How Do I Choose Keywords When My SaaS Has Zero Traffic?

You open a keyword research tool for the first time. It spits out three thousand keywords, sorted by volume, difficulty, and a dozen other columns you don't fully understand. None of them feel like the right place to start.

This is where most technical founders quietly give up on SEO. Not because they don't understand the concept, but because the tools are built for people who already have traffic to analyze. When you're starting from zero, the usual advice, "look at what's already ranking" and "target high-volume, low-difficulty terms", doesn't give you much to work with, because you have no baseline and no domain authority to compete with.

Here's the good news: choosing your first keywords when you have zero traffic doesn't require a tool at all. It requires knowing your customer's problem better than the tool does.

Why Keyword Volume Is the Wrong Place to Start

Most founders open a keyword tool and sort by search volume first. That's backwards when you're starting from nothing. A keyword with ten thousand monthly searches is almost always dominated by established sites with years of backlinks and authority behind them. You will not outrank them in month three, and probably not in month twelve either.

What actually works at zero traffic is the opposite instinct: look for keywords with low volume but high intent. A search like "how to track subscription churn without a data team" might get forty searches a month. But the person typing that is deep in the exact problem your product solves, and there's a real chance nobody well-established has written specifically for them.

Start With the Words Your Customers Already Use

Before opening any keyword tool, go back to your own customer conversations. Look at support tickets, onboarding calls, and signup surveys. Write down the exact phrases customers use to describe their problem, not your product's marketing language, their language.

Founders often get surprised here. Internally, you might describe your product as "workflow automation for agencies." A customer might describe their problem as "chasing my team for status updates every single day." That second phrase, in the customer's own words, is closer to what they'd actually type into Google than anything in your pitch deck.

Use the Free Tools Before the Paid Ones

Once you have five to ten real customer phrases, run them through free discovery tools before paying for anything:

Google's autocomplete and "People also ask" boxes show you related questions real people are searching around your topic. Answer the Public and AlsoAsked turn a single seed phrase into dozens of question-based variations. Reddit and niche community search show you the exact language people use when nobody's trying to sell them anything, which tends to be more honest than what shows up in ad copy.

Paid tools like Ahrefs or Semrush are useful later for tracking difficulty and competitor gaps, but at zero traffic, they mostly confirm what customer language already told you for free.

Group Keywords by Buying Stage, Not Just Topic

Not every keyword you find deserves a blog post right away. Group them into three rough buckets:

Problem-aware keywords - searches from someone who knows they have a problem but hasn't found a solution category yet. Example: "why is my team missing project deadlines."

Solution-aware keywords - searches from someone who knows solutions exist and is comparing approaches. Example: "best way to track project deadlines for a small team."

Product-aware keywords - searches from someone actively comparing tools, often including "alternative" or "vs." Example: "[competitor] alternative for small agencies."

Early on, problem-aware and solution-aware content is easier to rank for and builds topical authority. Product-aware keywords convert better but are harder to rank for until you have some domain history - save a few of those for later, once you've built a foundation.

Pick Five Keywords and Commit

Resist the urge to write content for fifty keywords at once. Pick five that map closely to your actual ICP's specific problem, write one solid, specific piece of content for each, and give it two to three months before judging results. SEO is slow by nature - the founders who quit early are usually judging month one against a timeline that realistically takes a quarter.

Where Research Tools Can Help - and Where They Can't

Keyword tools are good at telling you volume and competition. They're not good at telling you which keyword actually matches a real customer's problem, because they don't know your customer — only you and your customer conversations know that. This is exactly the gap Infinall.ai's research workflow is built to close: it pulls in customer language, competitor content gaps, and topic patterns so your first keyword list starts from evidence about your specific audience, not a generic volume-sorted spreadsheet.

FAQ

How long does SEO take to show results for a brand-new SaaS site?
Most new sites start seeing meaningful movement around month three to four, with more noticeable traffic by month six. Anything faster is unusual, and anything promised faster is worth being skeptical of.

Should I focus on blog content or landing pages first?
Start with a mix. One or two landing pages targeting product-aware keywords, and a steady cadence of blog posts targeting problem- and solution-aware keywords, tends to compound better than either alone.

Do I need backlinks if I'm just starting out?
Not immediately. Focus on specific, well-answered content first. Backlinks matter more once you have content worth linking to and a bit of a track record.

Is it worth targeting keywords with zero listed search volume?
Sometimes, especially very specific long-tail phrases pulled straight from customer language. Search tools often undercount low-volume terms, and a highly specific phrase can still bring in the right visitor even if the tool shows "0."

How many keywords should a solo founder try to target in the first three months?
Five to ten well-chosen ones beats thirty scattered ones. Depth on a focused set of

Should I update old blog posts or keep writing new ones?
Both, but if you're choosing, revisit anything published more than four months ago that's getting some traffic but few conversions — small updates to underperforming posts often move faster than starting from scratch.