Search engines no longer drive by keywords. This is why you should think beyond keyword-based content for your business.
Websites don’t rank for one search term. So why not write content?
Over the past 10 years, search engines have changed dramatically. However, many content strategists and SEO specialists still approach content as if it were 1999.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to rank content. The keyword-based process doesn’t help much. This article examines a variety of problems that this strategy has and provides an alternative for creating expert-level content on a large scale.
What You Should Do With Keyword-Based Content?
- Google challenges keyword-driven content
- Strong pages are not ranked for one keyword
- Search volume is not a useful metric.
- Not the most useful metrics based on linked data
Google No Longer Prioritizes Keyword-Driven Content
Google’s search algorithm changes almost daily. Notable past updates include Panda (2011) to target low-quality sites, Hummingbird (2012) to distinguish search intent, and RankBrain (2015) for context and relevance to searches.
Google added a topic layer last year to its knowledge graph. It can not only understand people, places, and facts, but it can also deeply understand a topic area. It analyzes all content available on the internet and creates a model for that topic.
Good pages don’t rank for just one keyword
The one-page-one keyword rule was popular in the past. SEO professionals would optimize multiple pages for keywords that are closely related.
A marketing agency in New York may have pages dedicated to different keywords, but they might share the same page.
- Agency for digital marketing
- Digital marketing agency in Miami
- Online marketing companies
- Online marketing in Las Vegas agency
- Marketing companies near me
These pages had low-quality content but didn’t matter so long as they were high-ranking.
These days, the times have changed and this approach no longer works. Today, a well-written page can rank for thousands or hundreds of keywords.
For example, take the Top Digital Marketing Agencies page at Clutch. SEMRush data indicates that it ranks for 879 keywords, including the ones I just mentioned.
Not all keywords from the list will appear on the page. The page isn’t optimized for all keywords, but it ranks well for those search terms. What is the secret?
Google understands more than keywords. It not only understands synonyms but also the semantic relationships between words. Google understands that not every keyword is important, so why would you write content for pages that rank poorly?
Search Volume is not a useful metric
Search volume is a common metric for keyword-driven content marketers. They create pages that target keywords that are below a certain threshold.
This is wrong. Here’s why.
As we’ve seen, a well-written webpage can rank for many keywords. These keywords have a far greater traffic potential than the targeted keyword.
This page on Geico, Does Car Insurance cover Rental Cars? for example, targets a keyword phrase that has a monthly search volume of just 590.
This page has nearly 8,000 visits per month from 1,400 keywords. That’s something to be proud of!
Are you still not convinced? These are more pages that target low-volume keywords and generate lots of traffic.
Not helpful either are linked-based metrics
To find the best opportunities, marketers often combine search volume and “keyword difficulty”, a linked-based metric. This approach has three limitations.
They are a poor predictor of difficulty
They don’t account for each site. According to a popular SEO tool, the difficulty score for the keyword “digital marketing agency” is 59%. This difficulty score doesn’t matter if Clutch. co is used or MarketMuse. This is not possible.
They don’t lead to better opportunities
Those opportunities are quickly gone as everyone is looking for keywords with high volume and low competition.
Every piece of content fails to contribute to the bigger picture
These opportunities often lead to a disjointed collection of articles that do not contribute to the greater good of your site. This is a difficult way to establish authority and credibility.
Keyword research doesn’t improve content quality
For expert-level content creation at scale, traditional keyword tools don’t work. They don’t model a topic to provide semantically similar concepts.
They provide variations of the root keyword. You’ll find a list similar to this when you enter a term like “office breakfast ideas” in the keyword tool.
- Ideas for breakfast potlucks made from store-bought ingredients
- Ideas for group breakfasts at work
- Ideas for breakfast at work
- Breakfast in the office
- Ideas for breakfast at work
- Ideas for breakfast potluck
- Ideas for breakfast food at work
Keyword research is not a way to create better content. This list is not helpful for writers to create high-quality content.
A topic model such as MarketMuse returns a wealth of semantically related topics that can then be used to create expert-level material. This list can be used to create a narrative.
When writing a blog about office breakfast ideas, it is important to include hard-boiled eggs and scrambled eggs as well as yogurt and granola as well as granola bars and granola bars.
To ensure that the topic is covered, you can also compare your content to the model. This will make your editor swoon!
SEO: Why a Topical Approach is Better
Content marketers are adapting their content creation methods to keep up with search engines changing algorithms. This is why topic-driven strategies offer more potential.
It negates the shortcomings of a keyword-based technique
Instead of trying to grab a few opportunities and creating a mess of content, why don’t you create Wikipedia for your industry? You can address all user intent profiles as well as relevant subtopics with a topical approach.
Even better, each content item contributes towards building your website’s authority in search engines and your audience. This allows you to rank each piece of content that you create by connecting them.
It’s a cost-effective way to create expert-level content
Based on thousands of related documents, a topic model identifies the key topics that should be addressed in your content. To ensure the best quality content, address these topics in your article.
It’s a scalable process
Machine learning can be used to quickly generate topic models for AI-driven platforms. This list can be passed to a writer who can create expert-level content even if they are not expert.
Editors can quickly review submitted content and compare it against the model to determine the depth of coverage. They can also suggest changes. This changes the entire process from a gut feeling to one that is driven primarily by data. Content quality can now be measured objectively, and not subjectively.
