How We Helped a New Skincare Brand Find Thousands of Hidden Keywords Using Reddit

The Story of Symphonic MD

Symphonic MD is a groundbreaking new skincare brand powered by science. Their unique formulations offer results competitors can’t match — including a world-first moisturiser that combines both retinol and vitamin C in one product, something long thought impossible in the skincare world.

As a newcomer to an incredibly competitive market, Symphonic MD faced an uphill battle. The skincare niche is saturated with big brands and even bigger budgets. Competing in organic search — especially with no domain authority — felt like David vs. Goliath.

That’s when they came to us.

Their challenge: How do you drive organic traffic to a new site in an ultra-competitive industry where everyone has access to the same keywords?

The Challenge of Competing in a Saturated Market

The problem with traditional keyword research tools is that everyone uses them — and in a competitive space like skincare, the obvious terms are already dominated by the big players.

We needed a way to uncover:

• Questions people were asking that competitors weren’t answering
• Keywords with intent that weren’t showing up in Ahrefs or Semrush
• Opportunities to build topical authority fast, without relying on high-competition terms

Our Hypothesis

People turn to Reddit and Quora when they can’t find what they’re looking for on Google.

Our theory: If we could mine these platforms, we’d uncover real questions users were asking that weren’t covered on competitors’ websites — and weren’t showing up in keyword tools due to low or fragmented volume.

We also believed many of these questions were being asked in multiple different ways, leading keyword tools to misclassify them as “zero volume” — even though they represented real demand.

Our Method: Scrape, Cluster, Strategise

We:

• Scraped thousands of real user questions from subreddits like r/SkincareAddiction, r/Skincare, and r/Beauty
• Grouped the questions using our own proprietary clustering tool to identify recurring themes
• Identified keyword clusters that had no coverage from competitors
• Mapped each cluster by intent and funnel stage, assigning them to informational, navigational, or transactional content types

Example themes we uncovered:

• “Can I use vitamin C and retinol together?”
• “Why does my moisturiser sting after exfoliating?”
• “Best skincare routines for sensitive + oily skin”
• “How to layer skincare when using acids”

These weren’t showing up in keyword tools — but were being asked hundreds of times in different ways.

The Results: 5,000+ Monthly Visitors in 4 Months

By focusing on underserved, high-intent topics that competitors missed, we:

• Created a content strategy with dozens of unique blog post ideas
• Helped Symphonic MD publish content that answered real user questions
• Built topical authority fast — without needing backlinks or existing domain strength

The outcome?

Nearly 6,000 organic visitors per month within 4 months — in one of the toughest niches in SEO.

This was achieved with:

• No prior domain authority
• No backlinks
• No paid media

Just smart strategy, unique data, and better targeting.

Ready to Find the Keywords Your Competitors Missed?

We help brands uncover hidden keyword opportunities using Reddit, SERP analysis, and machine learning clustering.