SEO Keyword Research Tips
Keywords are Dead.
When I arrived at TSL, one of the first things I did was to help our team and our clients kick the “keyword” habit.
Don’t get me wrong. Understanding the keywords & phrases, and adjacent terminology of your industry is important. It’s vital.
But it’s 2016 and you need to stop wasting time and energy on keyword research because you’re doing it wrong. Keywords are dead and great content wins.
Disclaimer: There has been plenty of debate around the importance of keyword targeting, especially over the past year. But those debates are for SEOs and digital marketing professionals. In-House marketers, content strategists, business managers, and business owners shouldn’t worry about keywords. And this blog post is for you.
Kicking the Keyword Habit
Keep using the term “long-tail keyword”. I’m not going to judge you.
The main challenge here is that targeting long-tail keywords requires us to know the search volume, at least relative search volume, for a keyword. We don’t.
We don’t know how often people search for a specific phrase or keyword. Google just doesn’t reveal that kind of information. And when they do, the keyword data is so diluted and convoluted that we feel persecuted (shoutout to Rhymebrain.com for help).
Let’s say that you want to target the phrase “IBM Cloud”
…because you’d like more traffic to your website pertaining for IBM Cloud Storage products. (I won’t get started on just how impossible it would be for your site to be found for that phrase — unless you were, of course, IBM.)
Following the typical recommendations, you visit Google’s Keyword Planner, Moz’s keyword tool, or dive into Hubspot’s Keyword Tool. And there you might see something like this:
You’re excited, right? You’ve hit the jackpot! “IBM Cloud” is searched for 9,900 times and competition is minimal.
One of the problems (among many) is that those numbers aren’t relevant to you. In fact, they don’t even pertain to organic search volume. And, the search volume you see above and that you find in similar tools include close variants.
What is a “Close Variant” Keyword?
Anywhere you see “search volume” next to a keyword, it’s referring to how often someone searched for a broad-match variant of that keyword. In our hypothetical situation above, the 9,900 searches could very likely include these popular search queries:
- “ibm cloud sales jobs”
- “ibm cloud transformation advisor salary”
- “ibm cloud certification study group”
The search volume associated with “IBM Cloud” will include all queries with no qualifying statements about which phrases were searched most often.
Still in doubt? Read this post about Google KW Planner on Moz’s Blog. Anyone in the industry shouldn’t be surprised to read a post like this because it’s old news. But this is surprising to anyone who hasn’t paid attention to Keyword trends, changes in the SEO industry, or Google’s ongoing changes to API use and limiting KW data.
Using Keyword Data to Make Bad Decisions
But Marty, all we need is a rough idea about how popular a topic is, and then we know whether we should target it right?
WRONG!
You just don’t have accurate data to help you make informed decisions as to which long-tail-keywords to target. Let’s take another run at this. I’ll try to simplify.
Let’s say you’re targeting “Network Security”. We’ll see what HubSpot tells us compared to Google.
HubSpot’s Results:
Google’s Results:
Well, it looks like there’s a disagreement. Who should we trust?
Probably, neither. Why? Let’s see what the related terms are and what’s being searched for:
- “network security engineer salary singapore”
- “free minecraft network security”
- “xbox 360 network security”
- “cryptography network security 5th edition”
I can promise you that 70% or more of the search volume attributed to “Network Security” is from “free minecraft network security” and “xbox 360 network security”.
So if you were to target “network security”, you’d probably see significantly fewer searches than what the keyword volume indicated.
And on top of this, you have very little idea what level of competition there is for the keyword. In the case of popular technology phrases, you know right off the bat that you’re going to have a lot of competition. When it comes to branded terms (like the IBM example above) you’ll be competing against Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, C-SPAN, Forbes, and a plethora of “How To” sites.
If you don’t believe me, go to Google and type in “IBM Cloud”. You’ll see the results. If you don’t buy into this, you’ll end up making a lot of really bad decisions that are based on very misleading data, which required considerable research time. Now, that’s just bad marketing — bad business really.
The Solution? Embrace the New SEO Marketing
So what’s a digital marketer to do?
Well, in short, become an authority for a single segment. That could be one industry, one product line, or one consumer pain point. Here’s an example:
- Identify a niche market segment that you want more traffic from.
- List out the different offerings or solutions you provide that are most valuable to that segment (don’t list them all out).
- Consider what actual people want from that segment or what they need AND how you fulfill that need. Consider the blog topics, collateral, and various content pieces that speak to your target market’s wants and needs.
- Begin writing down specific ideas for pieces of content that you want to create. Now, this is key: Don’t seek inspiration from a mom’s blog because it’s just not relevant. Also, you don’t need to write a scholarly article, draft a 30-page white paper, or shoot a motion picture. You need content that is uniquely valuable, helpful, and easily digestible. Take, for example, infographics. That ship has run it’s course, but their popularity was in part because they presented complicated information in an easy-to-read way that wasn’t intimidating. Think like that.
- Now, search on Google (or Bing — I guess) to see what your competition is like. I’m not saying to spend hours here. Just search for something similar to one of your ideas. What shows up? Were you considering creating an infographic depicting the epic rivalry between the state of MD v. the state of NY in lacrosse? Well, if your search returns a 6 high-quality, recently published infographics, then you should cross that idea off your list. Ask yourself whether the competition offers something great or if there’s an opportunity to beat them out. (And there’s no point in making that infographic, MD wins by a landslide.)
- And finally, get to it. Write, produce, record, draw, sow, whatever!
The result?
You’ll spend less time researching, and you’ll create more valuable content that will eventually have higher organic ranking. In the end, this will give you a stronger website.
Great content wins the day. Creating content based on topics that are important to your audience and helpful is more valuable to your company than focusing on keywords.
Uniquely valuable, targeted content drives relevant traffic to websites, and a percentage of that relevant traffic will ultimately turn into sales.
The days of keyword stuffing and over-publishing have passed. Search engines are smarter than that - people are smarter than that - and both expect more from your content. Give it to them.
Give your readers what they want. And stop baiting people with outdated SEO keyword tricks.
Write for people, not Google. Your content is the face of your brand.
Now say this with me: “Keywords are dead. Long live your brand.”
