Without Google’s help most people trudge along with a trickle of traffic from social media, fail to get results, and give up.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is how you get Google’s attention.
You shouldn’t avoid SEO unless you’re confident you can drive traffic to your content without Google’s help. SEO isn’t difficult, and has the side effect of making your content more relevant to readers.
What should you be looking for in a keyword?
Most beginning content marketers use Google’s keyword research tool incorrectly, and sit there for months wondering why no one’s finding what they write. I experienced this first hand, and wasted time on terms I thought thousands of people were looking for.
But nope. Turns out it was tens of people. Tens! I learned that broad match is for people who’ve already built up a strong authority site. Broad match is your enemy for now. Untick it and go to exact match any time you’re looking for a keyword.
Wait what
Confusing? It can be until you understand what’s happening. Broad match might cover stuff like this:
- how big is jupiter
- gas giant
- large planets
A new site would be lucky to rank for one of those, much less all of them. It usually takes having high-quality content for every related keyword to match up to all of them. A long-running site like Bad Astronomy probably ranks for quite a few search queries that fall under a single broad match phrase.
Phrase match is less broad, and looks more like this:
- composition of jupiter
- orbit of jupiter
- atmopshere of jupiter
A single highly-detailed piece of content could rank highly for all of these, even on a newer site.
Aim for exact match, which will only match the keyword you put in. Make sure you have “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms” ticked unless you have a good reason for keeping it off.
Understanding keyword competition
The competition value gives you a very rough idea of how many people are aiming for your keyword. The competition in the AdWords tool only shows how many people are bidding for that keyword for display on Google’s ad network, but it’s a useful guide until you’re making enough to afford a third-party keyword research tool.
Don’t take the “Low,” “Medium,” and “High” as absolute though. It can change daily, and sometimes hourly. You should always search for your target keywords on a logged out browser to see who’s ranking for them.
I can usually tell how hard it will be to rank for a keyword by whether or not I recognize the names of sites that currently rank, but I’ve been studying Internet marketing for longer than I’ve been writing about it. That means I know the names in my area of experience.
An older blog has a good chance of ranking for competitive keywords. New sites aren’t so fortunate, and need to aim for keywords with lower competition until they’ve built up enough signals for Google to know the site is trustworthy.
The idea of a niche
There are people out there who build hundreds of tiny sites around one or two keyphrases. These usually work for a time and can provide a lot of money through affiliate offers and advertising. But there’s one big problem with them: they’re extremely vulnerable to competition and changes in Google’s algorithms.
You’re less vulnerable to competitors and changes to the way Google sees the web when you provide a lot of great content around a variety of related keywords under one domain.
The long tail
Long tail refers to the appearance of a list of search terms when graphed by how many people search for them. Terms with a high number of searches would appear around the highest point, while the tail of the graph is made up of thousands of longer, more specific terms. These specific terms are collectively called the long tail.
For now, worry about exact matches on terms with 2000-10,000 searches per month. Some SEO advice says to target terms with 2000-3000 searches, but that only makes sense in the short term. You’ll have more luck ranking for more popular queries as you get better at providing what people are looking for. And then you’ll be glad you aimed for the higher value terms.
Search intent
Search intent refers to what someone meant with a query. It’s easier and clearer to explain with made-up examples.
- cars
- used cars
- buying a used car
- buying a used car from a private seller
That could be anything. Am I looking for the wiki on cars or for quotes on car insurance? Impossible to tell. Terms like this favor long-running and well-established sites.
This sort of term is popular in local searches. The local used Ford dealer will probably never rank for used cars in a global market, but they’ll rank easily if they’re the used car dealer in that town with the best web presence. But this still says nothing of intent.
To figure out intent you need something more.
Here we go. That dealer could get a lot out of making a blog with tips on maintaining, buying, and selling used cars. It would act as a way to bring potential buyers to a contact page. It would also help set them up as an authority in the local market.
My favorite example of local companies getting this right is Inkhead Promotional Products, a local company that prints promotional materials for companies all over the world. Its blog has advice, reports on trends in its market, and product announcements. It’s a perfect example of content marketing in the wild.
Now this one is tricky. What is that dealer supposed to do here? They aren’t a private seller. No need to worry though: they still have guides on how to find a good used car, and that’ll help a buyer when going to a private seller. Does that count as a lost lead? Not necessarily.
That person is likely to share the guide on social media and blogs. Even without a sale to that person, it’s a potential sale to everyone they know.
And it helps build the company’s reputation and brand.
Post length, keyword density, and outbound links, oh my
People worry too much about minor statistical details and worry too little about how valuable their content is to the reader. Especially notorious for this is post length, keyword density, and links to other sites (outbound links).
Post length only helps in so far as a longer post gives you more chances to hit a long tail keyword you didn’t know existed. A short post can still rank, and can still provide value to the reader. Keyword density is an outdated notion that presumes Google hasn’t advanced in the last ten years. Outbound links are great as long as they help the reader.
In general, most data points you might worry about should be set aside. Your number one focus is always on whether or not your writing provides the reader with value. Nothing you do beyond that matters in the long run.
Keyword research is the starting point because it tells you whether or not enough people are looking for what you want to write about for it to be worth writing.
Some day you’ll have enough readers to not care about what Google thinks, and you’ll know the audience you’ve built well enough to know what they’re looking for. But until then, you need to practice a little search engine optimization.
