Should you ditch keyword targeting entirely? There's been a lot of discussion around the idea of focusing on broad topics and concepts to satisfy searcher intent, but it's a big step to take and could potentially hurt your rankings. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses old-school keyword targeting and new-school concept targeting, outlining a plan of action you can follow to get the best of both worlds.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, we're going to talk about a topic that I've been seeing coming up in the SEO world for probably a good 6 to 12 months now. I think ever since Hummingbird came out, there has been a little bit of discussion. Then, over the last year, it's really picked up around this idea that, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't be optimizing for researching and targeting keywords or keyword phrases anymore. Maybe we should be going more towards topics and ideas and broad concept."
I think there's some merit to the idea, and then there are folks who are taking it way too far, moving away from keywords and actually losing and costing themselves so much search opportunity and search engine traffic. So I'm going to try and describe these two approaches today, kind of the old-school world and this very new-school world of concept and topic-based targeting, and then describe maybe a third way to combine them and improve on both models.
Classic keyword research & on-page targeting
In our classic keyword research, on-page targeting model, we sort of have our SEO going, "Yeah. Which one of these should I target?"
He's thinking about like best times to fly. He's writing a travel website, "Best Times to Fly," and there's a bunch of keywords. He's checking the volume and maybe some other metrics around "best flight times," "best days to fly," "cheapest days to fly," "least crowded flights," "optimal flight dates," "busiest days to fly." Okay, a bunch of different keywords.
So, maybe our SEO friend here is thinking, "All right. She's going to maybe go make a page for each of these keywords." Maybe not all of them at first. But she's going to decide, "Hey, you know what? I'm going after 'optimal flight dates,' 'lowest airport traffic days,' and 'cheapest days to fly.' I'm going to make three different pages. Yeah, the content is really similar. It's serving a very similar purpose. But that doesn't matter. I want to have the best possible keyword targeting that I can for each of these individual ones."
"So maybe I can't invest as much effort in the content and the research into it, because I have to make these three different pages. But you know what? I'll knock out these three. I'll do the rest of them, and then I'll iterate and add some more keywords."
That's pretty old-school SEO, very, very classic model.
New school topic- & concept-based targeting
Newer school, a little bit of this concept and topic targeting, we get into this world where folks go, "You know what? I'm going to think bigger than keywords."
"I'm going to kind of ignore keywords. I don't need to worry about them. I don't need to think about them. Whatever the volumes are, they are. If I do a good job of targeting searchers' intent and concepts, Google will do a good job recognizing my content and figuring out the keywords that it maps to. I don't have to stress about that. So instead, I'm going to think about I want to help people who need to choose the right days to buy flights."
"So I'm thinking about days of the week, and maybe I'll do some brainstorming and a bunch of user research. Maybe I'll use some topic association tools to try and broaden my perspective on what those intents could be. So days of the week, the right months, the airline differences, maybe airport by airport differences, best weeks. Maybe I want to think about it by different country, price versus flexibility, when can people use miles, free miles to fly versus when can't they."
"All right. Now, I've come up with this, the ultimate guide to smart flight planning. I've got great content on there. I have this graph where you can actually select a different country or different airline and see the dates or the weeks of the year, or the days of the week when you can get cheapest flights. This is just an awesome, awesome piece of content, and it serves a lot of these needs really nicely." It's not going to rank for crap.
I don't mean to be rude. It's not the case that Google can never map this to these types of keywords. But if a lot of people are searching for "best days of the week to fly" and you have "The Ultimate Guide to Smart Flight Planning," you might do a phenomenal job of helping people with that search intent. Google is not going to do a great job of ranking you for that phrase, and it's not Google's fault entirely. A lot of this has to do with how the Web talks about content.
A great piece of content like this comes out. Maybe lots of blogs pick it up. News sites pick it up. You write about it. People are linking to it. How are they describing it? Well, they're describing it as a guide to smart flight planning. So those are the terms and phrases people associate with it, which are not the same terms and phrases that someone would associate with an equally good guide that leveraged the keywords intelligently.
A smarter hybrid
So my recommendation is to combine these two things. In a smart combination of these techniques, we can get great results on both sides of the aisle. Great concept and topic modeling that can serve a bunch of different searcher needs and target many different keywords in a given searcher intent model, and we can do it in a way that targets keywords intelligently in our titles, in our headlines, our sub-headlines, the content on the page so that we can actually get the searcher volume and rank for the keywords that send us traffic on an ongoing basis.
So I take my keyword research ideas and my tool results from all the exercises I did over here. I take my topic and concept brainstorm, maybe some of my topic tool results, my user research results. I take these and put them together in a list of concepts and needs that our content is going to answer grouped by combinable keyword targets — I'll show you what I mean — with the right metrics.
So I might say my keyword groups are there's one intent around "best days of the week," and then there's another intent around "best times of the year." Yes, there's overlap between them. There might be people who are looking for kind of both at the same time. But they actually are pretty separate in their intent. "Best days of the week," that's really someone who knows that they're going to fly at some point and they want to know, "Should I be booking on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or a Monday, or a Sunday?"
Then, there's "best times of the year," someone who's a little more flexible with their travel planning, and they're trying to think maybe a year ahead, "Should I buy in the spring, the fall, the summer? What's the time to go here?"
So you know what? We're going to take all the keyword phrases that we discovered over here. We're going to group them by these concept intents. Like "best days of the week" could include the keywords "best days of the week to fly," "optimal day of week to fly," "weekday versus weekend best for flights," "cheapest day of the week to fly."
"Best times of the year," that keyword group could include words and phrases like "best weeks of the year to fly," "cheapest travel weeks," "lowest cost months to fly," "off-season flight dates," "optimal dates to book flights."
These aren't just keyword matches. They're concept and topic matches, but taken to the keyword level so that we actually know things like the volume, the difficulty, the click-through rate opportunity for these, the importance that they may have or the conversion rate that we think they're going to have.
Then, we can group these together and decide, "Hey, you know what? The volume for all of these is higher. But these ones are more important to us. They have lower difficulty. Maybe they have higher click-through rate opportunity. So we're going to target 'best times of the year.' That's going to be the content we create. Now, I'm going to wrap my keywords together into 'the best weeks and months to book flights in 2016.'"
That's just as compelling a title as "The Ultimate Guide to Smart Flight Planning," but maybe a tiny bit less. You could quibble. But I'm sure you could come up with one, and it uses our keywords intelligently. Now I've got sub-headings that are "sort by the cheapest," "the least crowded," "the most flexible," "by airline," "by location." Great. I've hit all my topic areas and all my keyword areas at the same time, all in one piece of content.
This kind of model, where we combine the best of these two worlds, I think is the way of the future. I don't think it pays to stick to your old-school keyword targeting methodology, nor do I think it pays to ignore keyword targeting and keyword research entirely. I think we've got to merge these practices and come up with something smart.
All right everyone. I look forward to your comments, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Hi Rand,
you know that this topic (ops... irony not intended) is very dear to me. Actually it was the subject of a WBF I did for Moz and of my MozCon talk.
The methodology you suggest is not different from the one I was talking about in those linked sources: creating "topical hubs" based on keyword research and intent analysis, so to create content that can target a set of keywords topically and semantically related.
In other words, keywords are going to be our thesaurus around which we build a strong content asset, which is able to target the keywords we want, the queries that are related to those keywords and that would be fool to target specifically, and the intent behind those keywords and queries.
All of this can be done for every kind of content, not just "big one". I usually offer as an example how a Spanish friend of mine crafted the product pages of his ecommerce, for instance this (gtranslated version for you to better "understand" it). If you opened that link, you can see how that product page is perfectly optimized on a topical, keyword and intent point of view.
As a plus to your WBF, I'd like to add two things, one less obvious than it may sound and the other related to when conducting this kinds of research.
The first thing is: use schema.org well when creating the keywords/topical targeted content. And I don't mean just for the possibility we have of earning a rich snippet, but - really - for improving the semantic understanding Google has of the content your created.
For instance, if you use just the basic of the schema.org/Article, you are going to loose quite many opportunities. Instead if you implement it well (especially using the SameAs property), your content may also have the opportunity to earn visibility in Answers Boxes or as a Featured Snippet. Ok, I know there's some controversy about those features of Google search but - heck! - having my content ranking above all (even Adwords) and with a link is not something I spit on with disdain.
The second thing is: when doing the keyword and topical research.
Usually SEO do Keyword Research somehow as a stand-alone analysis, maybe after the pure technical one, maybe when treating the on-page facet of SEO.
Well, I think that all that has become old or, at least, it is not so effective anymore.
Personally I do that kind of research as a part of the Content Audit (as so well described also Everett Sizemore here).
It is thank to a Content Audit that we can understand if, how and in what stage of the consumer journey and funnel we must improve our content also under an SEO perspective.
It's during a Content Audit that we can understand if we need to consolidate content or, on the contrary, it would be better to stem a content in subsets able to target better keywords, promising topics and specific intents.
And, finally, it is a Content Audit that ultimately can help us understand and guide us into researching new topics, and start a keyword grouping around those topics.
Let me finish citing few tools that can help the practice of all this theory:
And that's all (folks)
Very extensive reply. :) Maybe Rand followed your work while creating this WBF, without referencing to you! Shame /ding/
Just kidding, I think the video is really great and can be useful while planning content. Gonna try and think differently.
Best,
PopArt Studio
Rand doing such thing? Nah! He is not that kind of guy :-)
One thing I've found helpful in regard to this is to create spreadsheet matrix for each major topic area with a cell for each persona and buying stage: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XxahT72hb01uUM_Eh9e-tjHf8rbVeFnJBa286OfQ41c/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks for stressing the importance of using rich snippets. I haven't thought about it before. Also, this content audit tutorial seems to be very detailed and useful for us.
Ref Wired AI: Keywords at the root domain are all important as AI waits for us to catch up with processing information.
https://www.wired.com/2016/02/ai-is-changing-the-technology-behind-google-searches/
Thanks for Rand's great WBF and Gianluca's detail comment!
but may I ask why using good pages to extract keywords? which is in Gianluca's comment "using the "extract keywords from a page" feature. Use wikipedia page or very good product pages as sources."
and how to define a "very good product page"?
What I thought is that, using Wikipedia or other high PA/DA(or high-ranked?) page related to preferred keyword,
and using Keyword Planner to extract keyword groups that associated, is that right?
Brent
Hi Gianluca and thanks for your high-quality comment! I'm trying out the tools, though I'm working out how to use Amazon keyword search. What about "long-tail keyword tools", such as Ubersuggest and Keywordtool.io? And, do you have any tool that retrieve synonyms (i.e. sneakers / scarpe da corsa)? I was informed about SEOZoom for italian market but haven't tried it yet. Thanks for any answers :-) Elisa
Topical optimization always can outperform keyword optimization for humans. We (humans) always looking for in-depth articles OR we're looking for quick answers. So far quick answers can be seen in SERP - keyword graphs, carousels, etc. More about that -> https://moz.com/blog/mega-serp-a-visual-guide-to-g... and https://moz.com/blog/google-glossary . But answers in SERP works when answer can be one and only ex. "How tall is Obama?". For "best days for flying" there isn't definitely answer. Anyway - if you provide special markup Google can index and extract this to be showed in SERP as featured snippet.
But we still living in not-so-perfect world and still keyword optimization outperform topical optimization in SERP. And mantra "write great content and they will follow" isn't working all times.
That's why most of SEOs need to live same time in dual worlds - optimize for bots (KW) and optimize for humans (topic). This sound little bit as schizophrenia - i agree on that. But it's much better than few years ago when spinned, robot generated and meaningless text with optimal keyword saturation can outperform your article with weeks of research.
Agreed with your point Nikolow, we can craft content that can extensively cover the topic and on the very same hand we can optimize it for keywords too.
Using one page to rank for multiple keywords is also easier from a link building perspective. Firstly, because you don’t have to do extensive link building for each page. You can focus on a few pages.
Ahrefs did a study about the use of exact and partial match anchor text links. They showed that using exact and partial match still works. On the other hand you don’t want to get a Penguin penalty for having too much exact/partial match links. By focusing on different kind of keywords, you can bring variation into it.
Awesome WBF!
When talking with brand-side content writers, I aim to educate them on the importance of understanding search data (and the use of keywords, close variants, synonym) - providing them with a sort of outline “content strategy" for what the piece should cover (informed by search data) and general direction about what the headings and subheadings might be. They are the subject matter experts, not me, so I find providing a little SEO direction combined with letting them have at it generates the best pieces. Too much SEO/keyword thought and the piece is a bore; too little & it will get little search traction, even if it's great.
I also usually encourage writers to not think much about keywords as they're writing. I explain that while they may have a set of 'focus KWs,' it’s best to focus on providing value and answering as many questions as possible about the concept, and that by doing so, they will/should naturally be using those important phrases. Then we’ll review the piece together & I can point out any SEO opportunities I see - like adjusting intros, subheadings, links, maybe some minor copy revisions, along with helping create the ideal title tag & description. Typically I’ll go through this 1 or 2 times with a content team before they’ve got it & can implement/optimize on their own for future pieces. I'll even guide them through the KW research process so they can start identifying new opportunities on their own.
I 100% agree that the “classic" way of using KWs & on-page targeting is not the way to go… and that the new-school way is too weak. The balance of combining search data with topical/user intent targeting is just right! As you put it, we should all strive to “leverage the keywords intelligently” for search success while also doing our very best to satisfy user intent.
Hi,
We had a dream client last year who had budget and gave us free rain to do as we pleased in rebuildng their web presence with the simple aim that they wanted to sell pool tables to the domestic market online in the UK. We focused our time and effort purely on the execution of great content geared around the topics which we knew the customers wanted answers to.
Most people know what a pool table is but when they come to buy one are overwhelmed by the choice, including the now popular option to have a multi-purpose slate bed pool table and dining table. We worked really hard to produce a collection of topic oriented guides that answer all of the questions that consumer have rather than creating a colleciton of landing pages which neatly targetted terms. We invested heavily in real content (presenter led video, professional photography and even getting a collection of 5,000 3D renders so that we could deliver a comparison/filter based shopping option, which is the intuitive shopping style people want these days. We set ourselves the goal of trying to deliver the kind of shopping experience you get with Apple products.
We didn't spend a great deal of time ensuring the right keywords were in the right guides, but using the Moz campaign tools we were able to see that the right landing pages are associated to all the keywords we want them to rank for.
There is work to do but the content is delivering, we get great feedback off the site and often consumers land stay for an hour and then make an enquiry. Proof that if you create topic based content it works a treat and gets ranked correctly.
https://www.kingswoodleisure.com/buyers-guides
We love the idea of topic and guide based content, if you haven't tried creating a x10 guide in your industry yet you really should invest the effort. It's also a really easy concept to sell to the customer because they can understand it.
Another cracker Rand, thanks for your hardwork on WBF from fans in the UK!
David.
That's great that topic based focus has worked for you. Because you were thinking broader than just keywords, you produced something that other's can't produce (because they don't have budget for it). That way, I think, you won the game.
Well done David. Great to see a real world example that works.
Great reading as ever Rand. I completely agree - producing smart user-friendly content that "incorporates" keywords is what we should strive for. It can be a bit of a battle, but the goal should be to satisfy the needs of the user and the search engines.
I've just gotta say, we are still killing it with keyword-focused optimization. Still seems to work great for us so I'd advise people to test things out on a small scale before they change their whole strategy for page development.
Rand,
You really nailed it!
I just love the concept of old-school keyword targeting and new-school concept targeting.
After hummingbird update, keywords plays an important role in SEO. The things we need to focus are user intent, keyword synonyms and long tail keywords. I just love the post Gianluca Fiorelli has written on state of digital
blog.
Example. The "skinny jeans" is the keyword for SEOs but the user is always search with the "skinny jeans for women", "women size 2 skinny jeans".
Another thing, people are always worried about local search volume in Google keywords planner. They don't use the keywords whose local search volume are less but I couldn't agree more with them. We can target the keywords with less local search volume.
I always prefer keywordtool.io and Google auto suggest for the keyword research with few other tools.
Let me share one experience with client, I had one client who has done SEO for their website from an agency and their most of keywords for industry theme are on top 10 even she isn't getting targeted traffic and inquiries.
Please stop me if I'm wrong! :)
Hi Rand,
Totally agree with you. Concentrating on keywords only or topics is a recipe for disaster. At least for now.
The base, the bare minimum of every successful marketing campaign should be a keyword research. Without it how will you know who to target? The outcome of this keyword research should be what I call a set of 'base keywords'. Those base keywords will be the words that best describe your business or operation.
Now based on this keyword set you can expand and go topical. In your content (blog posts, product descriptions etc.) you can use the base keywords in the title tags (or semantically related terms) and in the paragraphs go wild with topical (more humanly attractive) blabbing.
I do believe that topical optimization becomes more important than keyword optimization when it comes to content, but proper keywords are still necessary, without conducting a research you just go hit and miss with titles, descriptions, headings and so on. Especially for newer and smaller websites, heading can make all the difference.
Hi Rand, I love this post! But I'm a little confused... I know a topic may have more searchs than a keyword and that it can be useful in case we'd want to get faster to our public, but what about their short life? I mean, a keyword is somethign they'll always search, but a topic is just momentary, isn't it? Thank you so much :)
Topics are everything in todays SEO! Thanks for this useful video and the great way you explain the things so everybody could understand them :)
Combining the both approaches today - old and new school, as you call them, is the secret key to the successful rankings. The initial analysis before creating a piece of content is something very important and gives you many useful information, but many people still neglect it.
Most of the time I research for topics and keywords around them, but I'll also analyze what other people write, writing style, images, UX, social sentiment around these keywords. There is always some opportunities for improvements and giving people better answer. It's all about the ideas, and these ideas could come by other people content or the researched keywords.
Awesome post.
Yes. it's works for me. Last year i had published 2 content to target topic like simple app ideas and mockup up tools and written about:
Topic 1: The Top 7 Simple App Ideas that Made MILLIONS for their Owners
Topic 2: Best Mockup Tools for App Entrepreneurs
now all related keywords like app ideas (5,400 volume), best mockup tools, great app ideas and more which have big volume i got rank well in google.
Another great Whiteboard Friday, thank you Rand for the precious tips. The most customers are still keyword focus and still want to rank number 1. A good mix between the past (keyword) and the present (topic modeling) is the best tactique to win. It's the difference between working and working smarter.
A superb WBF Rand, totally agree with your perspective about crafting the content that can answer all the relevant queries extensively instead of optimizing it for specific keywords. I actually follow this approach and I have seen tremendous amount of traffic from long tail and short tail queries.
Superb Post Rand !!
I am running my Internet Marketing firm here in India and most of the time I try to convince the client with these approaches but they refuse and tell to use only Keywords that they have selected for business. I will now share this with them and advise them to think deeply and wisely for the sake of goodness of business.
You totally nailed it again.
Rahul
Yes, I too believe combining both topic and keywords while publishing a page that should include the detail guideline instead of just focusing on keywords. In some case if you want to make a separate we can do it, but again we need to put detail guideline that specific topics and then focusing on the keywords.
Wonderful post Rand!
Well explained with very practical examples that anyone can understand easily. As SEO experts, we are following the same strategy of making meaningful titles or we can say targeting long tail keywords for the website instead of targeting small keywords phrases for our clients. Some times clients would not able to understand and forcing us for keyword stuffing. Will share this post with them too so that they will also have the clear knowledge of such things.
Thanks for sharing.
This is so timely! I am wrestling with these issues on the Paid Search side. I agree that a hybrid solution can be a winner if it is backed up by good content and research. Thank you.
Yes, PPC is a whole different angle! I am not a fan of building out mega lists of every kwd variation, but I'm also not part of the team developing content strategy (LPs or offers). Since non-converting clicks are a loss for most PPC campaigns, getting the right content that uses high-volume keywords *and* provides a high-value solution is the best possible outcome, but is several steps removed from basic management of most paid search accounts.
I still think that I want to chase the new school approach. Your presentation is amazing. I can see that if you combine both approaches into something meaninful, there are a lot more opportunities both for users and for search engines.
But for some reasons, I still, really want to think beyond keywords. If we bound ourselves to keywords we miss much broader opportunities to create a real value.I want to write content about the stuff that hasn't become a keyword yet. Or I want to explore the keywords that competitors haven't even thought about, or explore links that they aren't aware of. Putting it to your flight example, yes, I can write the definitive guide about best flight days and everything, but I can also explore something that my competitors don't know, about habits of airline customers. I can survey people and get answers to questions like: "What is the purpose of customers flight?","What does the best flight look like?", "is the price main factor in choosing the optimal flight day?", "Do weather conditions influcence flier decisions?"... etc... Getting answers to those questions, I can then, evaluate the criteria about what we think is the "best" and what is actually the "best". For example, let's say that according to the survey results, we understood that pricing isn't a big factor for those who are flying for business trips, but it is number one factor for those who are traveling for their vacation. You see, then I can create even better content focusing on long tail keyword instead: "the best days to fly for business trips", etc...
Hi Ziyoda, I like your approach and I also tend to follow the same process. The problem with this balanced approach of keyword and topic mixing is, it's not enough. There are other ranking factors to look out for to rank well. And as we try to improve on all parts, the new school approach for content, as you described, will be more fruitful in the long run.
At present in SEO really everyone is confused to choose the keywords based on the topic and trying to target those keywords. This article helps to rectify those confusions.
Makes perfect sense Rand, you only need to do a Google search for a handful of searches and you will see Google rewarding this type of content. Many of the top pages that are ranked for a particular keyword are not necessarily targeting the keyword "exactly" in the URL or title tag, rather the keyword appears as part of "combination" of related keywords for that page.
I agree in what you say. Currently the market is saturated with keywords. We must find other words related to the segment as you say. In my web sell toys of different brands and in every article, after the title, try to use the technique you describe, although so far it has not given me great results with words related to toys such as dolls, walker, rattles, etc .. If I have to say that it has given me great results enter the word of the mark, such as country, online, stores, such long tails introducing brand toy if it has worked.
Hey, I think this seems to be a daunting task for them all. They are SEO makers and their mission is to get traffic and increase the readers on their pages. Though the content is very important, it can be nothing without a good keyword. So, we can understand why many blogs are still gaining in popularity without alluring contents. That’s because they have good keywords!
Great Whiteboard friday, I think times of ranking for specific keywords are going down and its more about topics in general. Focusing on keywords will probably get less and less important and it will be important to become an "authority" on a topic rather than a keyword or a set of keywords. This topic is close to the topic of the machine learning for me, mentionend in the article yesterday The Machine Learning Revolution.
So yes and no. thanks.
nice post
Great WBF, I totally agree that a combined approach to gain the benefits of both areas is the right direction to be heading in. We definately try to model our keywords and topics around each other to produce content that best fits user intent and Google. Nice work as ever.
Thanks Rand.
I think an underlying topic here is that many (not so good) SEO's get lost in work and they don't focus on learning and keeping up to date with trends with Google and SEO in general. These SEO's also give the good ones a bad rep by email/comment spamming businesses claiming they will integrate keywords or just fix a couple of things coming up on a (brand that starts with woo) report. They do this at a low cost that seems great until the "SEO" doesn't do anything, and then businesses are hesitant when approached about SEO in the future. It's very frustrating.
I am 100% on-board with the idea of combining the two strategies rather than just scrapping a strategy when it becomes less favorable. Obviously user-intent is where we are at/headed, but keywords still have some importance when utilized properly. The key is utilizing them properly, and implementing them in 10x content (as you would say) that captures a topic/question/problem in it's entirety, and then some, without being redundant.
What I'm getting at is that predicting, staying on top of and constantly evaluating and improving strategies is part of SEO's job and without that clients will not see benefits they should be seeing. Those who are keeping up should know the basis of what has been detailed in your post, and will now be experts on it.
-Ray
Is this another case of SEOs who only operate in binary so they are either targeting keywords or not using keywords at all?!
"...and then there are folks who are taking it way too far, moving away from keywords and actually losing and costing themselves so much search opportunity and search engine traffic."
Those people are just doing topical optimization wrong. I can't imagine a situation where someone has written some awesome content about a topic, yet somehow managed to neglect to use the most frequently searched phrases about that topic in the content.
To me, SEO has always been a combination of art & science (not an either/or choice) - so I primarily aim for a topical approach, then double-check that the content and whatever else I have done does in fact meet the needs.
I also think one reason a lot of traditional SEOs aren't rushing toward topical optimization a little more is that it isn't always simple - and it is more art than science. With keywords, you can have all kinds of nifty analysis tools, check lists, ratios and calculations. Optimizing around topics or concepts is a writing and creativity thing, and not so much a "nerd" skill.
thanks Rand! Awesome wbf!
Either way the quality of a writing can never be judged by a machine. It will be another "perfection of means, and confusion of aims" quoted by Einstein.
I suppose topics would be better instead of the keywords for a more successful SEO strategy!
I always wondered if I should use the phrases that the keyword suggest tool gives me when shorting by relevancy.
Hi Rand Fishkin
Thanks for sharing Friendly or easy reading post.
It seems to me that keywords have always been important in our linguistics. AI deep learning is out of the blocks and on its own creating algorithms and until mortals evolve (cyborg) AI has to use keyword linguistic data sets to communicate with daddy. Keywords are as important as ever it was, the rest is layer cake BS.
Hello!
I am a beginner to Seo and Moz Blog, and as a begginner i found interesting this good article of yours.
Actually i am using a strategy of mine where i take the focus keywords from the content page and then i check on search tool these keywords and their relatives to find the optimal way of their use. And as the company i work is about online sales, I also try to give the higher focus to those products that are more searched from people by physical way and those by online.
So somehow i am using a strategy like yours, but i would prefer to give some focus on page when people land, by using G- Analytics we are able to discover what people want, 'cause i think by time that will be exactly the thing they will search on google.
Anyway i am on my way to learn all new things for Seo on this blog and share all what i can discover.
Thanks for the article!
When writing articles for a website, the main focus should be in covering a topic as thoroughly as possible. Keywords will find their way in the content naturally. However, keyword research can still be an important part of the process, as long as the keywords are worked into the content naturally.
How do you think that topics could be tweaked to eCommerce overall?
Not yet, because best keywords can lead them to the TOP SEO while good topics can not do that. SEO makers also need money to live and work to pursue. Writing articles are the jobs of content writers, not them!
Great, Focus on topic and group keywords into them. Does it also suit to the google rankbrain search algorithm?
Thank you for whiteboarding this. I've been saying it at our agency for a while now and now it feels legitimate. Cheers!
Honestly in the ocean of crap SEO tutorials which throws up on Google this is Holy grail!
We make pages for human behaviour and not bots. I really like your best of both worlds approach.
I don't think that keywords will ever be obsolete. Yes Google is getting better at semantic search overall, but at the core of semantic is the keyword that they work backwards from. WIth that said - Some of our content now attracts more visits from long tail keywords than it does from the main keyword.
Great Post! Really interesting information ;)!!
You Completely nailed it Rand. Your Idea of Making this Hybrid is really Awesome...One of the Best thing I like about your Posts are the Drawings.... The Way you represent your complete article with your drawings are amazing...
Brilliant article! I want to start putting some of this into practice. Can any one recommend any other tools? :)
yuppers - this is how it should be done :-)
Great Piece of Advice!
I get more insight on combining Keywords and topics while creating landing page.
I will surely put it to use in my next landing page.
Hey Rand, Excellent write up as usual. Thanks for posting this up!
Great post as always Rand!
By focusing on topics rather then keywords, your SEO goals are much easier to meet. Why? Because when you stop worrying about the keywords themselves and focus on the content within the topic on which you are writing you will end up incorporating multiple long tail keywords that will "wrap" in your focused keywords along with many others. You will end up covering much more ground, and as a result, get more traffic to your site.
Rand, Great video I have been using this technical for a while. It is almost the same concept used to improve quality score in AdWords Grouping keywords in to themes and writing ads relevant to keyword groups.
Thanks for the share. Google continues to get smarter and more powerful. There's a greater demand for more creativity and strategy within the marketing industry....At the center of our efforts is the customer experience. Knowing your audience, understanding your audience, caring for your audience and their needs is critical - and developing resourceful content that provides answers and solutions to your consumer-needs. In our strategy, having the customer's needs in mind - is central to an effective plan.
Thank you, Rand, for one of your best Whiteboard Fridays so far! ^^
About the keyword vs. concept discrepancy: It does depend on the content of your website and on the searching habits of your target audience. There is really a difference between a service section of a local online newspaper informing about cancelled trains and flights in your vicinity, and a real estate portal full of local housing offers. Among people wanting to inform themselves about whether their flight is also affected by the ongoing blizzard, some will try some search term, and some will try a completely different one (or even ask Google the question), but they all want one piece of information: Is flight XY4711 or the next Acela to Boston delayed or cancelled today? In the real estate example, however, there is not much room for varying search terms besides the rather standardised phrase "house for sale in Akron, Ohio". Conclusion: For the real estate portal, the classic keyword-driven approach will still be the gold standard, but for the flight trouble section of the newspaper? Rather not. In this case I would really recommend the holistic approach described here.
I was thinking about this very topic on the way to work today. Thank you Rand for the visual by road-mapping it on the board and articulating the hybrid approach so well. As a 1-man SEO team, the importance of doing so cannot be overstated. It will take the efforts of the product team, the copywriters and designers for the new pages to come to life and the clarity found from this post will make that a lot easier. Thank you.
Wouldn't this approach just water down the focus of the page? Websites are expansive and it doesn't take much to topically theme a group of pages so surely the ideal (from an opitmisation perspective) is to create a group of content around you theme with each page focusing on a niche keyword. So, for example if I were interested in building content for bath repairs I might have one page covering bath chips, another covering acrylic bath repairs, another on repairing damaged bath enamel and so on.... Or are you saying Rand that best practice might be to create an overarching page covering all of these topics?
Thanks so much Rand. I just spoke with 2 clients this past week about how making a content piece by only focusing on SEO keywords and keyword phrases doesn't lend itself to the reader being engaged, satisfied or getting answers. I'm beginning to see some distance with the obsessiveness that has been keywords.
Your explanation is a great explanation and eloquently put so I can explain this to clients through you!
Thanks again!
Hey Rand,
Grand thanks. I am already trying to follow this type of keyword containing task but I am stuck at link building for contents.
Love the idea of concept targeting, but how does that relate to the "basics" of title tag, meta description, h1, etc.? I understand using H2 tags for the related keywords, but do you still need to pick one keyword and use it consistently in the "core" fields?
Hi Rand, Are you getting better at drawing?
It's good you've covered this topic. I also see SEO who don't quite understand that Google is smart as heck, but it's still a machine and that we need to communicate with it as clearly as possible. If you also want some traffic from Bing, we need to communicate even more specific.
When you don't pay attention to keyword research. You don't know the amount of searches and even worse, you don't know how high the competition is.
Have a nice weekend folks! Keep providing Google and your audiance valuable content!
Good read, thanks for sharing Rand..! Great to be here and being a part of this ultimate keyword vs topic discussion. It'll help to convince others who are still focusing on set track. It's a great lead to perform well on web.
Praise The Lord Sir and all readers be Blessed forever. Amen... As got it by search engines news came to understand "The Keywords and Topics works together. If you are posting any topics and keywords are relevant/ Complicate Benediction of SEO" be happy your will see great reputation... Amen
I am new at MOZ.COM and please if i am wrong please, please please correct me.
Your corraction will make me perfact one day. Amen Be Blessed all.. :)
Hi Rand, Another great article from your Whiteboard Friday. Thanks for updating us. As you taught us about focusing more at topic and not keyword. That is right but this thing right for content promotion like you post blog, article or press release for some topic and targeted our keyword in that content's Title.
But when we create a website page and target a keyword, how can we create similar kind of title that you mention in your post (targeting topic with keyword)? As our competitor targeted only keyword at their respective website's page and rank higher from us. So, at that time what can we do? Just follow new school method or follow traditional method that every SEO follow?
I have also one question in my mind that, Can we take another Whiteboard Friday. In which we have two pages that give us same kind of information. In one page we follow Old school method OR traditional SEO method and in other page we follow topic with keyword targeting method. Both pages have same value in terms of backlink, social media shares, etc. And Let we will see which page rank higher at Google SERP. What you say? From this experiment we may know the Google behavior for this topic with keyword targeting method.
The competitor may be ranking on the basis of domain authority, page rank and the number of back-links. It's not just about keyword or topic approach. We should stick to the balanced method (What Rand explained), and at the same time try to improve on other ranking factors. Unfortunately this process may take some time depending on the available resources and budget.
Hi, Mate. In my comment, I said that both web pages have same value in terms of backlink, social media shares, DA, PA, page rank, everything. And after that we conduct a test for both methods and let we will see which method get higher rank. I totally agree with Rand and its tactics but also have question about it and that question I asked in my recent comment.
This was a very informational way to start my day! It'll be interesting to hear how much keyword research and content will change as the search engines (hopefully) get better.
For me, I deal with a lot of healthcare related topics, but we ride the fine line of not wanting to become WebMD by putting a list of problems and symptoms. I hope for a more topic-related page in the future because my stakeholders roll their eyes when I have to recommend creating another page versus their wish to consolidate.
Great article Rand thanks. I think the merit in doing keyword research for optimisation is to find market value in a group keywords and the tangent keywords that can help separate you from your competition. I have also used the TLKT from Network Empire (not an affiliate) as it software is the only one that provides a rating of words that relevant to each other in a score called Lari Score so you can define a group of word into themes rather than single keywords.
great value! tnks. I thing the keyword research with tarjeting its so helpful.
Rand, Awesome. You just nailed it. This is cool post with some cool and real time information in this blog.
Thanks,
Ibtehaj
Rand and the Moz team thanks so much this seems to have a piece that many evolving SEO's need and that is blend new tactics with old ones for total dominance. What I love about this is your SEO pages for a site now become more of a tool for the user through the subheadings in the content that have the creative appeal that may not hold the exact ranking keyword. The examples where perfect and the page you describe where there was interactive tools and actually help the user accomplish something, but like you said when Google is not having you rank well whats the use.
Keep up the good work, its nice going to work on Monday and looking like a master mind in search.
Of course the combination of models is the best choice, and probably is the most natural. Thank you for such an interesting post
Great topic Rand. This topic will really be a great help for some of my SEO projects. I myself, as a digital marketer, manages some SEO jobs, and I have also same questions as Hummingbird came out, and has been discuss this case with our Search Shark team.
Great job Rand! This is my main area of interest over the past year. A lot of people don't get about how to implement the kind of comprehensive, holistic writing we know helps ranking. You struck just the right balance in showing the best approach. I hope people will see that understanding machine learning as employed by Google doesn't need to be crazy complex.
Usding topics makes more sense by all means. It covers user requirements in terms of what they are looking to read and want to use any particuler services along with keywords.
Brilliant,
Combing both models is a must. I really started to get pulled into the 2nd early this year, but felt that something was off. Thanks Rand for bring some clarity on the issues. Keywords still matter!
Thanks Rand, an exciting FMB.
I also believe that it is best to a combination of the two tactics, but maybe in the future the semantic issue will be more important than the keywords
Hi Rand.
You have rightly said the focus on keywords is no longer a beneficial strategy , but if we emphasize on content then it will be fruitful. Now it is really the time for broad thinking and change our mindsets about traditional SEO practices. Just sticking to old plain keyword strategy will not take us anywhere forward.
Thanks Rand for another great WBF.
I totally agree with basically everything you said. Developing catchy, call-to-action content that includes your targeted keywords and phrases only makes sense. Google's robots need to be able to crawl the content effectively and human users need to be compelled to read the information. This completely goes along with your Slide Share clip on optimizing for 2 types of algorithms, humans and robots. You have to think about optimizing for both to be successful!
Thanks for sharing another great tip and explaining it so clearly.
So did he have that red marker because he didn't know what to do with his hands orrrrrr?
Another great Whiteboard Friday Rand! Thank you for sharing. I think that blending the two methods makes so much more sense, as creating content around a topic using multiple keywords generally creates a more natural experience for the user.
Thanks for sharing very informative article for read...
Very special post.. thanks a lot
Another Great Piece of Knowledge by Great Wizard of SEO.
There is definitely a happy medium between keyword targeting and answering a user's initial search intent.
This makes perfect sense. Thank you for the information.
Thanks for the share this article. Good content.
nice post
Thanks for sharing another great tip and explaining it so clearly.
You talk about creating landing pages? thanks