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This article is part of a series of posts that make up the “How to Start a Blog” guide. If you want to read this series from the beginning, start here.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a rabbit hole with seemingly endless amounts of gurus, advice, and tools to try to accomplish the same objective: get people to come to your site. And it doesn’t take very long to realize that there’s a lot of conflicting information. What do the SEO “experts” actually do that works? In Lewis Carroll’s adventure, Alice, who had some experience with rabbit holes herself, said, “I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.” It’s been my experience that many SEO gurus do not follow their own advice, and many who do are not successful.
So I figure I’ll tell you what I actually do for keyword research on this blog. After all, you found this article, which means my keyword research worked to get you here. I don’t use any secret software, tools, or gimmicks, just content that helps people.
As you work through your keyword research, here are the main things to keep in mind that will greatly increase your chance of success:
- Find out what questions are being asked.
- Review related searches and auto-complete suggestions.
- Combine data with logic.
- Immerse yourself in your field.
- Focus on being helpful.
By focusing more on human behavior and the goal of search engines rather than on finding the “right software” or “secret sauce,” you can create content that ranks well long after the next Google algorithm update.
Why is the majority of SEO advice bad?
Much of the SEO advice given on the internet is given specifically because of the high commissions that are attached to SEO tools and software. In fact, that’s a big reason why there’s so much SEO advice on the internet – SEO affiliate commissions are incredibly high.
The second reason that a lot of SEO advice is bad is because of an inherent incentive to “game the system.” If you can find a way to hack your way to the top of the Google results for your industry, you can make a lot of money. In fact, the top results on Google are so valuable that it’s what Google based it’s entire business model on – people are willing to pay to put their website in front of as many would-be customers as possible.
Google makes a ton of money on the sponsored results at the top of Google results. So here’s the catch – Google is incentivized to try to make the results as relevant as possible. Google needs its users to trust the system so that they’ll keep coming back again and again. This is why Google pushes updates all the time to its search algorithm. These updates are designed to increase the relevancy of search results to provide the best results possible.
What’s the result? Many of the websites who tried to shortcut the system are cut off, and their rankings plummet. The “secret sauce” they found that worked in the short term is now totally defunct. But in the short time that it was working, that secret sauce was spread as SEO guru advice across the internet, and was even baked into SEO software and tools.
What you want to do is find the keywords that you can effectively cover in your website, and ensure that you create content that ranks well for years to come.
What are keywords and what is keyword research?
For the purposes of getting site traffic, “keywords” refers to words and phrases that people are looking for on the internet. You may hear the phrases “long-tail keywords” vs. “short-tail keywords.” Long-tail keywords are long phrases that are usually quite specific, whereas short-tail keywords are shorter and more broad.
As an example, let’s say that you’re looking for nutritious dog food for your dog. You might do a Google search for the short-tail keyword “best dog food” and get over 2 billion results. That amount of results is terrifyingly overwhelming, and you may not quite find what you’re looking for – it isn’t specific enough to your situation. So you may do a different search for the long-tail keyword “best dog food for huskies” and get close to 2 million results. That’s 1,000 times fewer results! Keep in mind that the longer your keywords, the better chance you have of ranking, but the smaller your target audience.
Keyword research is the process of figuring out where there are gaps in Google’s search results so you can fill those gaps and capture the traffic. Ideally you’ll find keywords that have high demand, but low competition. It’s also a process of finding the right balance between short-tail and long-tail keywords to find areas where you can compete and the audience size is worth the effort.
What are search engines looking for?
I used to work at a website-design company and we built thousands of websites. My team of designers and writers focused a portion of our time on keyword optimization. What did we find? We consistently found that good, helpful content always ranked better. Many of the clients that we worked with would insist on creating “top 10 products” or “most expensive product” review articles in hopes of capturing traffic and making money fast on high-paying affiliate programs. But why would you go to an obscure blog you’ve never heard of to read a biased review (since the blog writer wants you to buy the product so they get a commission) when you could go straight to Amazon and read hundreds or thousands of reviews from people who actually bought the product?
Instead, search engines love how-to and explanatory articles that provide the best information possible under the most ideal conditions (fast load times, low amount of spam, high domain authority, etc.). Search engines are looking for really great answers to the questions that get asked. It’s a search engine – and they are only as good as the answers they return. That’s specifically why Google dominates the competition for internet search – their results have consistently been more relevant and more useful.
That’s not to say that there’s never a place for providing product reviews and going after affiliate commissions. However, Google and your audience will trust you much more if you provide great content that does a fantastic job of answering questions.
Which leads us to the first main thing to focus on when doing your keyword research.
Find out what questions are being asked
You need to figure out what questions are being asked and which questions currently have the worst answers. Have you ever tried to find something on Google only to come up with answers that weren’t quite what you were looking for? Over the course of a month or so, write those questions down! If you are looking for an answer and can’t find it very easily, chances are that others are also running into that problem. If you can write good answers to those questions, you can rank well.
If you’ve already chosen your topic and set up your blog, start doing searches on Google for things related to your topic. You’ll want to keep track of three main points as you do this:
- Are there a lot of answer results for your search?
- Are the answers to this search query really great?
- Which websites are ranking on the first page for this search query, and are they massive, well-known sites?
If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, that can be a warning flag that you may not be able to be successful by writing articles on that topic. A “yes” doesn’t mean you should abandon all hope of ever ranking for those keywords, it just means that you might have a harder time doing so and it’s worth considering all of the factors as a whole before proceeding with caution. It can also mean that you’re too broad in your search.
Remember the “best dog food” search from earlier? You probably won’t rank for those keywords, like ever. Unless you’re willing to dedicate your entire site and years of research/writing to rank. Currently, the top search result for “best dog food” is DogFoodAdvisor. That’s a blog that’s 100% dedicated to just one thing – dog food. They’re able to claim the top spot in Google because of that specific focus.
But you may be more likely to be able to rank for long-tail keywords, like “best dog food for huskies.” Your chance of success is likely higher if you write a blog about “huskies”, rather than “dogs” in general.
You also need to pay attention to quality. If there are a lot of results for your search but they’re all unhelpful, you have a great chance at ranking well if you can write detailed, helpful posts on the topic that answer the question really well.
Review related searches and auto-complete suggestions
A very helpful method for determining what people are searching for is using Google auto-complete and related searches. You can start typing the first part of a question into the Google search bar and see what Google predicts are the questions you might want to ask.
Using our example topic of dogs from earlier, I might start typing “do dogs” and see what Google predicts as a question I might want to ask. These predictions are based on Google’s extensive data on historical searches – in other words, these are the questions that other people most often ask. There are some awesome things people are searching for in this case, like, “do dogs have belly buttons,” “do dogs dream,” “do dogs go to heaven,” “do dogs get hiccups,” etc.
There’s another website that is based entirely on this idea that I use often and can recommend totally: Answer the Public. Answer the Public allows you to enter in your topic and see a bunch of questions that people on the internet are asking relating to your topic. The website will produce charts and word diagrams that show related searches and alternative phrasing for similar questions. It’s free to get started with a couple of searches every day, and then you can upgrade for unlimited searches.
If you do use Answer the Public to get some ideas for your blog, I’d recommend taking those ideas and bringing them back over to Google. By searching those things in Google, you can get results straight from the source and see if the competition is low enough (or the opportunity great enough) for them to be good keywords.
Combine data with logic
Once you’ve done some research using the above methods, or SEO keyword tools, you’ll want to combine your numerical results with human logic. This is the “gut check” method, and while totally subjective, I believe it’s an important piece of the puzzle that many SEO “experts” leave out.
The next example uses the Google keyword planner, a tool that can be a great way to gather data to determine the relative amount of traffic – but don’t put too much faith in it! Keep in mind that this tool is used for determining the cost and relative competition of placing an ad on Google, not necessarily the competition of ranking on Google.
Let’s take an example from the Google keyword planner tool where I think the data is likely off. Using our earlier example on dog food, I did a search in the keyword planner for “best dog food.” Take a look at some of the results:
I was very surprised at the monthly search volume that Google is claiming for some of the search results. 10 – 100 monthly searches on Google for “best supermarket dog food?” This is where we want to combine the data with logic. I don’t think there’s any way that this search term only gets 10 – 100 searches per month. “Best raw bones for puppies?” also has to have more.
This is obviously not very scientific, but think about the population size of the audience for your keywords. Think about how many people you know that would be interested in the topic. How many people have you seen or spoken with that are participating in something related to the topic? How many people own dogs? If you’re finding keywords that have very low competition but also seemingly low demand (search volume), do a check to see if that lines up with what seems logical. Don’t let what seems to be a small amount of demand scare you away for something that may actually have higher demand, but low competition. Check your gut. Does the data you’re seeing seem logical? If not, it’s probably wrong.
Side note – I don’t normally recommend using keyword tools that attempt to estimate traffic and competition. This is because the tools are often wrong, as they’re working off of a small subset of data. Usually best to go straight to the source (Google) for your research on keywords. Check out this excellent video by Income School that compares the results of various “SEO keyword planning” tools:
Immerse yourself in the field
Once you’ve figured out your topic and some keywords, spend the time in your chosen industry to become an expert. If you’ve chosen a topic that you’re interested in, chances are good that you already have some experience in that industry.
Learn the pros and cons of multiple approaches to the question. Many things in life have multiple possible answers and outcomes. Just because you’ve found something that “works” doesn’t mean that it’s the best/fastest/cheapest/easiest solution. Your readers will appreciate the research you’ve done in laying out the various options and talking about the pros and cons.
Ultimately, you’ll want to learn as much as you can to enable yourself to be able to write the most helpful content possible.
Focus on being helpful
Remember how Google is incentivised to make its search results as relevant as possible? Well, that’s where it’s important to be as helpful as possible. If you can be helpful, if you can answer search questions better and more thoroughly than anyone else out there, you can get traffic.
At this point you should have a series of questions that you can answer and various topics you can address. Answer and address them as well as you can.
Some of the most frustrating websites are the ones that make you click through multiple links or navigate through hundreds of ads to find what you’re looking for. Don’t do that to your readers. It will drive traffic away. Instead, remember times where you received answers that were particularly helpful. What made them helpful? Implement those aspects into your blog articles.
Here are some of the things I thought of as traits of a helpful answer:
- Honest
- Accurate
- Precise
- Clear
- Relevant
- Engaging
- Concise
- Comprehensive
- Understandable
Get started writing!
Now that you have some great keyword ideas and questions to answer, it’s time to get started writing. How do you write blog articles, and how do you make sure that your content is engaging and relevant? The next article in this series talks all about writing articles.