Thursday, July 25th, 2024
When it comes to Content Marketing production, one of the most important but at times often overlooked areas of importance is keyword research. In order to drive targeted traffic to your blog and rank high in the Search engines, it comes down to choosing the right keywords that your ideal visitor is entering into the search query.
There’s no point ranking number 1 on Google, if it’s for a string of keywords that no one’s ever going to search for.
Also, if you?re targeting common short-tail (1-2 word) keywords that are highly competitive, then you?ll find it hard for your content to rank anywhere near the top of Google.
The majority of them, if not all of the websites that rank high for these short-tail keywords, are big established authority websites like Wikipedia.
It would be extremely difficult, to knock off any of these sites from the top spots!
Use Long Tail Keywords
For best results, you want to target the low-hanging fruit, the long-tail keywords (3-5 words), that just a few other marketers are targeting.
Why? Because with long-tail keywords, you can easily ascertain the searchers intent, so you can create the exact content that they?re looking for.
This means that those who will eventually read your content, are the ones who are specifically searching for it.
For example, if someone typed a short-tail keyword such as “bag” into Google, you wouldn’t know exactly what that person is looking for.
They could be looking for a definition of the word bag, or they could be looking for different types of bags.
However, if someone typed a long-tail keyword like “how to make a handbag,” or “where to buy a red Nike backpack,” you?d know exactly what that person is searching for.
The best part about targeting the right long-tail keywords, is that you can target those that has buyer intent.
This is when your conversion rates should become that much higher, than if you were targeting common popular keyword phrases.
In addition to focusing on long-tail keywords, another keyword metric you should be paying close attention to, is the search volume for that keyword.
Finding Buyer Intent Keywords
You can use a free tool like Keywords Everywhere (https://keywordseverywhere.com) to get search volume data, when initially researching.
Learn About Keywords Everywhere HERE
For example, if you were to choose between two buyer intent keywords, you?d prioritize the one that has a higher search volume.
Some may argue that search volume, is based on historical data and should be ignored, but it?s actually a pretty good indicator of a keyword?s potential demand in the future.
Of course, some new and trending keywords may not have as much volume as other similar keywords in the past, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to them.
Even keywords with zero search volume, can still turn out to be quite profitable in the near future!
New keywords are coming up all the time, everyday, so if you want to create a demand for a keyword, it?s certainly doable.
If you want to know what type of keywords your target audience is going to use, you need to establish a user profile, of your most “model” customer.
Try to get into your most ideal readers head and think and act like them. What would “John” or “Jane” think? What would they type into Google?
Write your thoughts down. Write your potential keywords down.
Once you establish a list of your best content ideas, you should also add these new ideas to your keyword list.
The next thing for you to do, is to plug your keywords into a keyword research tool like Jaxxy. (https://www.jaaxy.com)
For the most part, a good keyword tool, will show you the best keywords to target.
It will reveal how competitive a keyword is, if it?s worth going after or if you?re just potentially wasting your time.
Once you’ve finished your keyword research, you can then put everything into a Microsoft Excel file or Google Sheets spreadsheet.
Filtering Out The Best Keywords
You then want to go over your keywords, one by one, and group related keywords together.
When you create your content, you can then target all those related keywords in the group at once.
Just a word of caution. Your keyword groups shouldn’t have too many keywords in it, as it can get too difficult, if you try and target every single keyword on the list.
For optimum results, try to have at the most 20 keywords per group. Remove one-word keywords from your list as it will be nearly impossible to rank for.
If you’ve initially grouped more than 20 keywords, see if you can split a group into two or even three smaller groups. This will help you create yet more targeted specific content.
Brainstorming Content Ideas
When it comes to successful Content Marketing, it comes down to creating compelling contagious information that’s pertinent, and then sharing it on your blog and the social networks.
This so your content marketing strategy, can result in consistent everlasting production of high-quality information, this day in and day out.
You can?t just write a short uninspired story, an absolutely random blog post, and then expect it to go viral, or expect it rank on the top of Google and the other search engines.
In the past, the quantity over quality approach may have worked, but recently, search engines have become a lot more astute.
You?re basically competing with millions of other blogs, websites, and articles in your niche, on the same keyword phrases.
If you want to outrank others, what you need is to come up with valuable content for those keywords, that’s better than theirs.
By valuable, it’s content that has the potential to change your readers minds and ultimately lives for the better!
Something that offers a unique insight into your niche, something that will establish your brand as an authority. and not just some generic “me too” content, that rehashes what everyone else is writing about.
Brainstorming Techniques You Can Use
Brainstorming for suitable content ideas, is a great way to fill up your content pipeline.
If you?re wondering if you need a content pipeline, the answer is a big resounding “YES!”
You should have at least 30 to 50 ideas in your pipeline. The more ideas that you can add, the better off you will be.
Generating Ideas For Content:
• Answer the 5 W?s And The H – This is one of the most basic techniques you can use to generate content ideas. Basically, once you have a central idea, you need to answer the 5 W?s (who, what, why, where, when) and the H (how)
• Check What?s Popular And Trending – Find a way to connect your niche to the latest trends and events. You can do so by finding out what?s popular on social media, the news or what the top TV shows are showing
• Get Inspiration From Your Competitors – Find out which topics get the most likes and shares on your competitors blogs, and see how you can put your own spin on it. Of course, you?re not going to plagiarize, but what you can do is strive to create content that?s far better than all of your competitors
• Mind Mapping – This is a great technique because you can visually see the themes and the sub-themes for your main idea. You can have as many “branches” and “sub-branches” as you like
• Use Content Idea Generators – There are quite a few content idea generators you can use, to come up with some original and fun topics. You can try a combination of different brainstorming techniques, to help you generate the most ideas in the shortest amount of time
You may get some farfetched or seemingly impossible ideas for now, but don?t throw those out yet.
Save them by creating a list of priority topics, and then another list for possible future topics.
Creating Content Titles And Outlines
First get your keyword groups sorted out, as what you’re going to do is create a title for each keyword group.
Try to understand what each of the keyword group?s theme is about, so it?s easier for you to create the outline and the content.
The titles that you come up with doesn’t need to be set in stone. You can change them at anytime, even after you’ve published your content.
At this point, you just want to get as many titles up as possible.
For each keyword group, try to come up with 2-3 possible titles. Do this from one group to another, until you have titles for all of the groups.
Then go back to the very first keyword group, and choose what you think the most suitable title is.
The title should accurately represent all of the keywords, in the entire group.
The Skeleton Of The Content
Once you’ve selected a suitable title, you can then start creating an outline. Your outline should include all of the keywords in your group.
As much as possible, you want the keywords in your content?s headers and sub-headers, as you’ll get some SEO points doing so.
Of course, you don?t want to keyword stuff. If a keyword doesn’t make any sense in the header, then reserve it for the main content later on.
Creating The Content Outline
Your outline should be easy to understand. You need to do so, because you don?t want to get confused later on, when you start working on the content.
If you outsource to someone else, then it?s even more imperative that your outline makes sense.
Create an outline for all your keyword groups, this especially if you’ve managed to come up with plenty of keyword groups!
While working on the outlines, you can see which pieces of content are going to be related. Write them down, if you think you can link content A to content B and so on.
This is also great for internal linking later on.
How much detail you include in your outline, is ultimately going to be up to you.
If you know the topic well, then a loose outline will probably do. You still have other keyword groups to create outlines for!
Planning Out Your Content Calendar
Consistency and organization, are important when it comes to your content marketing strategy.
The best way to make sure that you have content published regularly and routinely, is to set up a content calendar.
Doing so not only helps you organize your content, but you can also plan your calendar ahead of time.
Without a calendar, your strategy may end up in complete chaos, and sooner or later, you?ll find yourself procrastinating and doing tasks that aren’t related to your content marketing goals.
Creating A Content Calendar
You can use a spreadsheet, or you can download a free content calendar template from the Internet.
What’s Recommended Is Using Google Calendar
• Google Calendar is free to use, and it?s drag and drop easy
• You can access it anywhere you are in the world, as long as you have an Internet connection
• You can open it on your desktop, your laptop, your iPad, iPhone or Android device
• You can add multiple calendars and use different colors (this works great if you plan on using separate social media and content calendars!)
• If you work with a team, you can share your calendar with your teammates and assign them different access levels
To get started with Google Calendar, you?ll need a Google account. You can sign up and connect to it, with GMail.
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