SEO for MSPs: What the Search Data Actually Says
SEO for MSPs: What the Search Data Actually Says#
Most MSP SEO advice is the same three sentences. Write blog posts. Target "managed IT services [your city]." Be patient.
Nobody checks whether anyone is searching.
So we checked. Here's what came back.
Your own words have no search volume#
We pulled US monthly search volume for the phrases an MSP would use to describe its offer to a financial services firm. Not close variants. The exact phrases.
| Keyword | US searches/month |
|---|---|
| it support for mortgage companies | 0 |
| cybersecurity for mortgage brokers | 0 |
| mortgage lender cybersecurity | 0 |
| title company it support | 0 |
| ria it support | 0 |
| investment advisor cybersecurity | 0 |
| financial advisor it support | 0 |
| cybersecurity for registered investment advisors | 0 |
| insurance agency it support | 0 |
| insurance agency cybersecurity | 0 |
Thirty-seven phrases out of the list we tested came back with no measurable volume at all. Two of them returned no long tail variants either, meaning the keyword index holds nothing resembling them.
This isn't "low volume, be patient." Rank number one for "it support for mortgage companies" and you win traffic that doesn't exist.
Write that page anyway if you want it as a sales asset. Just don't count it as an SEO play.
Where the volume actually is#
Three places. None of them are the phrase you'd put on your own homepage.
Category education. People don't search for your service. They search for what you are.
| Keyword | Searches/month | CPC | Competition index |
|---|---|---|---|
| what is an msp provider | 6,600 | $6.60 | 0.05 |
| what is an msp | 2,900 | $49.25 | 0.03 |
| what is an msp in tech | 210 | $13.56 | 0.03 |
| how much does managed it services cost | 90 | $38.89 | 0.02 |
That competition index is out of 1.0. At 0.03 there is effectively nobody bidding, which usually means nobody has bothered to write the definitive page either.
The outsourcing terms, and this is the interesting one.
| Keyword | Searches/month | CPC | Competition index |
|---|---|---|---|
| co-managed it | 1,900 | $63.40 | 0.02 |
| co-managed it services | 1,900 | $63.40 | 0.02 |
| help desk outsourcing | 720 | $245.47 | 0.07 |
| outsourcing it help desk | 720 | $245.47 | 0.07 |
| it help desk outsourcing | 140 | $620.00 | 0.05 |
| msp help desk outsourcing | 110 | $100.04 | 0.14 |
Read those two columns together. A click on "it help desk outsourcing" costs $620 and the competition index is 0.05.
High price with almost no competition means something specific. A handful of advertisers know exactly what that visitor is worth and are willing to pay for them, and almost nobody else has shown up. The searcher is an operations lead with a budget and a problem, not somebody browsing.
You can't afford to buy those clicks. You can rank for them.
Compliance checklists. Higher competition, but the intent is unmistakable.
| Keyword | Searches/month | CPC | Competition index |
|---|---|---|---|
| soc 2 compliance checklist | 590 | $36.21 | 0.56 |
| soc 2 checklist | 170 | $48.13 | 0.53 |
| soc 2 requirements checklist | 90 | $40.46 | 0.48 |
| soc 2 audit checklist | 70 | $44.00 | 0.38 |
| cyber insurance requirements | 90 | $11.16 | 0.09 |
Somebody searching "soc 2 compliance checklist" has been handed a requirement by an auditor, a client or an insurer. That's a person with a deadline.
The regulatory terms sit in the middle#
These have paid value and organic value at the same time, which is rare.
| Keyword | Searches/month | CPC |
|---|---|---|
| glba compliance | 1,000 | $20.18 |
| ftc safeguards rule | 590 | $9.77 |
| glba safeguards rule | 480 | $6.96 |
| ria compliance consultant | 320 | $53.89 |
| regulation s-p amendments | 140 | $9.39 |
| sec regulation s-p | 110 | $30.59 |
Cheap-ish clicks with real intent and fairly low competition, and almost nobody in the MSP world writing for them. About 2,750 searches a month across the whole country, so it's not a firehose. It's the right 2,750 people.
What not to chase#
| Keyword | Searches/month | CPC |
|---|---|---|
| endpoint detection and response | 27,100 | $95.63 |
| security awareness training | 14,800 | $69.31 |
| soc 2 compliance | 12,100 | $72.45 |
| penetration testing services | 3,600 | $265.58 |
| managed detection and response | 720 | $188.10 |
Big volume, and every MSSP and compliance platform with venture funding fighting over it. You will not outrank Vanta for "soc 2 compliance." You might outrank everyone for "soc 2 compliance checklist for a twelve person RIA," and that page will convert better anyway.
So what do you actually write#
Six pages, in this order.
1. The definitive "what is an MSP" page. 6,600 searches a month at a competition index of 0.05. Most of what ranks now is thin and written for other MSPs. Write it for a business owner who has never hired one. What you do, what it costs, what happens in week one.
2. A co-managed IT page. 1,900 a month, $63 clicks, almost no competition. Half the companies searching this already have an internal IT person and think that disqualifies them from calling you. Tell them it doesn't.
3. A help desk outsourcing page. 720 a month at $245 a click. That price tells you what the visitor is worth. Cover cost per user, coverage hours, escalation, and what happens to their existing person.
4. A pricing page with real numbers on it. "How much does managed IT services cost" gets searched, and nearly every MSP answers it with "it depends, contact us." Publish a range and the assumptions behind it. You'll lose the shoppers you were going to lose anyway and win the ones who wanted a straight answer.
5. One regulation page per rule that governs your target vertical. FTC Safeguards Rule for mortgage lenders. Reg S-P for RIAs. Get this right, because the rules don't overlap. The Safeguards Rule covers mortgage brokers and lenders. RIAs answer to the SEC. Insurance agencies mostly answer to state regulators. Aim the wrong rule at the wrong reader and you've told them you don't know their business.
6. A checklist page per compliance framework you support. Give away the actual checklist. The people who use it and do nothing were never going to call. The ones who read it and realize how much work it is will.
Notice what isn't on that list. There's no "IT support for [vertical]" page, because nobody's typing it.
The part that takes a year#
Local rankings and category rankings behave differently.
"Managed IT services Atlanta" is a map pack fight, and the map pack rewards proximity, review volume and a complete Google Business Profile more than it rewards writing. If you're chasing local, the work that pays is getting reviews and finishing your profile, not publishing another post.
The category and compliance terms are different. They're won with genuinely better pages, and they'll take six to twelve months. That's the honest timeline and anyone promising faster is selling you something.
Which is the actual argument for running paid alongside it. Search ads on the regulatory terms cost very little because the volume is low, and they buy you the same visitor while the organic work matures. We wrote about that separately in Google Ads for MSPs.
One uncomfortable implication#
If the search volume for your vertical is zero, that isn't only an SEO fact. It's a positioning fact.
It means nobody is looking for what you sell, described the way you describe it. Your SEO can only catch people already in motion. Creating demand where none exists is a different job, and it belongs to LinkedIn and Meta, not to a blog post.
It also means the first MSP to write the real page for a category term tends to keep it. There's very little competition on the pages that matter, which is unusual, and it won't stay that way forever.
Keyword figures are from DataForSEO, US, pulled September 2026. Competition index is Google's own 0 to 1 scale for paid competition on the term.