[paulcole]

I mean it seems like you have your answer.

SEO tricks and optimizations to rank for unbranded terms are very very very unlikely to work. Really the only thing that does work is creating useful content and in some cases creating a lot of it.

And remember SEO can't create demand where there is none. So if there's no KW volume for the terms you want you shouldn't be surprised if you're not getting a lot of results.

If there's demand and the bulk of the effort hasn't gone into creating good and useful content then you probably won't see any results no matter how long you wait.

Or why not put $6k/month into Google Ads for the unbranded terms and just buy the traffic you want?