Last updated: November 1, 2026.
One of the first metrics we come across in keyword research is search volume. In its simplest form, it’s estimated data showing how many times, on average, a keyword is searched over a certain period.
For example, “coffee machine” might be searched 50,000 times a month. “office coffee machine,” on the other hand, 2,000 times.
At first glance, everyone naturally goes for the keyword with 50,000 searches. Because more searches seem to mean more visitors. But in SEO, things are usually not that simple.
What does search volume tell us?
Search volume tells us only one thing:
Is there interest in this topic?
But it doesn’t answer these questions:
- Will this visitor become a customer?
- Can we compete for this keyword?
- Is this keyword really relevant to our business?
- Can we make money from it?
And this is where one of the biggest mistakes in SEO begins: automatically targeting a keyword because its search volume is high. Sometimes you actually need to do the opposite.
Search volume isn’t the number of visitors
The word I underline when reading search volume is potential. 50,000 searches doesn’t mean 50,000 visitors. Even if you’re in the top spot, you won’t get all of that traffic.
Ads, map results, shopping results, featured snippets, AI Overviews and the user’s search intent can all change how many clicks go to the organic results. I covered these features in Chapter 5.
So search volume answers the question “How much demand could there be here?” Not “How many visitors will I get?”
Low search volume isn’t always bad
We have a client we’ve been working with for about 7 years. Their daily organic traffic usually ranges between 30 and 40 visitors. Someone new to SEO would probably see this number and think, “Is it really worth doing SEO for this little traffic?”
But our client works B2B. The machines they sell cost around €20,000. In this industry, what matters isn’t getting 10,000 visitors a day. It’s the right people coming to the site. Because even a few right customers in a month can more than cover the SEO investment. It’s a business with low search volume, but when you show up for the right keywords, the rate at which visitors turn into customers is very high.
That’s why I don’t immediately delete a keyword that shows 0 or 10 in a tool. In some industries, even 10 of the right searches can be very valuable. 10 people search, 8 of them are really looking for that product, 2 become customers. If your product is expensive, that keyword becomes quite valuable. In fields like B2B, industrial products, machinery, healthcare, law and high-priced services, the economic value of low-volume keywords can be very high. We see this often with agricultural machinery too. The name of a very specific piece of equipment may be searched only a few dozen times a month, but the person searching may have a very strong intent to buy.
In SEO, our goal isn’t always to bring in the most people. Most of the time, it’s to bring in the right people.
That’s why when I do keyword research, I never look only at “How many times is this keyword searched?” The real question becomes:
“Could the person searching for this keyword really become our customer?”
I think this is the question that changes how we look at search volume.
Are search volumes exact numbers?
No. Semrush may show one number. Google Keyword Planner may show another. Another tool may come up with yet another estimate. Because they all use different data sources and different calculation methods. One tool may show 8,100 for a keyword while another shows 6,600. When the data was last updated, and how it’s split by country and device, can also vary from tool to tool.
That’s why I never see search volume as an exact number. Is a keyword searched 10,000 times or 12,000 times? Most of the time, that’s not the real issue for me. What matters to me is whether one keyword gets more or less demand than another.
Why do tools show different volumes?
There are a few concrete reasons for this difference:
- They’re all estimates. Google doesn’t share real search counts publicly. Third-party tools estimate volume from the data they collect themselves, using their own models. When the data source is different, the result is different too.
- The numbers are averages and rounded. The average monthly searches in Keyword Planner are, by default, the average of the last 12 months. Google says these numbers are rounded and also include close variants of the keyword (Google Ads Help). This may be why you see the same or a very similar number for “coffee machine” and “coffee machines.”
- Sometimes you see a range, not a single number. For accounts with no active campaigns or very low spend, Keyword Planner shows wide ranges like “1K–10K” instead of a single number. Comparing two keywords with that kind of range is almost impossible.
- Keywords are grouped differently. Some tools put very similar keywords into a single group, while others give each one its own volume. The same keyword may appear on its own in one tool and as part of a group in another.
So two tools showing different numbers for the same keyword doesn’t mean one of them is wrong. Both are estimates. When comparing, I find it more reliable to pick a single tool and compare keywords against each other within that tool.
Comparing with Search Console impressions
If you already have a page that ranks, you have a more realistic data source: Search Console. In the Performance report, you see the number of impressions for each query. An impression tells you how many times your site appeared in the search results for that query (Search Console Help).
This number isn’t search volume. If your page is on the second page and the user didn’t go to the second page, you don’t get an impression. So impressions only count the searches where your site appeared. But it’s a good reference for checking the tools’ estimates.
If your page has been in the top positions for a query for a long time, the monthly impressions for that query give a more reliable idea of the real demand than the tool’s estimate. If there’s a keyword where the tool shows high volume but you get few impressions despite being in the top positions, you should treat that estimate with caution. I cover Search Console in detail in Chapter 29.
Higher volume isn’t always more valuable
Let’s say we have two keywords:
- shoes: 100,000 searches
- men’s black running shoes: 2,000 searches
Which one is more valuable? At first glance the answer seems obvious. But the person making the second search is telling us clearly what they want. Men’s. Black. Running shoes.
If we sell exactly this product, the 2,000-search keyword can be much more valuable for us. Because the user is much closer to buying.
That’s why when I evaluate a keyword, I don’t look only at search volume. There are a few other things I look at together:
- Search intent
- Relevance to our product or service
- Competition
- Likelihood of conversion
Search volume is only one of these. I cover search intent in Chapter 4, and competition in the next chapter, Chapter 11.
The monthly average can sometimes be misleading
A keyword being searched 10,000 times a month sounds good. But those searches may not be spread evenly throughout the year. For example, these keywords rise sharply at certain times of the year:
- snow tires
- air conditioner
- school bag
- valentine’s day gift
Snow tires are searched a lot in winter and drop sharply in summer. School bags rise in August and September. Air conditioners spike in summer. Valentine’s Day gifts are concentrated in a very short window. For most of the year, the monthly average of these keywords looks much higher than the real demand.
That’s why we need to look not only at “How many times a month is it searched?” but also at “When is it searched?” Google Trends is very useful here.
Reading seasonality with Google Trends
Google Trends doesn’t show how many times a keyword is searched. It shows the share of interest in that keyword among all searches, for the period and region you choose, on a scale from 0 to 100. 100 is the point of highest interest in the period you selected (Google Trends Help). So 50 in Trends doesn’t mean “searched 50 times a month.” It means “interest is half of the peak.”
In Trends, it’s especially useful to look at these questions:
- In which months of the year does this keyword rise, and in which months does it fall?
- Is interest increasing or decreasing over the years?
- Which of two different phrases is preferred more? For example, “coffee machine” or “espresso machine”?
- In which regions is interest higher?
For a seasonal keyword, the page needs to be ready not just before the peak but a few weeks before it. It takes time for Google to crawl the page, index it and for the ranking to settle. Publishing a snow tire page after the snow has started usually means being too late.
Things are a bit different for companies working globally
A keyword might be searched 500 times in Turkey, 10,000 times in Germany and 50,000 times in the US. But that doesn’t mean “The US is the right market.” Because the competition is different. The user is different. The product price is different. The conversion rate is different. The language is different.
Search volume always needs to be evaluated for the country we’re targeting. In global SEO, search volume is data you have to read country by country. The total global volume on its own usually doesn’t mean much. In Keyword Planner, too, you can choose a location and see the volume country by country. Google also notes that because the numbers are rounded, adding up the volumes for several locations may not give you the total you expect (Google Ads Help). I explain SEO for multiple countries in Chapter 26.
Is it right to add up the volumes of similar keywords?
Not always. For example, these phrases are very close to each other:
- agricultural sprayer
- farm sprayer
- sprayer
But adding them up directly and saying “it’s searched 18,000 times” is usually not right. Because the same user may have searched different keywords at different times. And as I explained above, tools group keywords differently. A tool may already be counting these three phrases as a single group.
That’s why I treat similar keywords less as separate counts and more as parts of the same topic. I go into keyword mapping and topic clusters in more detail in Chapter 13.
So should we never target high-volume keywords?
Of course we should. High-volume keywords that are relevant to our business are very valuable. But when prioritizing, we need to ask this question:
“Is this keyword really valuable for us, or is it just a big number?”
For example, “coffee” can be a huge keyword. But for a company that sells coffee machines, “automatic coffee machine” or “home espresso machine” can be a much better target. So high volume is good. But it’s good when it comes with the right intent.
How do I look at search volume?
When I evaluate a keyword, my order is usually like this:
- Is this keyword really relevant to our business?
- Could the person searching for this keyword be our customer?
- Can we compete?
- Is the search volume enough?
Sometimes I can drop a keyword with 50,000 searches and prioritize another one with 500. Because that can be the right choice for the business.
In SEO, sometimes finding not the most searched keyword but the keyword that will contribute most to our business is far more important. Search volume is very important data, but it’s not enough on its own to make a decision. Reading the numbers matters, but so does understanding the user behind those numbers.
Practice
- Look at the volume of 10 keywords you’re targeting in two different tools. How different are the numbers from each other?
- Open the Performance report in Search Console. How many impressions have you had for these keywords in the last 12 months?
- Open your most important keyword in Google Trends for the last 5 years. In which months does it rise, and is your page ready before those months?
- Did you add up the volumes of similar keywords on your list and write down a single number? Group them under the same topic instead.
- Are there keywords you deleted from your list because their volume showed 0 or very low? Add back the ones with clear purchase intent.
- Next to each keyword, write the answer to the question “Could the person searching for this keyword be our customer?”
Previous: Chapter 9: How to Do Keyword Research · Contents · Next: Chapter 11: What Is Keyword Difficulty?
This chapter was first published in Turkish on X (September 8, 2026).