wrong audience. That result became our standing precedent against chasing high-volume-but-generic topics in content too. A current example: one of our competitors pulls in several times our organic traffic almost entirely from generic SEO-software comparison content "Ahrefs alternatives," "Semrush vs Ahrefs," rank-tracking software roundups some of it drawing 6,000-10,000 searches a month. We deliberately don't chase it. It's real volume, but it doesn't build authority for a link-building service or attract buyers who'd actually hire us; it's a different business wearing an SEO-blog costume. The lesson: narrow, qualified topics that a real buyer of your service would search for beat broad volume every time unless you're willing to become a different company to capture that traffic. *— [Ahsan Mustafa](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahsan-mustafa-11841522), CEO, LinkBuildingHQ* --- ### Attract Banking Executives, Not Curious Clicks We tried writing about AI infrastructure and got tons of clicks, mostly from students and researchers. Not exactly our target buyers. Then we shifted to something specific like "sovereign AI stack for bank compliance" and the numbers dropped way down. But the people who showed up? Actual banking executives. Here's what I learned: in B2B tech, it's better to have ten people who actually need what you're selling than a thousand who are just curious. *— [Andy Wu](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andywu1), Marketing, Zettabyte* --- ### Use Specific Pages, Then Expand Reach Honestly, I stopped looking at volume first. A keyword with 40,000 searches a month means nothing if page one is Forbes, HubSpot and Wikipedia and we have a young domain. Position one gets around 27% of clicks (Backlinko's study), and page two gets almost nothing. So I look at who's ranking, what the searcher actually wants, and whether that person could ever become a customer. Volume comes last. I learned this on a blog for a small invoicing tool for freelancers. I wanted to go after "invoice template," which had about 100k searches a month. My teammate wanted a batch of small pages on things like GST invoice format, net 30 terms, and what to do when a client pays late, at 100 to 500 searches each. I argued the big term would bring more traffic. We only had one writer, so I got my way and the first two months went there. Six months in, that page was stuck around position 20 with maybe 400 visits a month. Most people searching it wanted a free download, not software. Meanwhile the small pages we squeezed in around it were bringing about 4,000 visits and most of our signups, because someone searching GST invoice rules has exactly the problem we solve. I was wrong, and it cost us about two months. Now I ask whether we can rank within three months and whether this person would pay us before I check volume. I go after the big term later, once the small pages have built some authority. Ours climbed to position 9 after they started linking to it. *— [ANSHUL VIJAY](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anshul-vijay2), CEO, Pixels Corp* --- ### Prioritize Decision-Stage Local Care Topics I start with who the page is for and what they'd do after reading it. High-volume topics are tempting because the numbers look great in a keyword tool, but a lot of that traffic is students, job seekers, or people two years away from buying anything. Narrower topics usually have a smaller number next to them but a much clearer intent behind the search. My rule of thumb is that if I can't picture the person searching it picking up the phone within a week, it's a supporting topic, not a priority. I'll still write the broad content eventually, but it goes after the pages that actually produce leads. The lesson that cemented this came from a home care client. We had a choice between building out "what is in-home care," which had thousands of searches a month, or a cluster of pages around "24-hour home care" and "hospice support at home" in their city, which barely registered in volume. I went with the broad topic first because the numbers were hard to argue with. It ranked, traffic went up, and the client got almost no calls from it. When we finally built the narrower pages, they brought in a fraction of the traffic and several times the inquiries, because those searchers were families in the middle of a decision. What I took from that is that volume tells you how many people are curious, not how many are ready. Now I map every topic to a stage of the buying decision before I look at the search volume at all. *— [Danielle birriel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-birriel-361430123), Founder, D&D SEO Services* --- ### Related Articles - [10 Expert Strategies for Content Cluster and Keyword Grouping](https://marketermagazine.co/qa/10-expert-strategies-for-content-cluster-and-keyword-grouping) - [20 Tips for Creating High-Quality Content That Ranks](https://marketermagazine.co/qa/20-tips-for-creating-high-quality-content-that-ranks) - [16 Expert Tips for Optimizing Long-Tail Keywords](https://marketermagazine.co/qa/16-expert-tips-for-optimizing-long-tail-keywords)