Should we change branded keywords based on audience knowledge?

[J-Me]

Good Morning Moz,

Wanted to pose a question to the community that our company has been wrestling with internally for a while now. I think your insights would be tremendously valuable.

Our company effectively has two business units, one that is online and one that is offline. Each appeals to a different customer base as well. In one business unit, the larger, more offline and better established of the two, we refer to ourselves as a "manufacturer of high end automobiles" (not true, but using as an example). We've carried this through to the other business unit which is very small, web-based, and growing, but have quickly realized that the majority of would-be customers do not search for "automobiles", they search for "cars." And the keyword volume is night and day. On the order of 5000 searches/mo for automobiles, and 1,000,000 searches/mo for cars (again, not true for these example keywords but this is the actual ratio against our real keywords).

So, do we optimize heavily against a lesser known and used keyword, or do we try to target "cars" which sees higher search volume even though it's significantly more competitive?

We have this problem with a few different branded keywords, actually, and our search performance reflects as much. If someone were to search for these lesser known keywords they would find us, and we rank well. But the volume isn't there.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

[J-Me]

Thanks, Chris. That's a great point. We'll certainly keep that in mind as we approach our messaging and targeting.

[J-Me]

Thank you, Robert. It's a good suggestion and one that I think would actually help us considerably in the long run. The keyword we currently target is not really used by many others, so to build around it could position us well for long term growth (assuming we executed our awareness drivers well). Really appreciate your time and thoughts.

[J-Me]

Thanks David. It's interesting because we target the lower volume keyword exclusively and are typically number 5 on a typical SERP. We don't even appear in results for the higher volume keyword (a synonym at that) that we have little invested against.

[J-Me]

Thank you, Gaston. It sounds like a good approach and makes sense. Really appreciate your time.

[ChrisAshton]

Gaston has already answered your question well so I won't go into that any further. What I will say though is don't forget to consider the user intent here - depending on what your product actually is, people using that niche word may be looking for something different.

To use your cars vs automobiles example in a research context, you might find for example that people searching for "history of cars" are searching for recent history, whereas users searching for "history of automobiles" may be looking for info dating right back to the very first automobile.

Perhaps a poor example of my point but hopefully this illustrates what I'm getting at. While the two may technically be the same, sometimes we use variations of a word with a different intent. Your keyword focus should always be around this intent rather than just the words themselves.

I hope that makes sense!

[Toddfoster]

Hi Jamie,

I would agree with Gaston with a slight addition. Depending on the resources, time and team you have to dedicate to this project, what you could do is begin an awareness campaign for the small volume traffic keywords you are ranking well for. I believe your SEO efforts should be focused on high-volume keywords, with small amounts of work dedicated to terms you are already ranking well for.

However, what I would be aiming for would be to introduce a social media campaign or general marketing campaign with the goal of generating knowledge and awareness of the existence of your less well-known terms to increase the amount of times people are searching for it. Social media also provides you with the option of creating content which bridges the gap between your "cars" audience and "automobiles" audience. Using this example, "Top 10 Cars & Automobiles" gives you the option of ranking your article for both terms and utilizing LSI keywords (keywords that are relevant to the main keyword you are targeting) will give you the option of creating relevancy for both terms simultaneously.

In this case, using keywords such as "vehicle", "vehicles", "motor vehicles", etc. as your LSI keywords along with content targeting both "cars" and "automobiles" would do the trick.

Hope this helps to get the creative juices flowing.

All the best,

[DavidKonigsberg]

Keep in mind google does recognize synonyms of words. If your real issue is a pure synonym it may not matter which you choose as google cares more about topic then keywords these days. learn more about it here https://moz.com/blog/can-seos-stop-worrying-keywords-focus-topics-whiteboard-friday

can-seos-stop-worrying-keywords-focus-topics-whiteboard-friday

[GastonRiera]

Hi Jamie

I think that you've answered the question yourself:

• With the branded and with less traffic you rank well.
• With the other, there is a big chance to get much more traffic that with the other keyword.

My advice, focus on both keywords, but put mor effort on increasing the SERPs on the high traffic keyword. for example: 70-30.
Remember that for the "small" keyword you already rank well.

Hope it helps.
GR