When you’re looking for new clients and new projects, chances are that you’ve thought to yourself, “I need to figure out how to get more search traffic to my website.” You’ve probably heard the abbreviation “SEO” thrown around for Search Engine Optimization, and you’ve considered creating “content” to bring new clients in.
Content marketing is a powerful marketing channel. It can increase your brand visibility on Google and can drive organic traffic to your website. One popular marketing strategy is optimizing your website’s blog to rank on Google for highly relevant keywords. A recent statistic reports that 79% of marketers rank blogs as the most efficient marketing tactic – both for its SEO help and its ability to establish trust with your target consumer. With that being said, it’s important to develop a keyword research strategy before diving into creating blog content.
Keyword research is a core SEO task that involves identifying popular words and phrases people enter into search engines. Keyword research is the first step when developing content that ranks on Google. Similarly, to rank on Google, you need to understand the intent behind the keyword.
Creating content that brings in clients can be a really valuable use of your time if you do it right. But it’s more involved than you may realize, and it isn’t for everyone.
But if it’s for you, let’s break down how to create the most effective strategy possible.
Keyword Intent: What is it and why is it important?
Keyword Intent allows content creators to match their content and landing pages to the user’s intentions by understanding where a customer is in their buying journey. When you create content with keyword intent in mind, you will be more successful in ranking on Google.
There are 3 main reasons behind every search on Google.
Information Intent
A customer is trying to find information about something to make an educated decision. For example, let’s say a customer wants to learn about freelancing. They may search, “What is freelancing?” This search is purely used to learn more about something & not to buy anything.
Transactional Intent
A customer is almost ready to buy but wants to learn more & compare options. Examples of this could be someone searching, “Best Freelance Websites”, “Freelancing.school Reviews” or “Best Freelancing”. With the right content and setup, these searchers may buy things or look to buy somewhere further into the conversion funnel.
Commercial/Buying Intent
These searches signal a strong intention by the searcher to act (to buy, join, subscribe, etc.) Examples of this may include “Hire freelancers” or “Find freelancers online”.
Why creating content to rank on Google is difficult
Google will favor websites that are more credible and have authority. To check the authority of your website, I suggest using this free tool. To be transparent, here is freelancing.school’s authority compared to a content giant like Quora.
How Can My Content Compete With A Website Like Quora?
To compete with content from top websites, we need to find less competitive keywords and find ranking content from less powerful competitors.
Keyword Research: The best way to find content marketing opportunities
To find keywords, I have a paid SEO software called Ahrefs which allows me to see how competitive certain keywords are, how many people search for that keyword per month, and what keywords a certain blog post ranks for. Ahrefs costs $99 per month. A similar tool called SEMRush is also priced at $99 per month.
Let’s say I want freelancing.school to rank for a transactional keyword like “Best Freelancing Websites”. The first step is to see which websites are ranking on page 1 of Google. Most people will click on the top result. Here, it is Quora which has a domain authority of 93. Our website has a domain authority of 9 and may not rank for this keyword because it is too competitive.
Next Step: find highly searched keywords where competitors with a domain authority of 30 or less have top ranking content.
After researching keywords with Ahrefs I found a website competitive to ours in terms of domain authority yet ranks for hundreds of keywords on Google. The website remotelyworking.org has a piece of content that is doing well for SEO and has a domain authority we can compete with.
Below are the top 5 keywords this page ranks for on Google. Even if this blog post is in positions 5-20, it is on the right track to get organic traffic. This piece of content is ranking for “Best Freelancing Jobs” which gets 1,300 searches per month. Plus, it ranks for hundreds of other keywords like “Best Freelance Websites 2019”!
How to rank above competitors
We are now in a good spot to create content that ranks for keywords like “best freelancing jobs” & “best freelancing websites 2020”.
Step 1: Skim over top ranking content on Page 1 of Google and analyze what they have in common. I would search “best freelancing jobs” and skim through 4-5 of the top ranking blog posts.
One thing to notice is that all of these headers have a very similar structure and each blog post has similar content. To rank, you need to write a list post like the ones in the picture above, reviewing the best freelance job websites!
Step 2: Create a Heading (using H1 tag) and include something like [Number] Best Freelance Websites to Find Work in 2020.
Step 3: Put your keyword in the URL & Title Tag. I recommend a URL that ends with /best-freelance-websites. I am showing an example of a current top ranking blog post for this keyword. I outlined the Title Tag, URL, & H1.
Step 4: Write an article with about 1000-2000 words that lists websites and reviews them.
To make this worth your while, I suggest including your website in this list. So, you can get more brand exposure and drive conversions.
Step 5: Get people to link to your content. Ask other credible websites to link to your new blog post! Backlinks are important to rank on Google!
Step 6: Sit back and let visitors organically find your website!
Conclusion
Content marketing may be the solution to your marketing needs, but it takes a lot of practice to create content that ranks. I would recommend content marketing to help inform and persuade any customer from Google to buy or learn about your product. Content marketing is a great strategy for affiliate sites and drop-shipping sites. I hope this article helps you to understand more about what it actually takes to get someone to find you from SEO.
About the author
Bennett Heyn of Parker-Marker.com & sunglasssociety.com wrote an optimized blog article reviewing the best parking barriers on the market. As a result, Bennett earned over 2000+ page visits in less than a year & ranks 1st for “best parking barrier”. Bennett said, “I highly recommend learning about SEO & Content Marketing. It’s a lot of work but it pays off in the end!”
