Summary
I learned that keyword relevance and intent are more important than just search volume when selecting keywords. Focus on choosing keywords that align closely with what your audience is looking for and more likely to lead to conversions.
To rank higher, I should study Google's current results for a keyword to match user intent perfectly. If the top results are informational, I should create informational content, and if they are commercial, I should align my content that way too.
Understanding the competition is key. I need to check the quality of competing content, their topic authority, and backlink profiles to decide if it's feasible to compete for a specific keyword.
The value of a keyword can be determined using Google's CPC data. Higher CPC often means the keyword is valuable because advertisers are willing to pay more for clicks.
I learned the importance of creating unique content. Google prefers unique and fresh content over repetitive AI-generated content, so I should find unique angles or use fresh data to stand out.
Creating long, detailed posts isn't always necessary. Instead, focus on matching the search intent and covering all the relevant topics naturally without worrying much about word count.
Building my domain's topic authority means consistently creating content around a key topic across different owned and rented platforms. This helps in creating brand awareness and funneling potential customers back to my main site.
To gain an edge, I should look at zero search volume keywords that still have demand, by exploring forums like Reddit or using Google's People Also Ask for ideas.
I learned about the importance of user engagement signals in Google's ranking algorithm. Keeping content engaging through personal stories and patterns breaks can help maintain reader interest.
Finally, backlinks are crucial for improving domain authority. I need to focus on getting quality backlinks to signal to Google that my content is valuable and authoritative.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest focusing on keyword relevance and intent over just high search volume. Find keywords that directly relate to your audience's needs or questions. This low-cost strategy can lead to better search rankings and more conversions.
To rank higher, analyze Google's top results for a keyword to understand what type of content matches user intent. If top results show informational content, gear your content similarly. This ensures you align with what viewers are already engaging with.
I recommend you study competitors' content quality, their authority on a topic, and their backlink profiles to see if you can compete on those keywords. Look for gaps where competitors might not be as strong.
Use Google's CPC data to judge keyword value. A higher CPC indicates higher value, but don't rely solely on this. Consider combining CPC evaluation with your own audience research.
Creating unique content is crucial. Instead of replicating what's out there, find a new angle or present fresh data. This helps your content stand out on Google.
You don't need to write long articles, just ensure you cover the topic comprehensively with relevant content to meet search intent. Focus on making your content engaging by using stories or unique patterns to keep the reader's interest.
Lastly, consider exploring zero-volume but demand-driven keywords in forums like Reddit or Google's People Also Ask section. These can provide untapped opportunities that are easier to rank for.
Quotes by Author
#### "Search volume doesn't equate to value"
#### "Relevance and intent are better for determining value"
#### "You need to do well in the traditional search results"
#### "You should try to match the intent perfectly"
#### "Uniqueness is your strategic advantage in SEO right now"
Full Transcript
I'm going to show you a proven six-pillar SEO content creation process that grew this page's organic search traffic by,300%. I'm Nathan Gotch, the co-founder and CEO of Rankability. And since 2013, I've led hundreds of successful SEO campaigns, and my SEO work is featured on Forbes, HubSpot, and High Level. So, if you're excited to learn how to create SEO content that Google loves to rank, then like this video and let's begin with pillar number one, which is keyword selection. So, I'll start with the most important part, which is search volume is the last reason why you should select a keyword. Look at the search query side eye meme and now look at best personal injury lawyer in Albuquerque. So, which of these is more valuable? Well, if you guess the injury lawyer keyword, then you're right. The point is search volume doesn't equate to value. Relevance and intent are better for determining value. Which brings me to the six pillars of keyword selection. Number one is relevance. So think about the five stages of customer awareness and ask yourself, what's the likelihood that my target audience buys my stuff if they search for this keyword phrase? Focus on keywords that are closest to a conversion. Number two is intent. You can use the structure of a keyword phrase to get a ballpark idea of where a searcher is in the sales cycle. And you can put 99% of keywords into two buckets, informational and commercial. So the best way to figure out the proper intent strategy is just to look at Google and see what you're up against. So obviously we're in a very different world now because we have these AI overviews. But the good news is that typically the top ranking results in the AI overviews are also some of the top ranking results in the traditional organic. So you can see we've got Zapier, we've got Clear Scope, and we've got SEO.com. Once again, we've got the three exact top three popping up here as well. So the point is is like to do well in AI overviews, you need to do well in the traditional search results. So what you want to look at here is you see the types of content, the types of pages that are ranking. And so when you look at this, you look at those top three results and they're clearly allformational assets and the AI overview is pulling informationational assets. So that's pretty much all I need to know about ranking for this keyword. And it means that I need to also create anformational asset. Okay, that is the key. If I try to come in here with something super commercial, it's probably not going to do really well unless you have a lot of backlinks or you're pulling from other signals. But if you want to be able to get the best results with the least amount of resources and effort, then you should try to match the intent perfectly. So just study Google to find the perfect intent strategy. Number three is value. You can determine the value of keywords with relevance and intent, but you can also use Google's CPC data to see how much advertisers are willing to pay. In most cases, the higher the CPC, the more valuable the keyword is. Number four is competition. There are three critical variables of SEO competition. First, content quality, which is how good are the competitors who are currently ranking. If it's clear that they've invested significant effort, time, and money into their assets, you should expect to do the same. So, next, you want to go ahead and just analyze one of your top ranking competitors and do this more as a qualitative analysis, which means just use your own expertise and opinion to determine if this is going to be even doable, right? Does the top ranking competitor have a moat for this keyword? And so that's what you're looking for because at the end of the day, the goal is to be number one. So if you don't feel like you can produce something at the same caliber as the number one result, then you may want to go and pursue a different keyword before coming back to that one. So in this case, you know, we're looking at this one and clearly it's written by Brian Dean, who is a very good writer, number one, and number two is very skilled at the craft of SEO. So when we look at this, not only is it written by him who has subject matter expertise, but you can tell his copywriting is very, very good. The visuals are beautiful. This is a very good piece of content. Like this is elite level content. So you're not going to find this caliber of content for many keywords. It's just not doesn't really exist. But in general, like in most industries, you probably won't have to bring this intensity to win, right? But if you see someone like this ranking, then you may want to go a different direction. The second is topic authority. How well do the competitors cover this one topic? If it's all they talk about on their website, then you need to have the same level of subject matter expertise and focus. So, one of the quickest ways to see if one of your competitors has good topic authority or they've really focused hard on their one core discipline or subject matter expertise, just go into Google and just do a site search and then search something related to the keyword you're going after. So, in this case, we're looking at got seo.com. If you search content, you can see we talk about content quite a bit. Like many, many pages are built around that. If we go and look at just SEO, you're going to see the same thing. many many pages built around the con the topic of SEO. So when you're up against competitors who have done this who have really focused in on one topic for an extended amount of time, it's going to be naturally more difficult to beat them. So what you really want to do is see if there's competitors that don't have this level of depth. Right? If you see that, then that's a golden opportunity to pursue that keyword. And the next is backlinks. How strong are your competitors from a backlink profile perspective? you need to match their backlink quality and quantity to achieve similar outcomes. So the final thing you want to look at when trying to decide upon a keyword based on competition is the overall domain strength that you're up against. So in rankability, there's a column here that we use called domain score. So this is looking at the overall strength and quality of a backlink profile for the entire domain, not just the one page, but the domain as a whole, which is one of the biggest ranking factors. So, what you typically don't want to see is this. You see a lot of red. That's an indication that you're up against some very, very strong competitors. And so, you can actually see the criteria here, but basically, you know, if you're going to go after a keyword, ideally, you would see at least one to three competitors that are more in this moderate to weak range. That means it's a golden opportunity. Anything that's in this range, just remember, if you do pursue a keyword like this, a, you should have equivalent domain strength. And number two, you should be willing to invest in link building to make up any authority gaps that you might have because you're not going to be able to come into a keyword like SEO content with a brand new website and rank. You just it's virtually impossible unless you you know you have some sort of trickery that I'm not aware of. But if you look at this like a brand new website with a brand new page has virtually no chance of ranking number one for this. It's virtually impossible. So, you want to make sure you are matching your competitors that you're up against. And if you're not, then you're going to have to make up those gaps. And that's typically going to be on the link building front. So, now moving on to the next technique for keyword selection, which is number five, demand. So, search volume is one measure of demand, and the most commonly used for SEO. 80% of your keyword targets should have quantifiable search demand, and the other 20% are for topics that don't have search volume. Here's some quick ways to find zero volume keywords. So, the first technique you can use is going to the people also ask section right here. And a lot of these keywords are really good for longtail variants that are subsets of that core topic. So, like how to do SEO for beginners, is SEO free or paid, can I do SEO on my own? These are all different ideas based on that core topic that you originally searched. But if you want to go down even more levels, you can go ahead and just click this. And every time you click this, it's going to add more and more ideas. Okay? So theoretically, if you want to build topic support, you should go after each keyword that has different intent. So like for example, is SEO a good career? That's a very specific query that deserves its own dedicated page. Okay? And so think about it that way. Is this truly a different topic? And if the answer is yes, then create a dedicated page specifically for it. Second thing you can do is go into Reddit. There's tons of amazing topic ideas in here that often won't have search volume in the traditional tools, but they do have quantifiable demand by looking at user signals. So, just looking at this, I can already think of a few ideas for content. So, like ask me anything about SEO, but look specifically in what subreddit it's in for SAS. So, we could create SEO content related to SAS companies. We could look at this one here. This could literally be a topic. Not happy with your SEO results? Do this, right? That could literally be the title. We could target that specific idea and then go ahead and give some sort of actional advice to help them. Okay? And so you can take these as seeds to build out, you know, better content ideas or you could just use the idea itself because we have quantifiable proof here based on user signals that this is a good topic to attack. And then finally, you can go into Google Search Console and just look at any page on your website that has existing organic traffic. And I like to sort it and by position and look at keywords that are ranking very poorly. Okay? So look at the variants that are ranking very poorly and that's typically a sign that you can create a dedicated page for that topic because if your existing page was good enough for it, it would probably already be doing well, right? So what I want to look at are these really longtail variations. So like this one here, AI content versus human written content SEO performance. Okay, that's a very specific query. we could create a case study showing the differences in performance based on those two different ways to create content. And if you take this keyword and you throw it into a traditional SEO keyword tool, it's probably not going to show any search volume whatsoever, but people are searching it because that's why it's showing up here. So, this is a beautiful way to find topics that your competitors have no idea that they exist. And then you can just go and attack these. And the final technique you should use for keyword selection is number six, clicks. Did you know that 60% of searches on Google end without a single click? Well, here's the reality of what Google SERs look like right now. And that's why click-through rate or CTR potential must be a part of your keyword selection process. So, here's your action step for pillar number one. Scan the QR code on screen and make a copy of this free keyword research template. Add some of your perspective keywords into the sheet and then look at the scoring criteria tab to score your opportunities. Whichever scores the highest is a good keyword to pursue. And now it's time for pillar number two, which is uniqueness. So, Google's algorithms are craving uniqueness because they're overwhelmed with regurgitated AI content. If you get anything from this video, please understand this. Uniqueness is your strategic advantage in SEO right now. And this is the hardest part of the content creation process. But here's the good news. Your competitors are conditioning themselves right now to stop using their brains. Their first instinct is to open chat GBT when they need ideas. But what they don't realize is LLMs can't create anything new. They can only give you information based on existing training data. And that's why I want to introduce you to the purple cow SEO content strategy. I stole this concept from Seth Goden, but it'll help you get 10 times better SEO results. Here's how it works. Step one, study your competitors. So, look at a competitor that is a ranking very well and b has covered the topic at a deep level. Save their page as a PDF. Open chat GBT, attach the PDF and use the prompt. Then it will spit out a beautiful SWAT analysis. From there, you can step number two, brainstorm angles. use this simple prompt and once again it'll produce some solid angles and you can use this process to get the idea machine rolling and you can also differentiate your existing or new content with proven methods like number one attract usergenerated content. So I use this angle for our is Google biased case study. I knew this would be a polarizing topic and would attract UGC. And all of this UGC makes this page very unique relative to the competitors. Number two, use fresh data. So, Google's AI overviews love fresh and new data. Become the source by creating your own datadriven studies like our best CMS for SEO study. Instead of opinion, we conducted our own independent study. And you don't need to do massive studies. Even a small study that produces some anecdotal evidence can still create the uniqueness advantage. Number three, create experienced driven content. So share your subjective opinion on topics because AI can't do that. And that's exactly what I did with best SEO books. I purchased 26 SEO books and read every single one and shared my subjective opinion. And now for step number three, make everything unique. It's not required. And you can rank without doing this. But if you want to dominate, make your copy, visuals, and page design unique relative to your competitors. And yes, that is right. You need to invest in every single piece of content if you want long-term results. You won't regret it. So, now moving on to pillar number three, which is relevance. So, uniqueness is the lead domino, but Google's algorithms crave relevance. There are three moves you must make for Google to fall in love with your pages. Number one, match search intent perfectly. Do this wrong and your rankings are dead in the water. But the good news is that you don't have to guess. Just look at Google for your target keyword and see what's ranking. So if you see mostly informational content, then go informational. And if you see mostly commercial, you should go commercial. It's not a life ordeath decision and you can always try a new angle. Number two, use NLP. Google and other tech giants use NLP to understand human content. And you can use this to your advantage to feed the machines the relevant topics, sometimes called entities. Here's how. Step number one, use a content optimization tool. For example, I used Rankability to write the script for this video you're watching right now. It crawls your competitor's content, extracts topics, and prioritizes the topics based on what's covered the most. You can even click on a topic and see how the competitor is covering it in their content. In general, you should try to cover as many related keywords in your content as possible. But first, go on to step number two, which is create an outline. So, you can do this manually or with AI. So, just enter your keyword into the content optimizer and select your preference. You can generate just the content brief and outline or a full first draft with the AI content writer. If you're using AI to create the first draft, then use the entire prompt window to get the best output. And it typically takes four to five minutes to create a draft that A perfectly matches the intent of the keyword and B is already optimized for relevance. Just follow these simple guidelines for when you should or shouldn't use AI content. Now, for step number three, cover the topics. Notice that I didn't say inject keywords into your content. It's already proven that keyword density is not a Google ranking factor. View the keywords as topics. Sometimes you can cover the topic with a sentence and other times you need to dedicate an entire section. Now, you're probably wondering, what about word count? Well, the quantity of words on your page isn't a ranking factor. However, you can't rank without words, and words are required to create copy that effectively covers your keyword. Rankability gives an optimal word count range that eliminates the outliers, but this recommendation is not a law and we break it all the time. Just lean more towards the low end of the word count range to make sure your content is practicing brevity. And now for step number four, keyword placement. So what I've just showed you falls under advanced content optimization, but don't neglect basic onpage SEO best practices. So to rank well, you need to have your primary keyword in your URL, page title, metadescription, H1, first sentence, and ideally a variant in your H2. So here's where you should be at this point. You've identified a valuable keyword. You've found a unique angle, and you've created highly relevant copy. So now it's time for pillar number four, which is quality. So everything you've done so far will help you produce a strong page that stands out. But let's go to the next level with quality. So, step number one, spice up your SEO copywriting. You're not writing a dissertation. Here are some methods to make your copywriting more engaging and persuasive. Number one, write to one person. Notice how it feels like I'm speaking directly to you. You probably haven't noticed, but I've used the word you over 83 times in this video. Number two, don't try to sound smart. The smartest people are often the least persuasive. It's because they use jargon, big words, and don't know how to be clear with their ideas. My wife thinks it's really strange, but this one technique really works, which is speak while you write. For example, I was talking as I was writing this script, and it's more of a creepy whisper, but it helps me write how I speak. And this creates more of a connection with the person that's consuming your content. Number three, break patterns. So, rewind the tape to the previous section and see how I used a silly anecdote about my wife. This is how you can drive engagement. Tell your readers to do things. Reread this, click that link, open this, watch this, etc. Action equals engagement, which is something that Google is tracking with Chrome. Number four, use open loops. So, Breaking Bad is the best modern example of this. It's open loop after open loop. Do this with your content. Preview what's coming next, but don't reveal everything. So, drop a comment below and say copywriting if you want me to dedicate an entire video to this one topic in the future. Now, moving on to number five, become a rewriter. So, great writing is simply the byproduct of incredible editing. For example, this video script went through three versions before it was ready. Number six, build for skimmers. You might be the best copywriter on the planet, but you still must structure your content for maximum readability. So, here are my favorite techniques for breaking things up. Short paragraphs, headings, bullet points, numbered lists, custom visuals, but not decorative images. Only add visual content if it adds value to the content itself. Embedded videos and tables. And so, now it's time for pillar number five, which is topic authority. So creating one beautiful SEO asset is only the first step. Now you need to support your mother asset. Okay. So you've probably heard of the idea of topic authority or topical authority. But topic domination to me isn't just about your website, but it's all of the assets that you have online. You're going to try to attack that topic and create content around that topic across many different platforms. So but for this case, I'm just going to show you real quick example. So I'm going to focus here on content optimization. So that's the focus. That's the topic that we want to build a lot of authority on a lot of support around. So you want to do this on your owned assets. You want to do it on your rented assets. You want to do it on any asset. But let's just focus on the owned assets first. So in general, when you create content on these rented assets, the idea is that you're going to get people to know, like, and trust you. And if you do that well, a percentage of those people are going to go to Google and search your brand. Okay? And that's really the idea. We get people to come to Google. they come to our website and if they come to our website that's where we can actually drive real conversions and we can actually have an owned audience. All of these audiences on these platforms are not truly owned audiences. It can be taken away from us at any point. So we want to get people back to our home base. So with that in mind, when we're building topic authority for SEO, we want to start at the bottom of the funnel. So we begin with most aware. Okay, most aware is at the bottom of the funnel. These are keywords that are directly related to our brand. You should have no problem ranking number one for these keywords. It should be very easy and you it should be the focus. And it's amazing how many brands don't do this and they're not even ranking number one for their branded queries. So you absolutely want to focus on these first. Okay? And because these queries are so uh have such good commercial intent, you can go directly for whatever your core offer is. So, in this case, if someone's searching uh rankability pricing directly to a rankability free trial makes a lot of sense, right? If they're looking at our testimonials and our results and our case studies, all that bottom of the funnel content, we can drive them directly to a free trial because that is the core offer that directly aligns with where they are in the sales cycle. Okay? But then we go further up the funnel. Now, we're looking at product aare. Okay? And this is applicable to any business. Isn't just SAS, it's local businesses, ecom, it's the same idea. We want to start at the bottom funnel and work our way up. So then you're going to target keywords like this which is going to be rankability review, rankability alternatives, rankability verse insert whatever competitor. These keywords are also heavily commercial driven. So you can go directly to a free trial or you can use internal linking to drive them deeper into the funnel. And then we move further up the funnel. Again, now we're starting getting into that broad topic, the solution. In this case, the solution is a content optimization tool or an onpage SEO tool. Also, we're looking at al other competitor alternatives, right? So, now our brand is not in the equation yet, right? Someone isn't aware of our product quite yet. But the goal here at this stage is to make them aware. We want them we want to build that brand awareness for rankability. So, we drive them deeper into our funnel. Now, this one's a little bit harder to decide what the core offer should be. So, in my experience, I'm probably just going to drive them deeper into the funnel via internal linking, but there's no problem with trying to go for your core offer here as well. Okay. Now, here's where things start to shift. Now, we're moving into problem aware. So, going back to the original idea that content optimization, that's like the the center at which we're building support, topic support. You can see that it's very broad, right? It's more problem aare. It's not someone searching content optimization, they may not even know that they need a tool yet, right? They may just think, "Oh, this is just a process I can follow manually and do it." They don't know yet that a tool actually makes it a thousand times easier. So, what we're doing here is we're educating them on this concept of content optimization. So, we're talking about the topic in general. We're giving them checklists. We're showing them how to do on-page SEO, how to use AI to make things easier. And then we offer, you know, the solution to this thing that makes it way easier, which is, hey, by the way, you can actually use a tool that makes content optimization way easier. So you don't have to guess your way through this. So at this stage, you're driving them once again via internal linking to each progressive stage of the funnel. That's the idea. But at this stage, most people aren't ready to buy anything. So you can't really go for the throat here and just immediately go for your core offer. You're much better off promoting some sort of lead magnet that bleeds into that core offer. So what we do is we just offer some sort of free checklist or some sort of lead magnet. And in the lead magnet, we talk about the product, right? So, we talk about the tool because a tool is a is a vehicle to get them the result that they want, right? So, we're going to drive them into here. And then a large large percentage of people, 97 to 98% of people who go to your website aren't going to convert on anything. They're not going to do anything. But what you want is to get a percent a large percentage of those people on your email list because then that gives you the ability to remarket to these people to get them to know, like, and trust you, right? And in the email marketing process, the cool part is is once you've built out all of these assets in your email marketing, you can then promote all of these assets in your emails, right? So you can kind of guide them through this journey through email marketing till eventually they end up at your core offer. Okay? And finally, we're at unaware. Okay, so now we're talking about very broad topics where someone says, you know, I need to figure out how to, you know, write SEO content for my website. I I don't even know the first place to begin. So, you're going to give them the process for creating SEO content. So, funny enough, if you want to see this happening in real time, I'm doing this for rankability right now. Every single one of these assets I'm building, and you'll see them, they're being built. Now, slight nuance here. I'm doing this specifically on gotacho.com because it makes a lot more sense because that domain is way more powerful. So, I'm attacking these topics on that website and then driving it back into rankability. Eventually, once I've tapped out all those topics on got seo.com, then I'm going to go to rankability.com and I'm going to attack the same exact topics again. So, that way we can get multiple rankings on the first page of Google. But in general, these two phases here that the you of this sales journey, drive them to something free, a lead magnet that's, you know, very simple that they can get some value for. You can give them results in advance. And if you do a good job, some of them are going to, you know, take your core offer. And some of them, you know, you'll have to continue to market to forever. Essentially, you're going to have to nurture them until they're ready to, you know, use something at a higher level, to use a solution that's going to help them get results faster. So that's how you build topic support around your core concept that will actually help you drive real revenue. And now for pillar number six, domain authority. So in a perfect world, creating the best content would win in Google. Unfortunately, it's not that simple because Google can't objectively determine what is good content. It can only use signals to make the determination. And one of the most powerful signals that it uses are backlinks. So, watch the next video to learn how to build back links that actually
