There is absolutely no way that you can think up – and then target – all of the possible keyword search terms which may drive traffic to your site.  Every single niche can be looked at in hundreds of different ways and you will have to choose just a few approaches when you start your SEO efforts.  Once you start getting results for your chosen keywords though, you should start expanding your focus to include other keywords.

Look at Your Website Analytics

The best way to find new keyword terms to target is by looking at your website analytics.  In a quality website, the bulk of your traffic should actually be generated by longtail phrase which are NOT your targeted keyword terms.  It is always interesting to find out which terms people used to find your site as this can give you a completely new perspective about your website’s theme.  For example, let’s say you have a website about weight loss.  You target several weight loss terms and come up on page 1 of the SERPs for these terms.  But you come up on page 3 for terms like “detox cleanse” – terms which you didn’t even think about targeting at the launch of your website.

Tip: Search for high traffic keywords with low competition.

Make a Category for the New Terms

Once you find out what search terms are getting you unexpected traffic, you should work on incorporating them into your website in a much more visible manner.  One of the easiest ways to do this is by adding a category to your website which is titled with that term or a variation of it.  For example, the new category could be called “ways to detox the body before dieting.”

If you don’t want to dedicate a full category to that term but still want to generate traffic from it, then you must make sure that content with the term remains fresh.  In a weight-loss blog, for example, let’s say that you have one good article which is ranking for “detox cleanse.”  When the content becomes old and stops generating backlinks, then it will likely fall off the SERPs.

So, you should put a link to that article on your homepage, such as in a “most popular articles” section.  Make sure you use appropriate anchor text for the internal links.

Build Backlinks with New Search Terms

If you are already getting traffic from an un-targeted keyword, then it probably won’t take too much effort to drastically increase your traffic.

A backlink building campaign can be a lot of effort if you are starting from scratch but, since you are already doing pretty good for a term without any SEO efforts for it, a few quality backlinks for the new term can do wonders.

By using this route, then you don’t necessarily have to put internal links to the article which features the new term or make a special category for it.  But combining  the backlinks with on-site SEO for the new term might get you better results.