1.7M Searches with Zero Competition

Good news: this is crazy

Spoiler alert: it’s probably not an English-focused query.

This is a previous edition of SAAS Gap, Dreamer Bro — an archive for experimental SEO.

Today's dream is "hairstyle consultation".

When I came across this keyword, I was shocked—1.7 million searches with such subtle competition.

Semrush reports 0 KD (I don't buy into the idea of keyword difficulty though).

Did we just hack Google?

A little further research into this revealed how this is not a US-based query. There were only 50 US searches compared to 800,000 searches in Brazil, 360,000 in Germany, and another 360,000 in France.

Aha!

This explains why the competition is relatively small.

It's not a US-based query.

A lot of people think the world revolves around the US — have their data in the US market, make decisions based on US trends, and often overlook the markets in other regions.

All for good reasons, though.

Not bad, but this, in turn, leaves a handful of business opportunities in non-US countries that can simply be achieved by replicating what's working in the US…one of the theories of niching down.

Anyway, I was mostly concerned about the disparity of the search volume between these countries, so I had to perform a search intent check.

Double-checked the search results across countries using several VPNs. Went through some keyword variants and did some SEO brouhaha, but it was all pointless.

There wasn't a real reason for the crazy searches in these countries compared to the US, other than Brazil being a tad more obsessed with beauty than most countries.

Maybe this explains why.

Well, here's the thing.

There are 1.9 million people searching, with only a few sites doing this, which doesn't necessarily satisfy the intent, at least with the current development of technologies.

Satisfying the Search Intent

The site ranking top for this query, https://www.thehairstyler.com/, has users go through a quiz before they can be given an output. The output is then a list of models with supposedly similar hair features as you...

Few other sites that rank for the keyword are basically hair consultation service sites. You fill a form and book a consultation.

So it's a mixed bag on the SERPs — one way to tell (edited) a query isn’t satisfied on Google.

However, if we really dig deep into the search intent of this query, a good amount of people are probably looking to get a sort of instant gratification from their search and not a 'book me for the weekend' service. This is the reason why the top related queries for this query are:

1. what hairstyle suits me upload photo

2. test hairstyles on my face free online

Note: These two queries get over 300 US searches and 5,000+ global searches together.

I feel the reason the first site ranks top, outside other ranking factors, is because of the instant gratification.

Users get an output in a matter of seconds and not a consultation service.

Do something different.

A better way to approach this is to take the UMAX route, an app that trended in the past month, offering users beauty tips after a scan of their face.

That's actually the search intent of the query.

Build a system that has users upload their photos to get several hair options tried on that picture and maybe with some tips alongside. Do your SEO thingy. Put a price tag. Voila!

This is an abstraction, though.

A few sites that do this (they don't target this keyword) are:

1. Perfect Corp

2. Fotor

So, I guess it's technically achievable.

Experimental SEO tips in your inbox

Not just SEO.

Outside of organic traffic, there are other viable traffic generation schemes for this niche: Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, etc, which makes it one of a kind.

In fact, on Reddit, there have been a number of queries on this

The r/beauty, r/malegrooming, r/MakeupAddiction, r/curlyhair, r/FancyFollicles, and r/Hair are a few places that could welcome a tool like this.