Start your keyword research with a “big picture” perspective…
Traffic to your site first starts arriving from searches for keywords that you did not even anticipate. As you add some links and content, you start getting found for TIER 3 pages, then TIER 2. The last keyword you will usually generate traffic for is your Site Concept Keyword since it is usually the broadest.
When you do start ranking well for your home page, it will ultimately be your single most important traffic-builder. Even then, though, your TIER 2 and 3 pages will add up to way more than your home page. For example, even if Nori’s home page disappeared tomorrow, it would not drop her traffic by more than a few percentage points.
So what does this mean in terms of keyword research? Supply and Demand for your Site Concept keyword is not the be-all and end-all. You have to look across your entire set of keywords that will form your site.
Traffic grows from the bottom up and not from the top down. Build a great site with real content about hundreds of Specific Keywords related to your theme and you will automatically generate a ton of long tail traffic. (Nori’s site is found for over 12,000 words.)
A “Bottom to Top” Example
Let’s use the keyword “How Does Stress Affect Health” as an example. We’ll work our way bottom up (i.e., long tail keywords, then TIER 3, then TIER 2, and then your Site Concept keyword).
Long Tail Keywords
“How Does Stress Affect Health” has no Demand but it is one of those long tail keywords that you’ll win without even trying, when you create a TIER 3 page about “stress affects health” or even perhaps a TIER 2 about “stress and health.” There are literally thousands of long tail keywords and in fact, they are searched on every now and then (half of Google’s hundreds of millions of searches are “one-ofs”).
All those onesies and twosies add up, of course, but you don’t have to specifically create a page specifically about them. “Long tail traffic” just happens — they have virtually zero competition and since your site is good and relevant you “win” almost automatically.