Creating content that people want to read needs to be your priority.
Every business owner wants to rank on page one, spot one on Google. SEO can be a massively worthwhile investment that can single-handedly transform your company’s ability to reach more customers more easily and cheaply than your competitors. Using a combination of SEO and social media, I’ve helped companies grow from $300k a year to over a million in seven months and changed how multi-billion-dollar industries do their marketing.
Yet, for all that, I spend a lot of time talking people out of SEO. The reality is, until you’ve got about $50,000 a year to invest in it, you’re probably not going to get the result you want, and despite good intentions, the typical professional you find won’t be able to deliver on their promise. Even worse, for most, if you get the ranking you want and the traffic you desire, you still probably won’t get the actual sales conversion you’re hoping for.
Fortunately, what matters most to make SEO work for you is also what makes for a highly effective website and increases your online sales dramatically. It’s all summed up in one word: value.
Make value-driven content that’s compelling, wins your readers’ attention, and wows them.
The most important ranking factors never change, everything else does.
By far the most important ranking factors that Google considers are how many people visit your site directly, how much time they spend reading it, and whether or not they visit multiple pages. People visiting your website directly tells Google that you must be credible because people are visiting the page all on their own. The other two are all oriented around the quality of your content and whether or not it actually delivered value to the reader.
Google’s prime directive to make its search product better is to provide the most suitable answer to a searcher’s question. The better you answer the questions people are looking for, the higher you’ll rank and the more your conversion will be. That means that insightful, compelling, and valuable content that’s different from your competitors is always going to be the primary driver of search results.
SEO is about editing and promoting content, not ranking.
There are hundreds of optimizations that are all technical. Think of these as edits, similar to how a proof-reader edits an article. All that’s being done is optimizing and changing the language a little bit and adding metadata, schema (JSON-LD), and other technical aspects to “tweak” how an algorithm processes the data of the content.
The other piece, commonly blasted out as backlinks, is really just another way to say promotion. The more people reference your content, the higher over time it will rank because it’s valuable. People try to cheat the system by buying backlinks that are of questionable quality, which means that when a big Google algorithm hits, they start losing all the things they worked for because Google starts eliminating bad “backlink” sources.
An editor can’t make bad content good and a promoter can’t make bad content popular. That means even with the technical factors involved in SEO, the universal answer is: Make good content that people actually find valuable enough to read.
Forget keywords, write content based on customer questions instead.
The easiest way to focus on what people actually want to read is to do what you do as a professional anyway: Answer questions that matter to customers. When you create content focused around the things that your customers actually ask you, and answer them in the way that you actually do in person, a funny thing happens: You get content that people actually want to read because it matters to them.
If all you did was get in the habit of writing down or recording the questions your customer asks, answer them in the way that works for you in person, and turn those into articles, you’d be miles ahead of the competition in search engines because you’ve created valuable and insightful content to drive the whole thing.
Social listening enables brands to understand what their customers truly think about the brand’s products and services. By “listening” for mentions of the brand’s name, products, and services on social media, brands can remove pain points in the customer journey, resolve customer complaints, learn what customers like and what they don’t, and even learn what customers think about the brand’s competitors. That said, there are several things that brands should avoid doing when using social listening. This article will discuss the pitfalls of social listening and how to avoid them.
What Is Social Listening?
Social listening is a marketing practice in which brands “listen” for keywords, typically the brand name, the brand’s products and services, and its competitor’s brand names, products and services, on social media outlets. By actively listening for those terms, brands are able to rapidly respond to customer complaints, determine where the pain points are in the customer journey, understand what they are doing right, and where they are going wrong. Additionally, brands can learn the things that customers like or dislike about the brand’s competitor’s products and services.
Research by SmartInsights revealed that as of October 2021, 57.6% of the world’s population (4.55 billion people) use social media. The leading social media outlets are, in order, Facebook (2.8 billion users), YouTube (2.2 billion users), WhatsApp (2 billion users), Instagram (1.3 billion users), and farther down the list, TikTok (732 million users), Pinterest (478 million users), and Twitter (397 million users).
A report from GlobalWebIndex showed that up to 50% of social media users use social networks to do research on products and services. Additionally, a report from Statista indicated that 33% of those polled from the United States said that they have used social media to complain about a brand or its customer service. Given these statistics, brands have a huge opportunity to learn more about their customers through social listening.
Don’t Fail to Listen to How People Feel
Dean Browell, PhD, Professor of Digital Ethnography and Social Listening at the VCU School of Business, shared his thoughts on the true benefit of social listening: gaining a much clearer picture of the personalities, behaviours, and feelings of customers. “Social listening provides deep behavioural insights into the decision making of the online public while also providing the landscape through which peers find when they are information gathering,” explained professor Browell. “It helps to illustrate the personalities and behaviours of audiences and can be used to follow trends and patterns in both the audiences and their feelings toward brands, services, products, facilities, and more. Social listening seeks to provide the voice of the consumer and understand the volume and timber of that voice and how it influences others.”
Brands often get caught up on metrics, rather than paying attention to the feelings that their customers are expressing on social media. These customers are representative of all the other customers that feel the same way but haven’t taken the time to post on social media. “Listen to them — they’re telling you what products they want, how they want to be treated, and who they trust. And if you think those are just the loudest voices, then understand the power of those loud voices for all the lurkers looking for answers. Social listening can help you understand the customer experience and their perception of it — and how it influences others. That’s very different than simply how they navigate your website or find products in store (although they might talk about that too),” said professor Browell.
Don’t Focus on the Brand’s Official Social Channels
When brands focus on social media, they often turn to their own official channels, focusing on what customers post there, or how they respond to what the brand has posted. Often, however, the most revealing aspects of social listening will show up on customer’s own profile pages, or within other groups or communities.
“It’s understandable that brands would be focused on the channels they own first, but there’s a real issue with thinking that by mostly paying attention to who shows up at your official channels represents how people actually feel about you,” said professor Browell. “Yes, there’s things to be revealed in those interactions, but the context of those interactions is incredibly important — and showing how people speak to peers when you’re not around is crucial to understanding why some segment shows up at all on your digital doorstep. It’s too small of a focus group.”
According to Davitha Ghiassi, executive vice president of Social and Integration at Red Havas, a merged media public relations and communication agency, going beyond the comments that come to brands is vital to gain a fuller understanding of their customers. “Whilst much of your customer feedback may come to you directly via branded channels — research shows that 96% of the people that discuss brands online do not follow those brands’ owned profiles,” said Ghiassi. “Therefore, looking beyond the comments that come to you is crucial in order to see the complete picture; and social listening enables you to do just that by tracking conversations including relevant keywords, brand mentions and even visual mentions of your brand (i.e. logo, product through visual intelligence tools like Talkwalker).”
Don’t Just Listen, Participate
The 2020 Sprout Social Index report revealed that 79% of customers expect a response within the first 24 hours after they have reached out to a brand through social media, and 40% expect brands to respond within an hour. Although social listening is about just that — listening — it also provides opportunities for brands to interact and respond to customers.
When customers create a post extolling the virtues of a brand’s products, that brand should step in and reply, thanking them for their feedback. When customers leave negative comments about a product or service, it’s the perfect time for the brand to resolve a problem and gain a loyal customer. Social listening is not just about listening to what customers are saying — it’s about participating, and having conversations with customers, showing them that the brand cares about them, and is grateful to be able to learn how they feel about the brand.
Brands must avoid being confrontational or defensive when they reply to what may appear to be negative comments left by customers on social media. They should leave a well thought out reply explaining that they are sorry that the customer had an issue, along with a way for the customer to contact them directly to resolve the issue. If the issue cannot be resolved, they should offer to immediately reimburse the customer for the entirety of what they paid. Once the offer has been resolved, there is always the opportunity to provide the customer with a special discount, buy one get one free, or something extra that shows that the brand cares about the customer’s feelings.
“Social listening not only offers a powerful means of identifying and directly addressing comments, questions or concerns surrounding your brand or product — it also allows you to look to them for insights that can help improve the overall customer service strategy,” explained Ghiassi. “For example, by creating pro-active content that can live across channels and addresses frequently asked questions sourced via social.”
Don’t Fail to Set Goals for Social Listening Initiatives
Many brands begin social listening initiatives without setting any specific goals or KPIs. Not only do specific goals require different practices, but without goals or KPIs it becomes impossible to gauge the effectiveness of social listening initiatives.
Depending on the goals that have been set for social listening initiatives, brands can gain a much deeper understanding of their customers’ needs and desires, how they feel about the brand in general, or how they feel about specific products and services, than they can through other channels. “Goals of social listening can be incredibly varied,” said professor Browell. “Social listening could help inform a brand of their actual brand health, it could provide insight into how their target audiences (B2C or B2B) make decisions and therefore inform decision paths, it can help validate and enhance personas, it can help with recruitment and retention, it can illuminate crucial geographic differences, it can enrich other research including making big data more valuable with rich insights, it can help in product development and adoption…honestly, the applications are as endless as a market research tool, the only difference is social listening also informs you on what the public will find when they look for peer input — something that a survey or focus group can’t fundamentally confirm.”
Final Thoughts
Social listening can be a very effective tool that enables brands to get to know their customers on a more personal, emotional level — when it is done correctly. Brands must set goals for their social listening initiatives in order to reap the most benefits, listen to how their customers feel, and learn to empathize with what they are hearing. They must not make the mistake of only listening to what is posted on the brand’s own official social media channels, and they must participate, rather than just listen, responding to customers when appropriate. Finally, brands must take action based on the insights that social listening has revealed, and ultimately, improve the customer journey.
SEO keywords range from singular words to complex phrases and are used in website copy to attract relevant, organic search traffic. However, keyword integration is just the start. When properly leveraged, targeted SEO keywords should be used to inspire all page content in order to satisfy searcher intent.
From a searcher’s perspective, keywords are the terms typed or spoken into a search engine. When effectively researched and optimized, keywords act as a conduit for your target audience to find the most appropriate content on your website.
But Aren’t Keywords Obsolete?
Whether you’ve heard this a few times already or your first is yet to come, “Keywords are dead” is a phrase which continues to barge its way into SEO circles. Rather than tip-toe around this recurring, binary, often-click-bait motivated assertion, let’s confront it head on.
Several developments in the SEO world have caused this claim to be stirred from hibernation, but there are four major ones that come to mind.
1. “(not provided)”
If you’re brand new to SEO, you may be surprised to know organic keywords were once easily accessible in Google Analytics, Adobe Omniture, or any other analytics platform.
I’m not going to lie; it was pretty fantastic. We didn’t know how good we had it at the time.
However, things started changing in 2010 when Google began quietly taking steps to remove keyword data from our web analytics. In late 2011 through the following year, keyword data was being removed in a big way. It wouldn’t take long for the top keyword driver for every site to be ‘(not provided)’.
Once we lost our keyword data and were seemingly flying blind, many were quick to write the obituary for keywords.
But what really was different? After all, people were still searching the same and Google hadn’t changed how it was interpreting our content. We just had less visibility.
We’ve all heard, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” This is the same thing. Nothing was different; we just weren’t around.
Another time the validity of keywords was challenged was when Google rebuilt its algorithm in 2013. Receiving its name for being fast and precise, Hummingbird helped Google better understand search intent, particularly with complex and conversational searches.
In 2015, Google incorporated the AI-driven ranking factor, RankBrain, into the mix to further improve its query interpretation abilities.
Before, a search for “what pizza places near me deliver?” would send Google off looking for content that matches those terms. Now, Google uses these keywords as contextual signals to learn what we really want and often rewrites our query behind the scenes (e.g., “pizza delivery 66062”).
Knowing Google often rewrites our search queries may make it seem like their usefulness is all but obsolete. But really, Google just got smarter with what we provided.
Here’s another perspective. Have you ever heard the statistic that only 7 percent of communication is through words alone? This was derived from a popular study in the late 1960s and is often used to boost the stature of nonverbal communion, diminishing that which is verbal.
Here’s a challenge for you:
Go through your entire day tomorrow without using words – no typing, saying, or signing them. At the end of the day, let me know if you felt your communication was 93 percent as effective as it normally is.
I think you can probably predict the outcome.
It’s not that the stat is wrong. There is so much more to communication (and search) than words. It is, however, often misunderstood.
The 7 percent speaks more to quantity than importance. We need that 7 percent, and we need keywords.
I love voice search. Even though it’s been around for years, I still feel like I’m in the future when Google magically captures my unintelligible stammering.
As voice search grew from being an occasionally-used novelty to a staple in our search behavior, many wondered what that meant for keywords. We all knew voice search impacted keywords, but did it kill them?
We’ve Become Long-Winded
Between us (subconsciously) picking up on Google’s heightened interpretation skills and our communication tendencies when talking versus typing, we have become very conversational and detailed searchers.
In the old days, if we wanted to know who Brad Pitt’s first wife was, we would translate our thoughts into a search-friendly query, like “Brad Pitt’s wives”. Now, we simply tell Google what we want: “Who was Brad Pitt’s first wife?”. This is one of the main reasons why 15 percent of searches have never been heard of before by Google every single day.
So, while it’s been a huge win for searchers, it’s posed challenges to SEO professionals. For instance, it’s hard to know which keywords to keep an eye on if a significant chunk of traffic is driven by those that had rarely, if ever, been searched before.
But this goes back to the “(not provided)” argument. Just because our tracking is imperfect doesn’t mean the significance of keywords lessens in any way.
We Omit Important Keywords
Did you know through voice search you can find out when Scarlett Johansson’s first album was released from a query that doesn’t include her name or the name of her album? (Side note: Did you know Scarlett Johansson had an album?)
So, do keywords actually matter if you can leave out crucial bits and still get what you want? Of course! This just forces us to step back and look at the bigger picture, rather than examine each individual search in a vacuum.
Starting in 2014 and kicking things up a notch two years later, Google’s Keyword Planner tool began grouping volumes for similar terms. Instead of showing keyword A gets searched 100 times per month and keyword A1 gets searched 50 times per month, both would show 150. Google said the reason for this to make sure “you don’t miss out on potential customers” and to “maximize the potential for your ads to show on relevant searches.”
That explanation certainly implies searcher intent doesn’t vary much between closely related terms.
The move seemed to reinforce the notion that topics, not keywords, are all SEO professionals need to worry about. However, this doesn’t explain why Google search will often significantly shake up its results for keywords that Google Keyword Planner deems synonymous enough to lump together.
Ultimately, Keyword Planner is a PPC tool. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to understand how forcing PPC bidders to expand their keyword targeting could be a financially-motivated decision.
We know keywords are alive and well, but why are they so critical to SEO?
Keywords are Clues
The importance of keywords in SEO is in part due to their importance outside of it.
Forget about keywords, rankings, traffic, or even your website for a minute.
If you knew your customers’ true feelings, how would you operate your business differently? How valuable would those insights be to you?
In his book, “Everybody Lies”, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz shares his findings of what search behavior tells about human psychology. When in a focus group, taking a survey or responding to something on Twitter, we all tend to let our answers be impacted by how others may perceive them.
What about when we’re searching? The combination of anonymity and immediate access to a wealth of information paves the way for an unadulterated look into what we truly want.
It’s data-driven truth serum.
At its core, keyword research is a powerful market research tool that can be leveraged in many different ways, not just informing website content. To get the most out of keywords, you have to look beyond the explicit, literal translation and also pick up on the implicit clues to gain the true intent of each keyword.
As an example, let’s look at the query, “safest baby cribs”.
safest baby cribs 2017
Explicit information
Implicit information
concerned about safety
likely first-time parents
wants more than one crib to choose from
wants to know what makes cribs safe/unsafe
looking for article published in 2017
understands safety standards change over time
in research phase with future intent to buy
possibly in process of buying other items for nursery
safety may be more important than cost or aesthetics
likely looking for a list of cribs ranked by safety measure
Keywords are Like Personas
Personas act as bullseyes. They aren’t all we’re after but by aiming for them, we’re setting ourselves up for success.
Cover Your Entire Backlink Workflow
Analyze, clean, earn, and track backlinks from one tab. Manage your link profile easily with SEMrush!.
It’s not as if I only want to market to 54-year old women named Betty who have a 401k and are soon to be empty nesters. But that level of granularity and focus helps ensure I’m attracting the right group of people.
Conversely, if you have no focus and try to appeal to everyone, you will likely come away empty-handed. It’s a beautiful paradox, really – the exclusivity of your target audience often is directly related to the size of your actual audience, and vice versa.
It’s the same with keywords. A quick peek into Google Search Console’s search query data will tell you it’s never just about one keyword. However, having a primary keyword target for each page will give you the right direction and perspective to capture the right audience from a plethora of related searches.
How do You Choose the Right Keywords?
This topic could live in a post on its own, which it has many, many times. Here are some of my recent favorites:
While I highly suggest researching and experimenting with this topic in great detail if you’re serious about honing your craft, here’s a quick introduction to selecting the best keywords for SEO.
Don’t start with keywords: Before you put on your SEO hat or even your marketing hat, just be human. Learn about your customers from your customers. Before diving into tools and spreadsheets, try to gain some real empathy and understanding for the customers you’re serving and the perspectives they hold.
Build a seed list: Using what you gained in step one, along with what you know about where your customers’ needs and your business’ solutions intersect, brainstorm an initial list of words and phrases that effectively describe your core offerings.
Gather current keyword data (if your site already exists): Generate a list of what is currently (and nearly) driving traffic to your site using Google Search Console click data and any ranking data you have.
Expand the list using various keyword tools: Expand on the list you’ve built from steps 1-3 by looking for new keyword groups, alternate phrases, common modifiers and long-tail permutations. If you haven’t used many keyword research tools up to this point, now’s your time.
Group terms by search intent: Categorize your keywords in a way that will be simple and useful for you and anyone else who might look through them. This can be done by audience-type, phase of the funnel, or any other way that makes sense to you.
Map keywords to content: Choose 1-4 primary keywords to target on each page based on a careful balance between keyword difficulty, relevance, and search volume (taking organic SERP visibility into account). Once those are determined, find semantically-related and long-tail modifying terms to help support your primary keywords.
Do it all over again: Once your keyword strategy has been implemented, Google has had time to react and you’ve been able to collect enough data, rinse and repeat. They don’t call it search engine optimization for nothing.
What are the Most Common SEO Keyword Types?
Keywords can be categorized and tagged in multiple ways for a variety of reasons. Here are the most common types and examples of SEO keywords.
Branded vs. Unbranded
Branded search terms contain the brand in the query. This could include the official brand names, misspellings, branded acronyms, branded campaign names or taglines, parent companies, or anything else with obvious branded search intent.
Unbranded, or non-branded, terms are all other keywords you may consider. Unbranded terms often describe the customer problem or your business offering.
Some businesses have non-distinct names that can make this delineation more difficult. For instance, is a search for “Kansas City Zoo” branded or unbranded when the name of the zoo is… Kansas City Zoo?
Branded terms generally bring in the highest converting traffic because the searcher already has a certain level of brand familiarity and (often) affinity.
Examples:
Branded: Houston Rockets
Unbranded: the unequivocal greatest basketball organization of all time
Seed vs. Page-specific Keywords
Seed words are the obvious, initial list of words you start with in the keyword research process. They act as the seeds you “plant” to grow your list.
Seed words are often relevant to most of your website, if not all of it. Page-specific keywords are generally found later in the keyword research process and are applicable to only a single page or set of pages.
Examples for Home Depot:
Seed: home improvement store
Page-specific: deck building supplies
Long-tail vs. Head Terms
Those with the highest search demand are called head terms. Conversely, those with a relatively low demand are considered long-tail.
Why? When you graph them out, head terms fall off quickly in terms of the total number of keywords, whereas lesser searched terms seem to go on forever like a tail.
The middle of the graph is often aptly named “middle” or “chunky middle” (or torso). With 15 percent of searches being new to Google each day, it shouldn’t be surprising that most search queries are considered long-tail, even if each individual long-tail query gets searched very few times.
Head terms and long-tail terms tend to have the following contrasting characteristics. However, besides volume, none of these are absolute.
Head
Long-tail
High search volume
Low search volume
High ranking competition
Low ranking competition
Low converting traffic
High converting traffic
Few words
Many words
Best for top-level pages
Best for lower-level pages
Multiple search intents
Singular search intent
Examples:
Head: Bob Dylan
Long-tail: Who is Jakob Dylan’s father?
Primary vs. Secondary Keywords
Also labeled “targeted” or “focus”, primary keywords are used to describe your most important keywords. These terms can be used in the context of your entire site or a single page.
Secondary (also called “tertiary” or “supporting”) keywords include all other keywords you are targeting and/or incorporating. In some contexts, secondary terms are those you are loosely optimizing for, but they’re just not considered a high priority. In other scenarios, secondary keywords act as the semantic or long-tail support to help you get the most out of your primary keyword targeting.
Examples for a subscription shaving kit product page:
Primary: shaving kit subscription
Secondary: monthly, razors, free trial, custom
Step, Stage, or Phase
SEOs often recommend categorizing your keywords according to a marketing funnel or customer journey. This can help ensure you are targeting customers at each critical point.
Some sets of categories have the brand in the center (e.g., awareness, consideration, conversion, retention) while others are more customer-centric (e.g., unaware, problem aware, solution aware, brand aware). Similarly, some simply determine the action-oriented mindset of the consumer (e.g., navigational, informational, transactional).
Examples:
Awareness: 30th birthday party ideas
Consideration: Las Vegas travel reviews
Conversion: flight and hotel packages to Las Vegas
Retention: Mandalay Bay loyalty program
Local vs. Global Keywords
Depending on its usage, a local keyword can mean one of two things:
The searcher is looking for something geographically nearby:This can be very straightforward like “library near me” or “2-bedroom rentals in Phoenix”, or it could be more subtle like “restaurants” or “What time does Whataburger close?”.
The searcher has a high probability of being in a certain area: For instance, “Why did Oklahoma Joe’s change their name?” could be considered a local term because there’s a good chance the searcher is from Kansas or Missouri. Why? Those are the only two states where this exceptional barbecue establishment calls home. By the way, it is now called Joe’s Kansas City BBQ if you ever happen to be coming through town.
Examples:
Local: 2-bedroom rentals in Phoenix
Global: Is renters insurance worth it?
Audience Type
Rarely does someone self-identify themselves in a search.
When’s the last time you started a search with “I’m an XX year-old, college-educated digital marketer looking for [rest of your search]”? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this has never happened.
However, the ‘who’ behind the searcher can often be found in the implicit information of the query.
While almost no queries are exclusively searched by one group, many heavily skew towards a single audience.
One of the best ways to find out who is searching for a term is Google it and look at the results. Then ask yourself who the top results seem to be talking to.
If Google’s job is to give a searcher what they want, then the target audience for the top results of a query should be the same audience who completed the query.
Examples:
Patient: Is diabetes hereditary? Doctor: T2DM treatment algorithm
Evergreen vs. Topical
Evergreen keywords have steady search volume with little variance over time. On the other hand, topical keywords are either seasonal (e.g., valentine’s day gift ideas), flashes in the pan (e.g., covfefe), or consistently relevant (e.g., Taylor Swift).
Some evergreen keywords can switch to being topical when an event makes them culturally relevant, like searches for a celebrity immediately after their unexpected death or a city when it’s hosting the World Cup. Google often favors new content for topical keywords because the “query deserves freshness”.
People like to create evergreen content because it can be a low investment relative to the long-term value it produces. However, the competition and initial cost are often steep. Conversely, topical content is attractive because it has a lower cost of entry, weaker competition, and provides immediate value – but that value has a short shelf life.
Examples:
Evergreen: how to know if you’re pregnant
Topical: movie showtimes this weekend
Keywords vs. Carewords
For the first time since we moved in four years ago, we decided to pay to get our house cleaned. Our searches were very much based in logic:
What’s the cost for how much work?
Do they use natural products?
Did they get good reviews?
Are they flexible on timing?
However, how the companies made us feel certainly played a key role, even if it was mostly subconscious. In this instance, content that made me reflect on all the time I was going to save, how this would be one less thing I had to stress about, even the smell of a fresh house when I walked in the door – likely played a role in my final decision.
Sara Howard describes carewords using an example of buying a car. Would you include “reliable warranty” in a search for a new vehicle? Probably not. Do you want to know the warranty is reliable once you’re on the page? Absolutely.
In short, carewords are low-to-no-traffic-generating terms that increase on-site engagement and conversions for existing traffic.
Examples:
Keywords: wet bar ideas for basement
Care words: wine enthusiast, ample storage, simple, hosting, durable, man cave
How do You Optimize Your Website for Keywords?
Much like choosing keywords, effectively optimizing your website for keywords could live on its own blog post. However, here are a few tips to get started.
Where to Incorporate Keywords on a Webpage
URLs: URLs rarely change, are highly visible and describe the entire page. For those reasons, Google places some value in what they say.
Static content: Search engines are getting much better at crawling dynamic content. Static content is a near-guarantee for indexation.
Title tags: Title tags influence rankings and click-through-rate (CTR) and if written effectively, keywords can help with both.
Meta description tags: Unlike title tags, meta descriptions do not influence rankings in Google. However, including them can increase CTR.
Most visible content: Google’s job is to understand content the way we do. An H1 tag at the top of the page gets far more eyeballs than boilerplate content at the bottom. Whether it’s a heading tag, early body copy or a bolded phrase, the most visible content is generally the most influential for SEO.
Internal links and surrounding content: Incorporating keywords into the anchor text of links pointing to your page from others on the site helps show Google what your page is about. Similarly, content nearby anchor text pointing to your page is also observed by Google and, to a lesser degree, is used to describe the destination page.
Image and video file names: Instead of letting your phone give your image or video a default name that usually contains something random and nonsensical, give it a descriptive name using a relevant keyword.
Image alt attributes: Alt tags not only make your site more inclusive for your visually impaired audience, they give Google a better idea of your picture. Incorporate keywords when appropriate.
Image title attributes: Image titles don’t work on all browsers the same way, which is why Google may not put much weight into this content. However, if there is an opportunity to gracefully include keywords, go for it.
ARIA tags:ARIA tags are similar to alt attributes in that they help make website content more accessible to those with disabilities. You can use ARIA tags on certain types of dynamic content, interactive content, background images, and more.
Video closed captioning and/or transcripts: Some videos contain extremely relevant keywords but Google has no clue. Make sure what is heard and seen gets included in your indexable closed captioning or transcript.
Schema markup: Schema helps add context to content. When applicable, mark your keywords up with the most appropriate schema properties to remove some of the guesswork for Google.
Keyword integration tips
Don’t overdo it:Over-optimization is a real thing. It can turn away your customers and send you to Google’s dog (or Panda) house. Each one of the areas above has been automated, exploited, and tarnished. Ask yourself if it helps or hurts user experience. Make your decision based on that answer.
Ignore the meta keywords tag: The meta keywords tag gets little, if any, attention from the main search engines. Don’t waste your time here.
Don’t optimize each page in a vacuum: Unless you have a one-page site, you need to look at your keyword targeting by taking all pages into context. This will guard against any gaps or keyword cannibalization that can happen when you work on each page in a silo.
Test everything: If you have the opportunity to work on sites with a massive number of pages, you have a perfect opportunity to set up some worthwhile tests to polish your techniques.
When Won’t Keywords Matter?
How do we know keywords will always matter? In reality, there’s no way to know, but many of the root arguments shared in this guide have been the same for over 20 years, and they show no signs of pivoting.
With that said, I do think I can tell you the next time “keywords are dead” will ferociously bounce around the SEO echo chambers. Larry Page doesn’t just want Google to be at the level of a human, he wants it to be superhuman.
The introduction of Google Now has given us a glimpse of what is to come: Google searching for what we want without us having to ask.
If Google does our searching for us, would keywords still matter? Yes, but that’s for another time.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita Dinosaur Image: Clker-Free-Vector-Images/Pixabay All other images, screenshots, and video taken by author, August 2017
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most important feature that enables improved website visibility and recognition online. Without it, you might as well stand on the street and yell at people to check out your website. However, SEO is a strategy that needs to be implemented the right way in order for it to provide the best results.
There is no doubt that you will find tips and guides online that will “teach” you how to take an advantage of SEO fast and easy. However, you shouldn’t believe everything you find on the Internet. In fact, there are ways to take an advantage of SEO, but Google loves nothing more than to punish those who try to cheat their way to the top of the rankings. Here is some SEO advice you should most definitely ignore.
More Keywords Means Higher Rankings
No, it doesn’t. As the matter of fact, trying to flood content with keywords will do quite the opposite of ranking it high. It will get banned from search engine altogether. Google has this algorithm that has cute and fuzzy update names like Panda, Penguin or Pigeon but don’t let these names fool you, they are nasty critters when it comes to punishing bad SEO techniques. Stuffing keywords in content will not only be ignored by
Stuffing keywords in content will not only be ignored by readers but will also be marked as spam by Google’s spiders. They can punish a website with low rankings or remove everything from search engine depending on the level of violation.
Social Media Is Irrelevant
Who needs social media when you can have content and keywords, right? Wrong! Social media is a powerful asset when it comes to promoting a website or content and improving SEO rating. However, many people use it the wrong way by repeatedly posting backlinks to their blogs or posts. This approach is considered as spam and you will get removed from a social network if you keep it up. Nevertheless, social media marketing campaigns can vastly improve visibility and SEO rankings, however only if done properly and efficiently.
You Don’t Need Fast Internet for a Blog
Wrong again! Having a blog is an effective way to promote content, attract an audience and improve visibility and SEO. By posting organic, fresh and interesting content relevant to some product, service or website on your blog, will help improve rankings in the long run. However, slow internet means a slow loading page, and if people hate anything these days, its sluggish web pages.
Furthermore, the success of your blog highly depends on viewers – if they get bored they will leave, and if they leave you to get no traffic, it’s that simple. So ask yourself this: “Should I test people’s patience, or should I look for fastest internet providers near me and increase my bandwidth speed?” The choice is easy -you should invest a little bit extra and give your audience a fast blog to enjoy.
You Can Use the Same Keyword More Than Once
No, you can’t! Using the same keyword more than once, especially on the same website, will actually hurt rankings and not improve them. As mentioned, Google updates their algorithm regularly and using a keyword repeatedly will be punished by lowering the website rank on their search engine. However, not all hope is lost, as you can still post good content and use long tail keywords instead of repeating the same one over and over.
There Is No Need for Fresh Content
That is a terrible advice. Of course, there is a need for fresh content! Having consistency and posting new and fresh content regularly not only improves rankings, but it’s on Google’s preferred list of approaches as well. Furthermore, don’t try to fool Google by changing the dates on old posts to make them appear fresh because those fluffy pandas and penguins are going to slap you silly with punishments.
Always make sure you have something new to post about and if you really need to recycle old content then add something fresh to it and make a comparison. For instance, “Bad things about using SEO the wrong way in 2015” and make it “The difference between bad things about using SEO the wrong way in 2015 and 2017”. Give your old content new life, not a new post date.
Key Takeaway
As you are well aware by now, the Internet is full of bad advice. However, there is also good advice, so don’t hesitate to seek it out. If you are going to fully utilize the potential of SEO, then make sure you do it properly.
Author Nate Vickery
Nate Vickery is a business consultant and blogger. He is mostly interested in latest technology trends applicable to marketing and management. Nate is editor-in-chief at Bizzmarkblog.com.
