Issue 19: VIDEO - How To Get Maximum Value From Keywords and Content
Ari and Andrew talk keywords.
👋 Hello Big Ponders!
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again.
Doing the ordinary things really well, repeatedly, creates extraordinary results.
To ignore today’s topic - keywords - is to ignore how to build your fame, and ignore how to create growth for your business. It is as simple as that.
Here’s a quick list of FREE resources mentioned in our latest video chat.
😂 SEO’s Most Valuable, Yet Least Exciting Topic.
Creating value... what pets at polling stations shows us... examples of free marketing resources...
In our latest video we chat about all this and more.
From keywords to new content ideas that increase your bottom line, we're back to share more SEO insight.
Click to watch the video.
Here’s the video chat transcript in full. Enjoy!
Video Chat Transcript
Andrew: Hi, everyone. My name is Andrew McGarry. You're here with us for another Big Pond digital video and to talk today we've got Ari Pournaras. Ari is the owner, founder of Big Pond Digital. And in today's video, we are going to talk about the world's most exciting topic. I know you're all on the edge of your seats. It is the importance of keyword research. Now! Before you run away and think, I'm not watching this, I want to give you a very quick example of earlier today I needed to buy a new beard trimmer. I did a quick search online for the name of the brand that I wanted to buy along with "best" and "reviews". The kind of thing you would search for. Sure enough, T3 magazine or T3.com was the number one search result and because of their review I did indeed end up making a purchase. So content marketing does work and [in terms of] optimizing your content... things that people are searching for has real world value. As I've always said to people, if you don't write about the thing, you can't rank for the thing. It's really simple, but it's also really true. So Ari, you obviously know a lot about this subject. So the importance of keyword research. Let's hear it.
Ari: Cool. Yeah. So I guess, you know, when we say keyword research, I think we should maybe define what that actually means. And so when it comes to content optimization and SEO and ranking for certain things before you even do all that, you need to find out what people are actually searching for in the search engines and, you know, the type of keywords that they use, the questions that they ask. And that gives you a really good indication on how to actually structure your content and maybe even how to actually, you know, put a website together and build any additional landing pages, how to structure your service pages. So it's a really important step. And to find out what people input in the search engines to find businesses maybe similar to yours and that offer the same services. And because obviously if you're, for example, a dentist or a lawyer, the language that you would typically use to describe things is going to be completely different in a lot of cases from what your audience is actually searching for online to find you. And so keyword research put simply is a process of using different tools and to establish what people actually search for in the first place. And look at volumes. Look at, you know, how many unique searches this keyword will actually get on a monthly basis and what other relevant keywords that are closely related to that term could I potentially use. And it gives you a really good base to take that information and actually structure your content and move on to the next step.
Andrew: Yeah. You know, that's the thing. I mean, it's very easy to dismiss keyword research, but it is one of the foundation blocks of being able to optimise your content. Certainly we're all used to pulling out our mobile phones. We do a search for something. And this is the thing, like if your device has got GPS on it, then a search engine like Google knows that query or the search that you've just done, well, the results are going to be tailored to where you are geographically. So we all know that if you're standing in London, you're going to get a different search result for who's my local optician or my local dentist if I'm in Chelsea, as opposed to if I'm standing in Glasgow or Edinburgh. So yeah, this is the thing. Everyone's getting a tailored set of search results. And you know, I guess that's the great thing about Big Pond is Big Pond specialises in, no matter whether your business is big or small, it's about where you are geographically positioned. And I think that's one of the great advantages that I see from Big Pond. So if we move on to what is keyword research and then the example that we've got here of dentists. So if you want to just talk us through this.
Ari: Yeah. So this is just like an example of a tool that we use, industry tool that we use for keyword research. And we've used dentists near me as an example. And so you can see that it gives you like a list of other keywords that are closely related to the main term, and then you have a search volume now that's on a monthly basis. And so this is specific to Glasgow actually. So it's not nationwide. So you can set the geolocation, whether it's nationwide or cities and then you've got like a trend which tells you is it actually up, is it down, is it flat, average CPC that's you know, for PPC (for advertising). For advertising, yeah. And then competition. It gives you an indication if it's a competitive term or if it's like, you know, something that you could maybe rank for easier. And obviously, the broader the term, the more competitive it is usually. And so, yeah, this summarises what we just talked about.
Andrew: Yeah. And I guess the optimisation part of content, I mean, this is a great opportunity, I think, for people to look at their website and ask themselves, how have you presented the information both to users and to search engines? Because ultimately, you know, if you think about the process, someone does a search, they see a search result, they tap or click on it, and then they end up on a page. And so if we want to help companies rank for that search result, I mean, you've got two aspects to this. I would say you've got the actual on page content. So it's a bit like the page of a book know like what is actually on the page and then you've got the whole thing of like, okay, but where does the book live? So like in a library, if all the books were jumbled up in a library, you would struggle to find the book. But the whole point about really good optimisation and this is about where some companies fall down, what I would call proper content management, the whole idea of organising things and themes so that it's easier for both your website visitor and for Google to go, oh, this topic, well, this topic goes under this theme. And although that may seem obvious, structurally, websites create a lot of ad hoc content, and ad hoc content can be more difficult for Google and understand what's authoritative.
Andrew: And so I think we've got two issues here. We've got Big Pond, obviously work with clients where Big Pond will make the actual content itself, that page optimized. But then the page itself has to be from an information architecture perspective that's got to live in a website that makes sense, you know, and if information architecture sounds like some kind of complicated phrase, it's no more complicated than the history book goes in the history section of the library. And if you ad hoc content, then all of the on page optimisation in the world will still make it quite difficult for Google to figure out, are you authoritative for this topic or is the dentist down the road more authoritative because his website has the right themes and is structured better? So I think those are the kinds of things that do matter and that we do have to take into consideration. This really comes back to the whole thing of the benefit. The value, you know, is keyword research something that small businesses or businesses of any size can get benefit from? And if so how would they go about doing that?
Ari: Yeah, keyword research is something that a business of any any size could do and to actually strengthen their position online. And I mean, obviously when it comes to local businesses, there are several things that are obvious. Like if you're a dentist, then terms like dentist near me is going to be like an obvious keyword you can actually use or dentist plus location and but there's a lot of other things that people search for and different ways that people actually search for these things and that you don't know. And until you actually take a look at the data and you don't really have a full picture on how to actually structure your website, basically exactly what you mentioned and how to make sure that everything falls in the right place and belongs to the right neighbourhood.
Andrew: Neighbourhood. That's a really good way of putting it.
Ari: And it can be quite easy. I mean, obviously if you're operating like a massive website, then it becomes more complicated. But businesses of any size can actually go ahead and do that. And there's free tools online and also paid ones. And I've included some options in the next slide, I think. Yeah, there we go. And so the three free options are through Google. So the Google keyword tool or keyword planner and which you can access through PPC is once you actually go and set up a Google ads account, you don't have to spend anything. We can actually access the Google. He was a planner, and it used to be called a Google keyword tool.
Andrew: It's effective. And if I can just jump in, if you don't spend anything they'll probably send you a voucher. So you can always set up your account, let it sit for a week. You might get a voucher in the post. So if you're a startup or you're a small business and you want that, that can help. But yeah, the free tools are always a great place to start.
Ari: Yeah. And other than that, obviously, when you will notice that when you actually put something in it, when you search for something in Google and you get the predictive text that shows up and shows all the relevant keyword variations that people might be looking for. And all these things are actually based on what people search for and volumes. And so that could give you some good ideas on how to, you know, maybe include different variations of that keyword in the content to perhaps capture all the variations. Yeah. And when you complete a search and scroll down to the very bottom of the first page, you will get the related searches. And, and that's like another source for getting ideas to include in your content.
Andrew: And from a commercial benefit perspective, you know, one idea would be today in the UK, we have the local elections. No matter what your political persuasion is, let's say you run a pet store, you could today do an article on... I think the trend is usually called 'pets at polling stations'. We usually see it on social media. So for example, that could be the kind of trending topic that you could create that ties into a trend, which is pets at polling stations - with you as a retailer that sell pet related products. So, you know, you're always going to have those kinds of newsjacking opportunities or pick whatever buzzword that you like. That's a real world example. So you could be running a pet shop somewhere in Scotland and you could write a post and you could optimise it for that phrase, pets at polling stations, and then you could end up getting traffic that way. So I always find that when I talk to people and they say, well, you know, we're a boring business or we don't think people would be that interested. I think it's really just about having a bit of imagination to think about how can you connect the type of business with what people talk about in social media? And I think that particularly, you know, tictok or Twitter can be or even YouTube can be a goldmine for content inspiration. So it just ties back to this thing of there is money to be made, there are leads to be generated, there is commercial value to doing this. It's not just "oh some technical work that someone in the marketing team will take care of". I think if you understand the commercial value of a good content marketing plan, then all of these things that we're talking about today have real value.
Ari: Exactly. And it's what you said. It's basically combining creativity to get the right angle and the techie stuff that we're talking about here. You combine both worlds, then you've got more of a chance to actually be seen and get traffic and more brand awareness, for example.
Andrew: Yeah. So want to talk us through the three tool examples you've listed here.
Ari: Sure. Yeah. The other tools are not through Google, but there's loads of these tools actually online. And so I've just listed three that we actually use. Answer the public is actually free too and it's actually quite beneficial. And if you input a keyword it gives you loads of different data and stats and related questions and you can actually use again for your content, and the two paid options that we prefer to use: keywordtool.io and SEMrush, and KeywordTool.io specialises in keyword research. So that's all it does. It doesn't do anything else. SEMrush is becoming more of a platform, but we only use it for certain things. And one of them is keyword research. And the other thing that I was going to point out is that these tools tend to give you... more accurate volumes for bigger, broader terms nationwide. You know, when it comes to smaller towns, they don't necessarily have all the data. And so they might display... for a certain keyword it's got 20 searches a month. And so I wouldn't really take especially for smaller towns and locations, I wouldn't really take that volume to be accurate. You just use that as an indication that this has got more volume than the other keyword. So I'm going to use this to actually optimise my content.
Andrew: Yeah. I think people tend to get a bit overly focused on the volume number, whereas there is an argument that how well you can write on a topic and how much value you can give to the reader will actually over time prove to be the better, you know, investment of your time, your energy, your focus. You know, there is an argument that there is less competition and there may be higher intent in more long tail queries, you know, like where you've put in like a more detailed type of search. But ultimately I think it comes down to a plan. You know, if you have a plan to write about a lot of different topics within your niche, then I wouldn't worry too much about... maybe this volume is right. I think ultimately, you know, like for example, if you're a lawyer, you need to write about your legal topics. I wouldn't worry too much on, you know, what's more competitive or not so competitive in the sense that if you've got a good long term plan, then hopefully you're going to tick all of the major boxes anyway. Again, I think this comes back to the thing of just having a plan versus ad hoc-ing content creation without any kind of guiding principle. But yeah, I mean, you know, the tools you've mentioned there: keywordtool.io, SEMrush, I think they're well worth taking a look at. I think anyone else could could take a look at things like Yahoo! [edit: doh! I meant YouTube] Predictive search will give you lots of ideas. What do people search for? Yahoo's [YouTube] a search engine in itself. Amazon is a retail intent search engine. You could go to Amazon and search for phrases and get ideas. So again, lots and lots of free places to see what people are searching for. And they all have, I would say, very strong commercial intent value. And then it's just to be able to create content that would rank for those phrases. Okay. So top tips Ari.
Ari: So to summarize Top Tips, before you actually use those tools, this applies if you've got like an existing business and you can actually utilise Google Search Console, which is free, you can sign up to that and also you can get keyword ideas from Google My Business too from your insights. And so those are two sources that you can actually utilise to see what people are actually using to find your website at the moment. You can combine that with all the tools we talked about, like a gap analysis and see what you can actually do next. And so the next one is... Intent is key. And so you don't want to go for the really broad keyword that's got all the volume if it's not going to do you any favours because you know, it's going to be a numbers game at the end of the day. And if it's too broad, you know, it's likely that there's going to be a lot of competition. And so make sure that you focus on something that if you put yourself in the shoes of a customer and then that's the type of keyword they would use to actually find your business and use your services. Always good to look at what competitors are doing. I don't mean look at what your competitors are doing and copy that. Yeah. Just have a rough idea of what they're doing and what's working for them and gives you some insights on how to improve your overall strategy. And last, which is I think it's really crucial and important is finding your place in the market.
Ari: And what I mean by that is, again, when you do keyword research, you see a lot of people get drawn by the big numbers. You know, X keyword is go 50,000 searches a month. And so that's what I'm going to use to actually optimise my page. And in most cases, if the website doesn't have a lot of authority, you're just not going to rank for that keyword. You know, there's going to be, for example, if you're like a fashion brand and you want to you sell jeans and you want to rank for men's jeans off the bat, that's going to be extremely difficult. And because there's massive brands there, you know, that are aiming for that have been there for years and unless you have a crazy budget and a lot of time and so by finding your place in the market, what I mean is like finding your niche and find it what you what you specifically do better than anybody else. And so you want to be maybe a little bit more descriptive. You want to get the right intent. You want to aim for maybe keywords that are not too broad, keywords that you'll have a chance to actually get in to the race and rank and, and potentially convert more people because the more descriptive a phrase is if you're matching that with what you offer on the page, then you've got more of a chance to actually convert.
Andrew: Yeah, that makes sense. Well that was a slightly longer one today, but we covered a lot of topics and as always, if anyone's got any questions, please do reach out to us at Big Pond Digital and we hope to have you along for our next video. Until next time. Thanks.
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