Why "Search Volume" is a Vanity Metric

Clients love big numbers. Engineers love conversion rates. They rarely overlap.

The biggest lie in SEO is that 10,000 searches/month = 10,000 potential customers. It usually equals 10,000 unqualified browsers.

The "Zero-Click" Problem

Google's AI Overviews and featured snippets are eating top-of-funnel traffic. A keyword with 5,000 volume might result in only 200 clicks because the answer is right there on the SERP.

Targeting Intent, Not Volume

Instead of chasing "marketing software" (Volume: 50k, Difficulty: 99), target "marketing software for solo founders with low budget" (Volume: 50, Difficulty: 10).

The volume is 0.1%, but the conversion rate is 50x higher. This is the premise of Programmatic SEO: capturing thousands of "long-tail" variations that bigger competitors ignore because the individual volume is "too small".