When it comes to SEO, how do you attract people to your site when you're introducing a new (aka not-searched) topic?

When there's low search volume for your particular niche, it does make sense to see if you can attract traffic from peripheral niches and interests (which it sounds like you've been doing).

Sounds to me like your goal, from an SEO perspective, should be focused on long-tail traffic acquisition, though.

The way to focus on the right type of questions is to think solution focused.

e.g. what solution is your problem looking to solve.

Maybe you can look to answer questions like "how can I stop yo-yo dieting" etc. Any questions that your potential customers are likely to be asking.

Some good ways to find ideas for the types of questions people are asking:

1. Take a look at your Google Search Console queries, see what you're getting the most impressions for, double down on that type of content.

2. Reverse engineer popular websites related to your topic or closely related to your topic. You can do this using tools like semrush.com, searchmetrics.com, Spyfu.

3. Look at the types of questions being asked in forums related to your topic. Take those forum questions and start answering them in detailed blog posts.

4. Look at questions being asked on Quora.

Again, take the question and turn it into a blog post. Answer it in detail on your own site.

5. Collect feedback from your website visitors on the types of content they'd like to see you write next. You can survey them using tools like Google Surveys or HotJar.

6. In some industries, it might be that the offline content (e.g. industry magazines, medical journals) take off before the topics become popular online. If this is the case in your space, take everything you're seeing offline or in close circles and start writing about it more publicly.

Feel free to send me a message if you want me to take a look at the content you've been writing to start with.

Thanks,

Scott

The best thing you can do is to brand yourself in terms that your target customers understand. People are open to trying new things if they know that by using that product they will get the end result they want. Let's hop on a call and I can go over how you can structure this based on your specific product.

Push content that is more contextually similar to what people are already searching for - rather than an abrupt switch from (general => niche).

Focus on sessions, not pageviews.

Check usage and user retention on your Demographics of GA.

If your doing something fitness related I would create an Instagram account. Provide specific practical tips/ how to information- information that would get your ideal client a result without needing you- you'll be able to curate a feed and look book that makes sense to your target customer -- then start engaging with hashtags and keywords that are being used them. So much more traffic you can attract from a platform that has 600 million users than worrying about SEO on a daily basis.

You're right about generic and high volume keywords having a ton of competition, especially if there's commercial intent for that keyword.

First - to find the best keywords I'd recommend using SEMrush or Ahrefs to find high volume keywords that have a lower difficulty score. The difficulty score is different from the AdWords competition score, and pertains to organic results instead of paid.

Like you mentioned, you should definitely target terms that people already are searching for related to your new terms you're introducing, and then introduce them to your new terms.

Like all marketing, repetition plays a big part. A benefit to you being the only one talking about it now is that you can shape the conversation. If you have email lists and social media accounts, you can actually influence the volume of searches for these new terms if your audience is large or passionate enough.

From what you wrote, you already know the strategy, you just need a good keyword tool to discover the hidden gems.