So, what is keyword difficulty, and how does keyword difficulty factor into your SEO content strategy? This article will explain how this metric is calculated and how you can use keyword difficulty to improve your website’s search visibility.

What Is Keyword Difficulty?

Keyword difficulty is a metric used in search engine optimization that estimates how much of a challenge it would be to rank for that keyword. Some platforms use the terms SEO difficulty and keyword competition instead of keyword difficulty.

A higher keyword difficulty score indicates how difficult it would be to be displayed on the first page of Google’s search engine results page (SERP). A high score means that there is fierce competition among the websites that are already ranking for that keyword.

Keyword difficulty is measured on a scale of 0 to 100. The closer to 100, the more difficult the keyword would be to rank for. The nearer to 0, the easier the keyword is to rank for.

How Is Keyword Difficulty Calculated?

So, where does this number come from? Most SEO tools use a range of metrics to calculate these metrics. Some of these factors include the competing domains’ ratings and your own domain rating.

At SearchAtlas, we use a weighted formula that takes into account the rating of the domains that rank for the specific keyword, the traffic share that frequents the top-ranking SERPs, and other nuanced factors. Domain rating is calculated by the number and quality of backlinks to that particular website.

Why Does Keyword Difficulty Matter in SEO?

You want to compete in your own weight class. If your competition is a domain rating giant, your content won’t be able to compete–and it will become buried in the SERPs. Keyword difficulty allows you to rank on Google for keywords that you can be discovered for. This, of course, leads to higher traffic and increased conversions.

Furthermore, keyword difficulty allows you to strategically invest your time, money, and other resources in efforts that will pay off. This makes creating an SEO content strategy easier.

How to Choose the Best Keywords for Your Website

Choosing the right keywords is key to SEO success. When selecting what keywords you can rank for, you will want to take into account keyword difficulty, search volume, CPC, and search intent.

1. Evaluate Keyword to Rank & Form a Winning SEO Strategy

The first step to creating a successful SEO content campaign is narrowing down where to focus your efforts. This is part of the beauty of keyword difficulty–it allows you to identify words you can realistically rank for, saving you time, and earning you organic traffic.

Pillar Pages & Cluster Content

Most SEO content specialists suggest starting with pillar pages, then clustering supporting target keywords around them. A pillar page is a long-form guide, landing page, or blog that focuses on a primary or core aspect of your business or website. Cluster content relates to the pillar topic but gives you the opportunity to expand upon smaller details or aspects of the pillar topic.

You should have a handful of pillar pages that relate to your industry. You can add cluster content as needed and as new keyword opportunities arise. 

A pillar structure allows Google’s web crawlers to more easily assess your website’s semantic content and give you kudos for overall topical depth.

For example, if you run a spa, your pillar topics will feature the primary aspects of your business. These may be massage, skincare, acupuncture, hot stone treatments, and waxing. From there, you can expand upon the topic. For example, you can have cluster content pieces for the benefits of each individual type of massage.

Once you’ve defined your pillar topics, you can then begin to create cluster content ideas based on keyword research.

2. Perform Keyword Research

With established pillar topics, you can begin your keyword research for your content clusters. When performing your research, your goal is to find keywords, or search terms, that are the most relevant to your business and that you will be able to rank for. This will require research. 

Often the simplest way to choose keywords is to list subtopics for your pillar pages. Then, plug those topics into a keyword research tool to explore potential keyword choices.

The SearchAtlas SEO suite allows you to quickly perform research and nail down your supporting keywords. With the software suite, the Keyword Discovery tool is an excellent choice for this step.

Simply type what keyword you want to research into the search box. Then, explore suggested keywords by viewing all. If you have a brick-and-mortar business or only ship within one geographic zone, you will want to refine your keyword location.

Review the list of keywords and select keywords by Search Volume (SV) and Pay-Per-Click Difficulty (PPCD)–which is similar to keyword difficulty but takes into account using a paid campaign. 

Select keywords with a difficulty score that is lower than your domain rating or domain authority. Keep in mind the low competition keywords have low difficulty scores. This ensures you have the best chance of appearing in the search results for that keyword. Watch this video for more information on how to use Keyword Difficulty and Domain Authority in your keyword selection.

3. Turn Your Research into Keyword Optimized Content

Once you have a list of keywords you want to create cluster pages around, you can use SEO content creation tools to optimize for those keywords.

In the SearchAtlas suite, navigate to the Content Assistant tool. Then select create a new article. Enter your selected keyword into the Add keyword field. The Content Assistant will run that keyword through our proprietary analyses and display the keyword’s

• Search Volume (SV)
• Keyword Difficulty (KD)
• Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

If you hover over the keyword, you can select the graph icon to display a full report of the keyword’s metrics.

You will also find suggested target keywords you can add to the same article. You can add up to 5 target keywords per piece of content. 

From there, you will be given a list of focus terms to include that relate to each particular keyword. These terms help improve the value of your content for search engine algorithms.

SearchAtlas’s Keyword Difficulty Scale

With the keyword researcher tool, you will find the keyword difficulty scale prominently displayed below the keyword you are researching. This scale is color-coded by difficulty level and labels the difficulty score of the particular keyword.

KD Difficulty Scale

0-25 = Easy

26-50 = Average

51-75 = Hard

76-100 = Very Hard

Keyword Difficulty Tools

A simple search will result in a wide array of keyword difficulty score tools. While each software will use a slightly different method of calculating keyword difficulty scores or keyword difficulty metrics, you will gain insight from whichever you choose. When comparing competitor software, keep in mind that you want to choose the best for your overall SEO needs. This often includes:

• An intuitive user interface, including a keyword overview
• A reliable keyword research tool that displays volume, keyword difficulty (KD), PPC, and KW competitors
• The ability to change keyword difficulty metrics location to another country or region
• Page authority for competing URLs and domain authority scores
• Backlinks profile analysis
• Which keywords should appear in headings
• Content idea suggestions based on keywords
• A keyword mosaic to easily visualize how your competitors use your targeted keywords
• A content creation tool to ensure your content is optimized for search results potential and content quality

SearchAtlas as a Keyword Difficulty Tool

SearchAtlas offers a full suite of SEO tools, including a range of tools to help users select competitive keywords that they have the highest chance of appearing in the top organic search results for.

In SearchAtlas, you will find:

• The SEO Content Assistant for optimizing based on the right keywords. 
• Content Ideas aids you in planning content that engages your target audience. 
• The Content Researcher displays your ranking potential for keywords, KD, a terms grid, keyword discover, the content score for top-ranking URLs, SV, CPC, readability and word count for your competition, and domain rating.
• The Keyword Researcher tool streamlines the keyword research process and helps you understand your keywords’ KD.

Free Keyword Difficulty Tools & Free Keyword Checkers

There are a plethora of free keyword difficulty software choices available, including the Keyword Research Tool and the SEO Content Assistant. With a 7-day free trial, you can determine if SearchAtlas is the best keyword tool for you.

Keyword Difficulty & Your Website

With the right keywords, you can take your content from underperforming and undiscoverable to Google’s first page of search results. Become the author of your site’s future by taking the next step toward mastering keyword selection, page authority, and SERP rankings. SearchAtlas makes keyword difficulty metrics easy to understand and guides you through the steps of producing the best content in your niche.

The post What is Keyword Difficulty & How Does It Affect Your SEO appeared first on LinkGraph.

Unlike the architecture of bridges and buildings, though, information architecture has more moving parts, a more abstract form of ‘building materials,’ and has only been around for a few decades. Additionally, information systems like websites are more malleable and can be adjusted and improved over time.

If you can master the principles of information architecture, you can build a website that will stand the test of time. Whether you’re in the process of creating your website or want to revamp your user experience and content, this article will provide you insight into how you can transform your website into a shining example of well-designed information architecture.

What Is Information Architecture in Relation to a Website?

Information architecture refers to the process your users go through to gather information about your products or services through a website or other digital platform like an app. Information architecture provides people with a systematic way to navigate from point A to point B in order to achieve an action or gain knowledge. In other words, better information architecture promotes easier accessibility of information through intuitive navigation design.

The best information architecture not only streamlines the user’s journey and goals, but it fulfills specific user needs by organizing a vast amount of information into little, easily digestible categories.

From Where Does Information Architecture Originate?

Much of the methodologies, techniques, and principles used to understand and improve information architecture design come from Peter Morville. Morville is the founding architect of this branch of user experience (UX) and content inventory systems. While he was the first, there is a large number of experts in this discipline who develop IA best practices through the Information Architecture Institute and user research.

What Elements Does Information Architecture Include?

Before we dive into how to improve your information architecture, it’s important to have a good sense of what is included in this field of study in relation to your website. While information architecture can apply to library science, spreadsheet science, and even physical structures, we will be focusing on IA in relation to websites.

So where can you find examples of information architecture on a website?

All it takes is for a website to load in order to be flooded with examples of information architecture. Information architecture is the strategic organization and presentation of your website’s content. In fact, nearly every aspect of a website and web design is part of IA. Of course, there is good information architecture and subpar IA, but all of the following are important parts of an IA system that go into your site:

• UX design/UI design
• Written content or web cop
• Graphic design and design patterns
• Images
• Buttons
• Links
• Layout features
• Website nomenclature
• Metadata tags
• Accessibility features

Good IA comes into play in all of the above. And these elements are often categorized into UX design, content creation strategy, and homepage layout (UI design).

How Do Information Architecture and SEO Work Together?

Search engine optimization (SEO) and information architecture both benefit website owners and web users by improving the internet experience. SEO and IA make quality content easier to find, understand, and navigate. SEO and IA differ in where they fit into the website creation process.

Good IA Supports SEO

SEO has the goal of increasing a website’s visibility through the science of configuring content, front-end web development, and back-end web development in response to search engine algorithms. The result is a website that search engines can find and display as search results to web users’ inquiries. This is an ongoing process. SEO requires a proactive and reactive approach since algorithms often change. Additionally, search engines see value to websites that regularly update their content.

SEO specialists regularly improve a website’s

• Written content
• Loading speed & responsiveness
• Organization
• Visual design
• Graphics and photos

Information architecture often works best when established before active web design begins. IA establishes a framework that supports the efforts of SEO specialists for the lifetime of a website. With a well-strategized IA, a website will have a strong foundation of logical organization. This makes a website more enjoyable from the user’s perspective since they can find what they need easily. In turn, this improves the website’s reputation. A better reputation increases the website’s authority and pushes it higher on search engine results pages, so more people can find it.

Good information architecture only as to be designed once.

Like most systems, the best IA only has to be designed once. If an IA system is effective, it will allow a website to scale and respond to changes needed for the most current SEO strategies. As more blogs, products, or landing pages are added to a website for SEO, good IA already has a designated location and system to handle them.

Why is Information Architecture Important in UX?

As your local librarians will tell you, providing easy access to information is priceless. Information is both empowering and vital for the best individual experience and a better society. However, when it comes to your UX, IA has a more specific importance. It increases your brand’s value to potential clients while bolstering your sales.

Good IA structure based on set principles has the power to help people find what they are looking for within seconds. One of the simplest examples of this is concise and accurate folder labels in your Google Drive. This naming or navigation system allows you to access the files and information you’re looking for quickly and effortlessly–leading to less frustration and wasted time.

While more complicated, Google Maps also uses IA to help people find what they’re looking for in the physical world. For instance, if you type “food near me,” your search results will be full of nearby restaurants. This demonstration of IA is a perfect example of what it means to help a user understand what they are looking for since the user is likely looking for businesses that provide food. 

How to Improve Your Information Architecture

Improving your information architecture can turn your website from an ordinary e-commerce page into a resource visitors enjoy using. These tips can guide you through how to improve your IA and help you prioritize which tasks to begin with.

1. Utilize wireframes in the prototype stages of your sitemap and IA design development.

Wireframes serve a multitude of purposes when it comes to developing strong IA and a sitemap. They work superbly as information architecture diagrams that can be moved around and changed before your design is finalized. 

At their very core, wireframes connect your IA to its UX design. In striking similarity to an architectural blueprint, a wireframe functions as a skeletal outline of a site or mobile app. However, this method of UX development is not limited to visual design, unlike a mockup. To accurately determine the logic of your site’s flow and the intended customer journey, this is a necessary step in your IA project timeline. Your site’s intended functions can best be evaluated through wireframing.

Through wireframing, you will have a solid idea of your visual hierarchy when you are ready to move your site to the content strategy phase. Common elements of a wireframe include 

• Search fields
• Breadcrumbs
• navigation systems
• Headers and footers. 

Ideally, you would use wireframes during your initial UX/UI design process. However, you can still utilize them on an existing website.

Identify Paths with Wireframes

Aside from assessing functionality, wireframing is a particularly useful method of identifying paths between web pages. This critical phase of the IA process will allow you to visualize how much space should be allocated for specific content.

When Prototyping Your Visual Hierarchy, Start with a Sketch

Low-fidelity wireframe versions of a website are quick to develop and more abstract because their main focus is on the visual hierarchy of your site. These bare-bones prototypes often implement mock content (like Latin text) as filler for spatial visualization. However, they provide you with a guideline for content volume when the time comes.

Linking concepts to tangible images and links can be a complicated process, even for the seasoned designer. If you have trouble getting your ideas to match your result, consider implementing a mind mapping software like XMind. XMind is a productivity tool used professionally to solidify brainstorming.

Move from Broad to Detailed Wireframes

Conversely, high-fidelity wireframes are more detailed versions are excellent blueprints for interaction design. They include metadata about a particular page element, like its behavior or dimensions. These more detailed versions are excellent blueprints for previewing your interaction design.

2. Keep your brand personas in mind throughout the UX design and content strategy process.

Unity and consistency across your brand are integral parts of a solid information architectural system. 

Your site is a reflection of your brand, from the elements of your visual design down to each blog post and product page. Accordingly, you should be keeping your brand personas in mind each time you implement a UX feature or post a new content piece. This ensures fidelity between your company and your target audience. Use your personas as a guide to help you, your design team, and your content strategist collaborate on your ideal user perception. 

Define and Implement Your Goal User Perception

Your goal user perception is the way you would like customers or potential customers to view your brand. Before making one of the many decisions IA requires, run your ideas through this line of questioning:

• Does this align with the image I want to create for my brand?
• Will this decision affect consistency across my site or organization?
• Am I appropriately conveying the good qualities of my business?
• Does this get us closer to our main goal?
• How does this project fit into the future of our company?

Any content or design elements that do not hold up to this line of questioning can be eliminated. Not only can this process help you avoid inconsistencies, but it reduces the possibility of having too much content on your site. This benefits your web admins, especially those who keep up with content creation for SEO purposes.

3. Your visual hierarchy determines readability, so prioritize your content accordingly.

Visual hierarchy is a principle of laying out and sizing visual elements to denote their importance to the viewer. For example, alignment, texture, whitespace, and contrast are a few of the visual design concepts that can help draw users’ attention to the right content. An effective user interface design does more than simply provide information. A quality hierarchy can persuade and impress users.

There are a few aspects of visual hierarchy that are highly beneficial to apply when creating UX design based on cognitive psychology. 

Visual Hierarchy Principles to Keep in Mind:

1: Larger images are perceived as more important

2: Bright colors garner more attention

3: Elements that are aligned are more pleasing to the eye

4: Higher contrast demands more attention

5: Repetition tells the viewer that elements are related

6: Proximity (or closeness) denotes interconnectedness in topic

7: More white space around an element draws more attention to it

Visual unity isn’t just essential to your brand image, it is also a critical part of your UX design. Familiar colors, menu hierarchies, and diagrams promote consistency and fluid usability. Even small distractions like slow-loading graphics or unaligned text columns can interrupt the user experience.

There are several useful IA software that can assist you in your UI development process, like OmniGraffle. OmniGraffle is used to create visuals and graphics for use in prototypes and mockups. As mentioned above, high-fidelity site frameworks utilize these types of visuals and graphics to help designers strategize where to put information and why it belongs there.

Visual Tidiness Affects More Than Just Usability

If you have ever been to a site that was unattractive, cluttered, or disorganized, you likely formulated a negative opinion of that business or organization. Perhaps you even deemed the information to be less reputable due to the nature or design of the site. This is why it’s important to stick to simplistic and user-friendly design. Together, a pleasant UX and UI can boost user confidence and solidify your site’s credibility. 

In addition to building trust among your users, a quality UX also lets Google and other search engines know that your site is worthy of ranking.

4. Structure and categorization are fundamental.

One mistake many people make is putting their content all in one place. In fact, overstuffing information into a single URL causes your UI to suffer, since there is no hierarchy or sense of organization. Too much information on a single page takes users much longer to sort through content to find a specific piece of information.

Users should be able to locate all desired information on your website quickly and easily. This requires a well-planned site map.

Category is… A Better User Experience

To create a better structure, you must first go through the process of categorization. Categorization is the process of organizing your content into a taxonomy system. Categorization is an integral part of navigation design because it has the ability to guide the user to the right content. 

Start by Finding Commonalities

Begin by grouping your content by similarities in content type. For example, in the image above, you will notice, at LinkGraph, we group our resources by format type (eBooks, blog posts, case studies, and videos).

The most common similarities should be land higher on your sitemap since they’re usually the starting place for narrowing down the user flow for optimal navigation.

For example, if your website centers on pet care, you likely will want to first group your products or articles by pet species. From there, you may want to divide the information or products into what aspect of care they provide. As you can see, this would make navigation easier for cat owners looking for a technique or clippers to trim their cat’s nails.

Using tools like SearchAtlas can make long-term organization easier by allowing you to group pages into categories. This allows you to see the category performance, so you can target where you can eliminate or improve content.

Eliminate Unnecessary Content and Categories

While generating new content is extremely important, making sure you have room for this content on your site is also essential. It can be tempting to hold onto content that you have created, but it is best to let it go to make room for site updates.

Omitting unnecessary or irrelevant data can also enhance the user experience. So, don’t be shy to perform a content audit and delete pages that receive little-to-no traffic. A potential customer looking for a specific piece of information may become frustrated or lose interest in your digital product if it is too difficult to find.

5. Your homepage shouldn’t be the only local navigation point.

While the ideal destination page is the homepage, users find nearly endless different ways to land on a website. For this reason, the digital design of each page on your website should share the same functions as your homepage.

Your website will likely be backlinked on other websites to enhance reputability and SERP ranking when your business begins implementing a content strategy. Since backlinking incorporates relevant keywords that may bring visitors directly to content, such as blogs or guides, you should ensure that every entry point of your website is equally user-friendly and visually appealing as the homepage in order to make a good first impression and move visitors beyond the landing page.

Alt: A landing page for HGTV on tips for adopting a dog. A pink box around the navigation menu.

For example, if a user enters your site through the contact page URL, it should be easy for them to find navigation elements that will take them to the homepage or digital product browsing section.

Provide tools to make finding resources easier

An efficient search system is the backbone of a great user interaction design. This allows an of your webpage participants to find what they’re seeking in seconds rather than minutes.

Provide FAQs with links to more specific information. This gives users the choice of how much information they need and an easy way to access it.

Keep a navigation menu at the top of all your subpages. Subpages need to provide access points for other activities you offer–Otherwise, your users may never travel from a subpage to your sales funnel (or another offering on your main page).

6. Go through the customer journey then map out a blueprint for improvements

Alt: Two caucasian women sitting side by side with a laptop between, going through the customer journey

The best usability testing you can perform is going through the actions of a potential customer. You can do this yourself by going through your website manually. Mind maps can also make the task of mapping the customer journey easy.

For best results, anticipate how a user will engage with your interaction design. Once you have a clear blueprint of your users’ needs, you can create an information hierarchy and a sitemap. Your sitemap allows Google’s bots to crawl your URLs to identify information used for SERPs.

Keep Speed In Mind

In general, the online community values convenience and speed above all. A recent UX study demonstrated that 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile app or site takes longer than three seconds to load. This means from decision points, your web design has about 3 seconds to sort and present the piece of information digital product the user is looking for.

This is to say that load time, page speed, and click response are essential parts of your information architecture and it is important to keep up with their performance. Thankfully, tools like the

Artificial Intelligence and the Customer Journey

The behavior of an internet user is relatively predictable, and artificial intelligence technology can now mimic user activity for rapid results from AI user testing and other usability testing efforts. In conjunction with heatmaps, you can pinpoint where users tend to get hung up and turn decision points into exit points.

Perform Regular Performance Audits and Fixes

SearchAtlas can make tracking and monitoring performance simple once your site is live. This can help you improve the customer journey by identifying navigation issues such as broken links.

Identify What Pages Visitors Use Most with GSC Insights

Finding which pages on your site that visitors utilize most can help you prioritize their functionality when auditing your site’s performance. This also gives you insight into which categories of content your target audience is most interested in.

7. Make sure the information part of your information architecture is high quality.

Findability, usability, and graphic design are all essential elements to good IA. However, the content you are managing needs to be as relevant as it is organized. The same way an information architect is well-versed in the science of organization, content strategists and content creators are experts in SEO and how to improve the content structures.

Reader engagement is a must when it comes to engagement time and scroll distance. The easiest way to improve your content to encourage deeper navigation is with clear headings as a road map to your content. The first thing many visitors will do is preview your headings and images for relevance to their search terms.

The quality of your metadata and headings will also drive more visitors to your site and reduce your bounce rate.

Structure Your Content for Usability and SEO

The Core Web Vital update made the structure of content an even higher priority. This change takes into account how long it takes for users to access the most important aspects of your website. The difference is now most IA design locates data-heavy elements below the page fold. And if these elements are vital assets to your brand, you need to give visitors a reason to scroll through pieces of content far enough to move beyond the fold. This is where the quality of your content comes in.

Information Architecture: The Science of Organizing the Customer Journey

The impact of well-strategized information architecture continues to become more and more profound. With information architects, UX experts, and content auditors, websites are better able to provide every user with easier access to their desired outcomes. Through the science of user behavior, cognitive psychology-based UI design, and strict hierarchy patterns, IA is improving the internet for all users.

Better IA can set your business apart from the competition. With LinkGraph’s team of visual designers, content curators and creators, and UX web developers you can turn your site into a top-performing contender on search engines, the worldwide web, and among your loyal base of customers. If you’re ready to watch your business grow, we’re ready to take on your next project.

The post 7 Tips for Better Information Architecture on Your Website appeared first on LinkGraph.

Google has gotten better at understanding content, so your keyword strategy also needs to get more advanced. Using a keyword cluster model to drive your overall content strategy can help bolster your search engine results and help you outrank competitors.

Here is a guide on everything you should know about keyword clustering.

What is a Keyword Cluster?

In short, keyword clusters are keywords that represent searches with similar consumer intent.

Also known as keyword groupings, these “bunches” of keywords are paired together because they represent the same, overarching intention.

Users don’t always search for products, services, or answers to their questions in the same way. For example, say your business is an e-commerce brand that sells women’s athletic shoes. An example of a possible ways that users might search for your products include:

All of the above search queries display the same intent, which is to purchase athletic shoes for women. If you only optimize your content for one of these terms, you’ll miss out on thousands of users who are looking for products and services likes yours.

The reality is, Google usually ends up ranking our web pages for multiple keyword phrases. With a keyword clusters model, you can be more strategic in making sure Google ranks your web pages for the similar terms that your target audience is using.

How to Create a Keyword Cluster

Creating a keyword cluster involves being more thorough with your research and more strategic about keyword targeting. It requires a strong understanding of your audience and the types of terms they use to find products, services, or content like yours.

1. Do Your Keyword Research

Any SEO professional understands that before you start with any type of keyword targeting, you must do your research.

You not only need to see what keywords users are searching for surrounding your search term/ topic. You also need to know which of those terms are more valuable and display the greatest conversion potential.

And when we say research, we don’t just mean finding a few keywords. Done correctly, extensive keyword research involves putting together a list of hundreds to even thousands of keywords that might bring potential customers to your website.

When thinking about what kinds of keywords to add to your list, ask yourself the following questions:

• What products and services do I offer?
• What problems can I solve for my customers?
• Why would a consumer choose my company over my competitors?
• If I was brand new to the industry, what words would I be searching to learn more?
• What type of customers do I usually get?
• Do I have any content currently that can answer users’ most common questions?

Once you have some ideas about what primary keywords and overarching topics you want to target, take your time to identify all the variations of the keyword and topic as possible.

This means all long-tail keyword phrases, pillar topics, synonyms, and related subtopics. While there is no perfect number to shoot for, when you finish your keyword research you should have a couple hundred keywords to work from. This will give you a good number to help you build out multiple keyword clusters.

2. Use a Keyword Tool

To find essential keyword metrics for the many keywords you’ll need in your list, you will want to use a tool like LinkGraph’s keyword researcher. (If you haven’t created your free account yet, set up your SearchAtlas dashboard).

Features like “Suggested Keywords,” will help you find similar keywords quickly and then easily add them to a list that you can eventually export to a CSV file.

Our Keyword Researcher tool simplifies your keyword strategy by giving you all the data and insights you will need to create keyword clusters to improve your website’s content.

Our tool will provide the data for:

• Monthly Search Volume: The average number of users who are enter the keyword into the Google search bar every month.
• Keyword Difficulty: The competitive landscape of the keyword on a 0-100 scale. Higher Keyword Difficulty scores mean more competition.
• Search Volume by Country: If you need the search metrics for specific country or region, the tool can be filtered by country.
• Cost-per-click: This is the price that digital advertisers are paying in Google Adwords to rank their website on the top of the SERPs. The higher the CPC, the higher the chances that this keyword will bring qualified traffic your way.

3. Identify Themes and Groupings

Once your list of keywords is complete, you’ll want to take your list and identify similar themes. Chances are, you may have already noticed some themes pop up while you were collecting your research.

The various patterns you might see will guide your keyword clusters. Some examples to look for are:

Relevance

This goes back to natural language processing. Are there certain groups of words that are synonyms and share the same search intent? The more similar the keywords, the easier it is for Google to crawl your landing page and gain insight on its subject matter.

Search Volume

The core keywords in your clusters need to have a reasonable search volume. This shows that users are actually searching for those terms.

While long-tail phrases will naturally have lower search volume due to their specificity, make sure any long-tail terms you include in your cluster still display strong conversion potential in their cost-per-click metrics.

Keyword Difficulty

For newer sites, it will be difficult to rank for keywords that have a Keyword Difficulty score higher than your Domain Authority. There are many ranking factors in play when it comes to organic difficulty, including your site authority, your backlink profile, and how established your website is in your niche.

Having a combination of lower competition and high competition keywords can mean securing some keyword rankings in the short term. As your site authority grows, your pages can rank for those more competitive queries in the cluster over the long-term..

Marketing Funnel

You an also group keywords together based on where the user is located in the marketing funnel.

• Top of the Funnel – awareness and lead generation keywords.
• Middle of the Funnel – consideration, and lead nurturing keywords.
• Bottom of the Funnel – purchase and conversion keywords.

Keywords that are at the top and middle of the funnel are better options for resources like blogs and ebooks on your website. Your primary landing pages that are conversion-optimized should target keyword groupings at the bottom of the funnel.

4. Assign your Keywords to Groups

Once you identify the themes and commonalities, it’s time to organize keywords into clusters. Aim for about 3-5 keywords in each cluster, as anything higher will be more difficult to optimize for.

The number of keyword clusters that you identify will be determined by how many landing pages you have on your website and whether or not you are optimizing existing content or starting from scratch.

When it’s time to optimize, do the following.

For Existing Content

1. Take every landing page you currently have on your website and write them all down in a spreadsheet.
2. Categorize the landing page based on a theme, whether it matches the marketing funnel themes from above, or it is a different type of content.
3. Match your keyword clusters to the pages, and refresh the content accordingly. This can mean adding a sentence or two to the existing marketing copy, updating the SEO HTML tags like page titles and meta descriptions, or updating the content copy with more relevant statistics, links, or information.
4. Use the SEO Content Assistant to optimize the content. You can optimize for up to five keywords, meaning all of the terms in your cluster
5. If any of your keyword clusters don’t match a content theme on your website or vice versa, then make note of these content gaps. You will use these content gaps to inspire new content.

For New Content

• If you are starting completely fresh, you will want to create at least one landing page per keyword cluster.
• Look to the keywords in your cluster to guide you on what information you share, and how you can help your customers.
• Like with existing content, use the SEO Content Assistant to optimize your content and improve its ranking potential
• After you create your initial pages, you’ll want to expand your content to reinforce your keyword clustering efforts. You shouldn’t just think about the content you produce today, rather you’ll want to focus on creating a sustainable content strategy that works on bolstering your website’s long-term SEO.

Tracking your Keyword Clusters in GSC Insights

After you publish your optimized content on your website, LinkGraph’s GSC Insights tool can give you an inside look at whether or not your pages are ranking for the keywords in your cluster.

Here are some things to look for to confirm whether or not your keyword clustering strategy is working:

• Impressions: If Google starts showing your SERP result to more users, it shows that their crawlers find the page relevant. Even if your page isn’t ranking on page one, impressions are a sign that Google sees your pages as related to the keyword query.
• Total Keywords: If the total number of keywords your page is ranking for improves, it shows that Google is understanding the content on the page and seeing its relevance to multiple keyword searches

GSC Insights can be used for organizing, tracking, and optimizing your keyword cluster strategy and to see what content needs more optimizing or what kind of additional content you should produce going forward.

Final Thoughts

With a bit of time, dedication, and research, deploying keyword clustering model will enhance your overall digital marketing strategy.

Knowing what content and keywords resonate with your potential and returning customers is crucial to staying topically relevant within your industry. It’s also essential to earning the organic traffic and conversions you need to grow your business.

Our SEO specialists at LinkGraph are here for all of your keyword and content strategy needs. Get in touch today to learn more about how our team and software can help you with keyword clustering and on-page optimization.

The post Keyword Clusters Guide for SEO Strategists appeared first on LinkGraph.

Keywords play an essential role in your overall search engine optimization strategy. If you only target highly competitive keywords when you’re creating landing pages and blog posts, it’s unlikely you’ll see those pages rank on page one. That is, unless your Domain Authority is equal to or higher than your competitors.

In this blog, we’re going to go over the concept of long-tail keywords and low-competition keywords. Rather than targeting highly competitive keywords that many other people may have optimized for, low competition keywords and long-trail keywords can help you get on to page one and see SEO wins earlier and faster.

What are long-tail keywords?

First, it helps to understand exactly what long-tail keywords are. These are longer keyword phrases of three words or more that are more specific and direct for your niche. 

For example, maybe you want your web design company to rank for the competitive keyword web design services. Here are some examples of some long-tail keywords that show similar search intent and relevance:

• web design services for small businesses
• web design services pricing
• development and web design services
• landing page web design services
• custom website design services
• web and graphic design services

If your brand or website is just starting out, the best keywords may be lengthier phrases that exactly describe what you’re selling rather than the basic keyword that your competition is targeting.

The more specific you can get with your keywords, the better. In fact, a majority of Google Searches (about 70%) are long-tail queries. People tend to search for their specific needs using at least three words.

So, if you can rank for these specific searches, you’ll be able to draw in more customers.

What are low-competition keywords?

The internet is a huge space full of literally millions of different websites vying for buyer‘s attention. That’s a lot of competition you are trying to beat out with high-volume keywords. In the keyword competition game, it can help to maximize your SEO strategy when you stay away from the keyword ideas that everyone is utilizing. This is where low-competition keywords come in.

Metrics like Keyword Difficulty estimate the competitive landscape of certain keywords. If the keywords your brand wants to rank for have high search volume, higher CPC (which represents conversion potential), and are already dominated by websites with lots of site authority, those keywords are considered higher competition. 

But to be successful in SEO, your brand should target and utilize keywords that you actually have the capability to rank for. Your potential customers will be more likely to find you if you are ranking in the top three positions on page one. Aiming for keywords where you can get to those top spots is a much more practical way of ranking, especially for newer websites.

Low-competition keywords should still be relevant to your products and services and will represent buyers somewhere in the marketing funnel. As you’re starting out or building your website from the ground up, lower competition keywords are great to gain some traction.

Avoid the high-competition keywords at first. Instead, draw more people to your landing page with low-volume keywords you can rank for more easily.

Pros and Cons of Long-Tail Keyword Targets

As with any marketing strategy, you need to make sure you’re using the best tools to help your company succeed. When it comes to long-tail and low-competition keywords, there are some pros and cons to consider. 

Let’s go over a few of those in detail now.

Pro: You have a better chance of ranking.

Playing the SEO game is all about your search rankings. The biggest pro of utilizing low-competition keywords is that you have a better chance of ranking with a fast turnaround. 

This is especially true for newer websites and young businesses. As you’re starting out, you may not have a strong domain rating or meaningful presence on the internet. Therefore, you won’t be competitive against big-name websites when trying to rank for general keywords. 

Focus on getting your numbers up on long-tail searches as a way to see results more immediately.

Pro: Your conversion rates can be higher.

When a potential customer searches with short-tail keywords, chances are they’re just looking around and browsing the internet. A long-tail search is more specific and direct. That means they represent searchers who know exactly what they’re looking for and are ready to buy it. 

When you rank for long-tail keywords, it greatly increases your conversion rates. Customers in these instances are poised and ready to purchase the exact product they need, and you want to be the site that gives it to them. 

Getting specific about your offerings is that sweet spot where you draw in potential customers and a target audience that is ready to finalize their purchase.

Pro: This is a great stepping stone to better SEO practices overall.

The world of SEO can seem intimidating at first, but it doesn’t have to be. Another pro of long-tail keywords is that they can help spark better SEO practices overall. 

Think of this as a stepping stone for beginners or new websites that eventually want to rank among those high-competition keyword suggestions. The key to a good long-tail keyword campaign is to always connect things back to the head concept or pillar page. 

As you work to rank with low-competition phrases, you’ll also be able to beef up your main content. This helps you create a more strategic site and homepage overall.

Con: Long-tail keywords have a much lower search volume.

The biggest con of long-tail keywords is that they have a lower search volume. If you don’t choose your keyphrases carefully, you may be ranking for concepts that no one ever searches for. 

All that hard work to create and optimize content wouldn’t actually result in higher site visits. This may also mean that your site traffic isn’t as high as you’d like. 

While this is a downside, it can still be a good strategy. That’s because the business and search inquiries you are generating are more specific to what your site offers.

Con: It can be trickier to find the right long-tail queries.

Another tricky part of utilizing long-tail keywords is finding the perfect keywords in the first place. 

You want to rank for an incredibly specific query while still creating relevant content. It’s easy to find the Google trends for main keywords and primary topics, but low-competition searches may be harder to pin down. 

You may find yourself going through a lot of keywords to find the perfect low-competition options for you. Luckily, here at LinkGraph, we have excellent tools to help you find long-tail keywords that will be perfect for your particular niche.

Finding Long-Tail Keywords with LinkGraph’s Keyword Researcher

Here at LinkGraph, we have a number of software services we can provide you. One of these is our custom keyword research tool. Get understandable, beneficial metrics for your SEO so you can get the best organic search traffic. 

There are a few reasons why this tool is a great way to do competitive analysis to find those long-tail keywords that will benefit your business.

1. Search Volume: See how much traffic certain phrases get on Google. Remember, with low-competition keywords, you may actually want a smaller search volume number than with generic terms.
2. Keyword Difficulty: See how hard it may be to rank on the first page of the Google SERP with Keyword Difficulty. On a scale of 1-100, the lower the number, the more likely you are to rank. 
3. Cost-per-click (CPC): Get cost-per-click metrics for each specific term to getter a better understanding of their conversion potential.
4. Search Volume by Country: Narrow down your search by country so you are appealing to new customers in your target market. 

You can also explore our keyword suggestion feature for a quick way to get inspiration for your keyword research. This feature will take the exact keyword you had in mind and help you come up with keyword target alternatives.

It shows you subtopics, related ideas, autocomplete suggestions, and more. It’s a good idea to do this research so you can find a low-competition phrase to bring in quality searchers to your service pages, product pages, or blog posts. Check out these solutions for keyword suggestions in a seven-day free trial of our SearchAtlas software suite.

Other Ways to Brainstorm Low-Competition Keywords

Beyond our terrific resources, there are ways to do some keyword brainstorming on your own. Start by searching competitor keywords and find what is actually ranking. Google can offer some free tools for you to see likely rank and PPC information for certain keyword opportunities. 

You can also take a page from your competitor’s book, literally. Search through the top SERP-ranked pages and dissect that content marketing strategy. Who knows? You may find a new keyword or get inspiration from these high-competition sources. 

Doing a quick Google search with our LinkGraph Chrome extension can also help you identify what related searches people are using to find products and services like yours.

Overall, these are just a few jumping-off points and ideas to help you improve your keyword inquiries and understand searcher intent in new ways. Once you’ve taken the first step, you can benefit from professional on-page SEO assistance to find the best keyword terms for better results.

When should I target long-tail keyword queries?

There are a few different reasons you should target long-tail queries and some great opportunities to do so.

Brand New Website

If you are just starting out as a new domain or fresh website, utilizing long-tail keywords can be the best place to start ranking and making a name for yourself on the internet.

Without as much competition up front, you’ll be able to gain some traction and build toward more short-tail queries. When creating your new primary landing pages, aim for creating keyword clusters that include both short-tail and long-tail queries.

Blog Content Strategy

Starting a blog is another perfect opportunity to explore these ideal keywords. Creating blog content on a regular basis gives you opportunities to create content that specifically targets these long-tail and low competition queries. Optimize blog posts based on search phrases to help your web page grow a following in the best way. Get specific about certain concepts and key phrases so your ranked page can work its way up the SERPs.

Overall, long-tail, low-competition queries are the perfect solution for newer websites or pages trying to convert new customers into profitable sales. If you’re launching a new product or searching for more business, explore the benefits of long-tail keywords and low-competition searches. Here is a video explaining how to move from a keyword to a blog topic for your content strategy.

Start your long-tail keyword strategy today.

Now that you understand the importance and benefit of long-tail, low-competition keywords, it’s time to implement your strategy! A pro tip as you’re starting out is to officially identify your mission. 

Your SEO strategy is specific to your company and the goals you’ve set in your business plan. When you know your mission, you can do better keyword research. You also can be confident in exactly what you want to promote. This will inform all your next steps as you do research on Google metrics and start utilizing keyword idea searches.

Remember, the more specific you can get with your low competition keywords, the higher the chance you’ll rank in those niche areas. Overall, your long-tail keyword strategy is just the first step toward helping you utilize keywords in a deliberate way. Work smarter, not harder with these tactics and techniques that can take your company to the next level of your SEO journey.

The post Unlock the SEO Potential of Low Competition and Long-Tail Keywords appeared first on LinkGraph.