We were recently asked to run a SEO campaign for something that no one is looking for in Google. This naturally begs the question: if we do a great job (again!) and succeed to get a good ranking for a term in Google that nobody is searching for, can this be profitable for our client? Surely not?

A few years ago, we were approached by a client who had this very dilemma. They had an amazing new ski resort that they wanted to promote on search engines. The problem was, great as it was, nobody had heard of it. As a result, even though we knew we could get great positions for this, as no one knew of it, no one would be looking for it in search engines.

This problem seemed impossible to answer at first. By its nature, SEO is designed to make a website rank for terms that people are typing into search engines. If you specialise in luxury holidays to Turkey, you want to be in the top 10 when people type related terms into Google and other search engines. If you have a great product that nobody has ever heard of, then optimising seems like a pointless exercise.

It may not seem so at first, but when it comes to finding online marketing solutions, due to the general increase of search volumes and the emergence of social media, we have more options today than we had a few years ago. Today, there are two solutions that we would recommend: optimise for the right type of people, and create the demand yourself.

So, let’s go with the skiing holiday example. If you have a great fjord ski package, but nobody is searching on Google for ‘skiing in fjords” it can be beneficial to optimise your site for parallel phrases such as “Finland ski holiday”, “Scandinavia ski holiday” or even “ski holidays”.  By being noticed by these people looking for the above, you have a decent chance of introducing them to this new fjord package idea and inspiring them to consider your package. 

Every product starts off with no awareness. ‘Paris Hilton’ would have been a distinctly niche, uncompetitive search term before her infamous sex tape, but getting to the top of the rankings for her name now would be hugely difficult. She indirectly raised her own market awareness, and subsequently the searches followed.

Now we can’t all be Paris Hilton, so how do we become a keyphrase superstar? One option is offline marketing. Raising awareness in the real world – a newspaper article, a news piece or an advert will get people typing your term, but obviously not everyone can afford these methods. It’s also very much a shotgun approach that will invariably hit some interested folks, but also a lot of non-interested types in the process.

An online method of creating awareness is that of social media, where you can find niche communities for any interest. Finding skiing communities online would be a doddle, and right there you have an audience that would be a natural potential market for your fjord packages. 

Starting a few, well placed conversations in related online forums, blogs, communities, etc about this particular type of skiing activity, posting pictures of how much fun it is and generally featuring it in many ski communities online would greatly contribute to increasing the awareness.