fancycarrssgg
Cross-Border Investigator
2
MONTHS
2 2 MONTHS OF SERVICE
LEVEL 1
300 XP
Step 1 - Choose A Keyword
The first step is to choose a keyword.
This is just a base keyword. You are not creating pages to target keywords. You are creating pages to target topics. Most know this, but what you probably aren't aware of is that, when you target a page for a keyword, you automatically optimize it for the topic. This means we shouldn't be too concerned with "topics" vs keywords. Just be aware you are targeting a topic, and not just a single keyword.
In some cases there isn't a main keyword to target and the topic will contain several searches around 100-200 volume per month compared with your main keyword having say 400 search vol, then a bunch of 20-50 search vol. In those cases you'll pick a few keywords to try to optimize. It's harder in those cases, but if you guys want a guide on that I can write one later.
For this example we're going to choose "best laptop for nursing students"
Step 1.1 - Identify the topic
The topic here is laptops/notebooks for nursing students. Obviously. But we're thinking now in terms of the English phrase and not just the single keyword. If the keyword was "duplicate content" then your topic could be a number of things. Looking at page 1 for that keyword, there are a range of topics from avoiding creating duplicate content, to how to fix a duplicate content penalty. So as you can see this is an important step. Identifying your topic.
Step 1.2 - Identify the user intent
Next you identify the user intent. This just helps you write a better article. For this keyword it's really obvious, but for the above "duplicate content", it's not. You should always look at what ranks on page 1 for that keyword to find out what the user intent is unless it's very obvious. You need to match what Google thinks the user intent is, with what you decide it is. For our example, the user intent is to find a good laptop that's best suited for nursing students. They want to find something that's unique for them, and not just any old laptop. They are probably wanting to know, are there laptops that are particularly useful for nursing students compared with the rest.
Step 2 - Check Competition/Volume
Use ahrefs for this.
You check the base search vol for the keyword, but more importantly you want to see the traffic/keywords from pages that are on page 1 for the main keyword. Sometimes you have a low volume keyword(50-100), but it has a lot of longtails in the group, so if you target the group you'll get quite a bit of traffic.
This is how you do it.
Step 3 - Gather your main keywords for the topic
Let's look into laptopsconsider.com/best-laptop-for-nursing-students/ to get our main keywords.
And actually this one has html bookmarks too. There's really VERY few keywords in this group.
We have
Step 4 - Gather Topics/Questions to cover
Look through a few pages in the top 10. Ignore outliers that are in the top 10. Ie, strong sites, sites with short content, sites that are different to what you're creating(ecommerce, videos etc)
Note down a few topics/questions. Let's take a quick look here :
So you have your core keywords and your topics now you need to include.
Step 5 - Word Count
This is an easy step. Just look at the word count for what's in the top 10. Exclude outliers. Generally you want to look at what the weaker sites are doing because if a weaker site is up there with a strong site, it has better on-page. If there's 3 sites that are quite weak, with 3500, 4500 and 4600 words, then go for something between 3700 and 4800. I like to keep costs down, so I'd probably in this case go for 3800 words personally. You don't need to beat everyone on word count, just be in the general ballpark and at least above the lowest.
Step 6 - Word & Phrase Usage Counts
This is where some people get confused and think about "keyword density". Google isn't checking for percents. Percentiles are irrelevant. It doesn't really matter if an article is 2000 words or 4000 words. It just needs ENOUGH usage of keywords so google knows what the page is about. The title is NOT enough. I don't care if you've ranked pages with just the keyword in the title. There are so many factors in SEO. It doesn't prove anything. Try to consistently beat the kind of articles ranking for this nurse article by only using "best laptops for nursing students" once in the title. You just won't. They are ALL optimized for it. Even the guys on page 2-3 are optimized here. Where you CAN beat these guys is through *better* optimization. They may be using the core keywords enough times, but there's other areas some of them lack that you can improve upon.
So with that said, let's look more at what you want to do in this step before writing.
First, your core keyword. This is a fairly simple one, and in the vast majority of cases, you want to use the core keyword like this :-
title/h1, and h2/h3, and 1-2 times in the body, generally somewhere in the first few paragraphs. Absolute minimum of using it 3 times. There's no reason not to. Using it 3 times in a 1000 word article is still not going to put you into dangerous territory. Help google out. It is just an algorithm. It does not understand when you're saying things like "one of the major advantages that the asus XYZ has for nursing students is that it's really sturdy with an extra long battery life, so it's ideal for moving around from lecture to lecture". You as a human know that this is very relevant for "best laptop for nursing students".
This is actually how Google would parse that sentence :-
brands: asus
advantages of asus
nursing students
asus for nursing students
asus is sturdy
asus has long battery life
moving from lecture to lecture
I don't think it would connect that the asus is GOOD for nursing students who ARE moving around from lecture to lecture. That's too advanced.
So look at those topics there. That's not really what you were going for
Compare it to this
"One of the best laptops for nursing students is the Asus XYZ. It has an extra long battery life which is really good for busy nursing students who are studying at a university that has its lecture halls spread out and need a good durable laptop they can carry with them from lecture to lecture that won't run out of battery so they can take notes in every class with their laptop"
See the difference here?
Google will see this as
"best laptops for nursing students"
brand: asus
asus xyz is one of the best laptops for nuring students
Extra long battery life
busy nursing students
good for busy nursing students
studying at university
lecture halls
durable laptop
carry with them
take notes in class with laptop
Lots of usage of "laptop", "nursing", "student", "best" in here.
Google is just an algorithm, folks! Stop thinking you have to write amazing content to RANK. You have to write amazing content so your site lasts for a long time, and you eventually attract some natural links, but to RANK, you just need to give it what it wants to see.
Now, with an understanding of that..
Look at your competitors on page 1. Avoid the outliers as always.
I use surfer seo to help me with this next bit, but you can do it manually.
I've selected a bunch of pages in the top 10 to compare to and this is what it's telling me..
It recommends 4300 words.
8 headings
18 paragraphs
This is slightly useful. While "18 paragraphs" isn't going to rank you, it helps to stay closer to what the competition are doing. It's just giving you a general guideline for what google wants to see for this keyword group.
What's more important is this
Step 6 - Write the Content
Step 5 was sort of talking about "rewriting stuff", so you can consider step 5/6 interchangeable. If you're using a standard writing service you'll have the content done then re-write yourself. If you've got your own writer you can train him up. If you're writing the content yourself you'll still probably do a post-analysis and tweak some things. Same with a writer. When you get bigger you can get an in-house SEO that you train up to manage your writers and handle all of this, pre and post optimization content work for you.
So that's it. Nothing more to say really! That's how you rank in google, guys. It's not about keyword density, or "high quality content". Google is an algorithm and as such you have to write as if you're writing for an algorithm, but also keep the quality high for your readers so your site remains future-proof. High quality content is good for your readers, meaningless for google. Google's favorite "do what's best for the users" is pure crap and just their attempt to get people to focus less on on-page seo, and just write stuff.
good luck. I hope this is of value to some of you.
The first step is to choose a keyword.
This is just a base keyword. You are not creating pages to target keywords. You are creating pages to target topics. Most know this, but what you probably aren't aware of is that, when you target a page for a keyword, you automatically optimize it for the topic. This means we shouldn't be too concerned with "topics" vs keywords. Just be aware you are targeting a topic, and not just a single keyword.
In some cases there isn't a main keyword to target and the topic will contain several searches around 100-200 volume per month compared with your main keyword having say 400 search vol, then a bunch of 20-50 search vol. In those cases you'll pick a few keywords to try to optimize. It's harder in those cases, but if you guys want a guide on that I can write one later.
For this example we're going to choose "best laptop for nursing students"
Step 1.1 - Identify the topic
The topic here is laptops/notebooks for nursing students. Obviously. But we're thinking now in terms of the English phrase and not just the single keyword. If the keyword was "duplicate content" then your topic could be a number of things. Looking at page 1 for that keyword, there are a range of topics from avoiding creating duplicate content, to how to fix a duplicate content penalty. So as you can see this is an important step. Identifying your topic.
Step 1.2 - Identify the user intent
Next you identify the user intent. This just helps you write a better article. For this keyword it's really obvious, but for the above "duplicate content", it's not. You should always look at what ranks on page 1 for that keyword to find out what the user intent is unless it's very obvious. You need to match what Google thinks the user intent is, with what you decide it is. For our example, the user intent is to find a good laptop that's best suited for nursing students. They want to find something that's unique for them, and not just any old laptop. They are probably wanting to know, are there laptops that are particularly useful for nursing students compared with the rest.
Step 2 - Check Competition/Volume
Use ahrefs for this.
You check the base search vol for the keyword, but more importantly you want to see the traffic/keywords from pages that are on page 1 for the main keyword. Sometimes you have a low volume keyword(50-100), but it has a lot of longtails in the group, so if you target the group you'll get quite a bit of traffic.
This is how you do it.
Step 3 - Gather your main keywords for the topic
Let's look into laptopsconsider.com/best-laptop-for-nursing-students/ to get our main keywords.
And actually this one has html bookmarks too. There's really VERY few keywords in this group.
We have
- best laptop for nursing students
- best laptops for nursing students
- laptops for nursing students
- best laptop for nursing school
- nurse laptop (they're ranking here in almost page 1 because this isn't going to have any big sites targeting it like "gaming laptop" would)
- best computer for nursing school (this is getting a bit more irrelevant here, but google probably considers the user intent close enough to laptops)
- best laptop for college nursing students
- best laptops for college nursing students
- nursing school laptop
- top laptops for nursing students
Step 4 - Gather Topics/Questions to cover
Look through a few pages in the top 10. Ignore outliers that are in the top 10. Ie, strong sites, sites with short content, sites that are different to what you're creating(ecommerce, videos etc)
Note down a few topics/questions. Let's take a quick look here :
- nursing school
- college students
- minimum requirements
- lectures/campuses
- maximize productivity
- durability
- time in nursing school
- the usual laptop ones, weight/battery/display/cpu/ram/storage/performance/portability/design - These are important to get your laptop and laptop review topical relevancy.
- exams
- note taking
- tablet vs laptop
- webcam/online courses
So you have your core keywords and your topics now you need to include.
Step 5 - Word Count
This is an easy step. Just look at the word count for what's in the top 10. Exclude outliers. Generally you want to look at what the weaker sites are doing because if a weaker site is up there with a strong site, it has better on-page. If there's 3 sites that are quite weak, with 3500, 4500 and 4600 words, then go for something between 3700 and 4800. I like to keep costs down, so I'd probably in this case go for 3800 words personally. You don't need to beat everyone on word count, just be in the general ballpark and at least above the lowest.
Step 6 - Word & Phrase Usage Counts
This is where some people get confused and think about "keyword density". Google isn't checking for percents. Percentiles are irrelevant. It doesn't really matter if an article is 2000 words or 4000 words. It just needs ENOUGH usage of keywords so google knows what the page is about. The title is NOT enough. I don't care if you've ranked pages with just the keyword in the title. There are so many factors in SEO. It doesn't prove anything. Try to consistently beat the kind of articles ranking for this nurse article by only using "best laptops for nursing students" once in the title. You just won't. They are ALL optimized for it. Even the guys on page 2-3 are optimized here. Where you CAN beat these guys is through *better* optimization. They may be using the core keywords enough times, but there's other areas some of them lack that you can improve upon.
So with that said, let's look more at what you want to do in this step before writing.
First, your core keyword. This is a fairly simple one, and in the vast majority of cases, you want to use the core keyword like this :-
title/h1, and h2/h3, and 1-2 times in the body, generally somewhere in the first few paragraphs. Absolute minimum of using it 3 times. There's no reason not to. Using it 3 times in a 1000 word article is still not going to put you into dangerous territory. Help google out. It is just an algorithm. It does not understand when you're saying things like "one of the major advantages that the asus XYZ has for nursing students is that it's really sturdy with an extra long battery life, so it's ideal for moving around from lecture to lecture". You as a human know that this is very relevant for "best laptop for nursing students".
This is actually how Google would parse that sentence :-
brands: asus
advantages of asus
nursing students
asus for nursing students
asus is sturdy
asus has long battery life
moving from lecture to lecture
I don't think it would connect that the asus is GOOD for nursing students who ARE moving around from lecture to lecture. That's too advanced.
So look at those topics there. That's not really what you were going for
Compare it to this
"One of the best laptops for nursing students is the Asus XYZ. It has an extra long battery life which is really good for busy nursing students who are studying at a university that has its lecture halls spread out and need a good durable laptop they can carry with them from lecture to lecture that won't run out of battery so they can take notes in every class with their laptop"
See the difference here?
Google will see this as
"best laptops for nursing students"
brand: asus
asus xyz is one of the best laptops for nuring students
Extra long battery life
busy nursing students
good for busy nursing students
studying at university
lecture halls
durable laptop
carry with them
take notes in class with laptop
Lots of usage of "laptop", "nursing", "student", "best" in here.
Google is just an algorithm, folks! Stop thinking you have to write amazing content to RANK. You have to write amazing content so your site lasts for a long time, and you eventually attract some natural links, but to RANK, you just need to give it what it wants to see.
Now, with an understanding of that..
Look at your competitors on page 1. Avoid the outliers as always.
I use surfer seo to help me with this next bit, but you can do it manually.
I've selected a bunch of pages in the top 10 to compare to and this is what it's telling me..
It recommends 4300 words.
8 headings
18 paragraphs
This is slightly useful. While "18 paragraphs" isn't going to rank you, it helps to stay closer to what the competition are doing. It's just giving you a general guideline for what google wants to see for this keyword group.
What's more important is this
Step 6 - Write the Content
Step 5 was sort of talking about "rewriting stuff", so you can consider step 5/6 interchangeable. If you're using a standard writing service you'll have the content done then re-write yourself. If you've got your own writer you can train him up. If you're writing the content yourself you'll still probably do a post-analysis and tweak some things. Same with a writer. When you get bigger you can get an in-house SEO that you train up to manage your writers and handle all of this, pre and post optimization content work for you.
So that's it. Nothing more to say really! That's how you rank in google, guys. It's not about keyword density, or "high quality content". Google is an algorithm and as such you have to write as if you're writing for an algorithm, but also keep the quality high for your readers so your site remains future-proof. High quality content is good for your readers, meaningless for google. Google's favorite "do what's best for the users" is pure crap and just their attempt to get people to focus less on on-page seo, and just write stuff.
good luck. I hope this is of value to some of you.