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.

To write SEO-friendly blog posts, it’s essential to ensure that your company’s content is optimized for the right keywords, shown to the right target audience, and is properly crawled, indexed, and understood by search engines.

Here’s a complete guide on how to write SEO-friendly blog posts and the many benefits of having a library of useful content assets that permanently live on your website.

To learn how to write seo-friendly blog content, sign up for LinkGraph’s SearchAtlas software. Our software includes powerful content tools like the SEO Content Assistant, Blog Topic generator, and our Meta Tag Optimizer.

What is SEO-friendly Blog Content?

Google looks to fill search engine results pages with unique, original, and valuable content. Blog posts are an excellent opportunity for your brand to demonstrate industry expertise and authority. 

Creating SEO-friendly blog posts encompasses more than just keyword research and meta tag optimization. Google looks for other relevance and quality signals on the page, like semantic richness, originality, content length, topical depth, and even expert authorship.

The effective use of keywords and backlinks are ideal means of signaling relevancy and authority. However, content quality remains Google’s number one priority. The most important goal to strive for with every blog you publish is to satisfy the searcher’s intent.

The best way to begin formulating SEO-friendly blog content is to examine trending topics within your current niche. To start generating ideas, consider the following questions.

• What industry-related questions does my target audience have? 
• Does my company have any special areas of expertise?
• What are trending topics that my company has authority in?
• Does my audience need help understanding my products or services?
• What topics are my competitors writing about?

Why are SEO Blog Posts Important?

There are so many benefits to regularly publishing blog content on your website. These benefits extend beyond just helping your audience, but have major benefits to improving your overall rankings in search engines.

• Blog content can increase your total keyword rankings, meaning more market share
• Having permanent content assets on your website can drive traffic for the long-term
• Showing up for lots of relevant keyword searches in your industry improves brand awareness, even if the user doesn’t click to your website
• Blog posts are great assets to link to and are a safe way to increase your site authority through link building

How to Write SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

Blog writing can be informational, insightful, or in the style of a how-to guide. But in summary, great quality blog content provides readers with a better understanding of the particular topic they are researching.

Blog writing for SEO success can seem complicated given the intricacy of search engine ranking factors. But to simplify the process, know that search engines and users define great content by the following qualities:

• Relevancy
• Comprehensiveness
• Readability
• Authority
  

Keeping these four elements in mind will help your brand perfect its content strategy while building brand awareness and fostering industry relationships through blog content.

1. Find Relevant Topics Through Keyword Research

Relevancy is one of Google’s driving factors in earning page 1 SERP rankings. That’s why first and foremost, your SEO blogging should always be guided by a strong keyword strategy.

To start identifying relevant keyword targets for blog posts, do the following.

Find Blogging Opportunities with the Keyword Researcher

The Keyword Researcher tool in your dashboard can help you find multiple relevant keyword phrases that present blogging opportunities. 

Most likely, your primary product or service pages are targeting the most valuable keywords in your industry. Blog posts, however, present the opportunity to target relevant long-tail keyword phrases. Long-tail keywords usually have smaller search volume but still display strong search intent. 

To get started, input the primary keyword target that you want to rank for into the Keyword Research tool. Then, use the “Related Keywords,” “Autocompletes,” and “Questions,” feature to see other phrases users are entering into the Google search bar that have a relationship to your primary keyword target.

Once you have a list of relevant keyword targets, you can start generating blog ideas around them.

Use the Blog Ideas Feature in the SEO Content Assistant

To generate blog post ideas, you can certainly rely on the power of your own creativity and brainstorming. But if you need a little more help, use the Blog Ideas tool in your SearchAtlas dashboard.

First, enter the keyword target that you want to create a blog post around.

Then click “Generate Ideas.” The tool uses GPT-3 technology to develop blog post titles as well some accompanying text to help you get your blog started.

If you’d like, you can export your blog ideas to a CSV file to review them with your in-house team of writers.

Develop an Editorial Calendar with your Blog Topics

Every blog post you create should target a new keyword. That’s because every keyword presents a new opportunity to get your content in front of more potential customers. 

So ideally, your brand should be regularly writing and publishing blog posts. An editorial calendar can help you stay consistent, meet deadlines, and then track the SEO progress of the blogs you publish.

When do you stop generating blog ideas? Well, until all of the questions that your potential customers ask are answered on your website.

Because there are literally thousands of ways that users are searching for products, services, or expertise like yours, your blog content should be ongoing for as long as your website exists.

2. Create Comprehensive Blog Posts to Signal Quality

After you have your keyword targets and blog titles, it’s time to get writing.

The most important goal of SEO blog writing is to satisfy your user’s intent. Is the user looking for an answer to a specific question? A tutorial for how to use a product? A how-to guide or a top-ten list? More than anything else, your blog should satisfy the user’s initial search query.

But in addition to relevance, Google will also be looking to see whether your blog posts are as high quality as your competitors. Here are some types for creating in-depth, quality blogs that search engines will love (and thus rank better in the SERPs).

Take a Look at Your Competitors

When trying to understand what will help your blog posts rank well, there’s no better place than to look at your competition. 

The SERP Overview feature in the Keyword Researcher will show you what content is already ranking for your target keyword.

Review the top-ranking content and take note of page titles, heading tags, rich media, content length, and other factors. 

Then, do your best to emulate those elements in your own blog post.

See What Google is Showing Users Who Search for your Keyword

Google helps searchers on their quest for knowledge with autocomplete suggestions and the “related search” section near the bottom of the search results page. These features can also help you develop your blog posts to be more comprehensive.

For example, say your general contractor business wants to write a blog post about the costs associated with bathroom remodels. The SERP autocompletes and Related Searches feature can provides some insights into related questions that users are asking about the topic.

Instead of just focusing on the costs of a bathroom remodel, your blog post should also break down cost by various square footage, the costs based on location, as well as how much value a remodel can add to the home.

If the user finds all of the answers to these questions in your one blog post, they are less likely to return to the SERPs with more questions, which signals to Google that your post is comprehensive and useful.

Improve the Semantic SEO of your Blog Posts with the SEO Content Assistant (SCA)

Semantic SEO is the practice of satisfying user intent through semantics. 

Semantically-rich content not only contains the target keyword, but related keyword phrases, subtopics, and answers to common questions that users have in relationship to the topic. 

To write your SEO-friendly blogs with semantic SEO in mind, use the SEO Content Assistant in your dashboard. The tool uses NLP technology to suggest the relevant focus terms and questions that will give your blog more ranking power.

Don’t Shy Away From Lengthy Content

Word count is technically not one of Google’s ranking factors. But the length of your content can often signal quality to Google. Google doesn’t like thin content, and if your blog doesn’t appear as comprehensive as your competitors, it’s unlikely Google will rank your content over theirs.

3. Use SEO Best Practices to Improve Readability

Readability is a bit of a broad term, but for SEO purposes, it refers to how easily digestible your content is for both Googlebots and readers. 

The same way grammatical errors, typos, and poor punctuation signal poor quality to readers, unoptimized ALT text, lack of visuals, and generic page titles send red flags to site crawlers. 

There is no such thing as search SEO-friendly content that is not user-friendly; they go hand in hand. So here are some optimization best practices that will help improve your readability for both users and Google crawlers.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Using target keywords to signal relevancy is one of the first SEO tips many people ever learn. However, there is such a thing as overusing keywords. 

A great way to check if your content is overstuffed is by examining its readability. Does it sound natural? Would you phrase that differently if your list of keywords didn’t exist? 

Of course, some accommodations will be made to assist Googlebots in crawling and indexing your webpages. Nevertheless, they should not compromise a reader’s user experience.

Use the Page Title to indicate precisely what the Blog Post Covers

The Page title and meta description should adequately describe the content and utilize your target keywords. Remember, these elements will appear on the frontend of the SERP results for the user and will significantly influence your click-through-rates. 

The Technicals feature of the SearchAtlas Chrome Extension can help you confirm whether or not the meta data of your blog posts are SEO-friendly.

Let the H1-H6s Give your Blog Post a Clear Structure

Meta tags are best known to help Google crawlers understand what your content is about. But because meta tags are also visible to the user on the frontend, they can help with the readability (or the scannability) of your blogs.

The reality is, most users will scan your content looking for the most direct answer to their question. Headings can help you make your content more readable by making it more digestible.

With Google’s Passage Ranking update, crawlers will also be looking to promote specific passages of your content that directly answer the user’s question. Your heading tags are key to Google knowing where that information is on the page.

Optimize your Anchor Text

Bad anchor text is the trademark of poor user experience. There is nothing more irritating than clicking on a link that navigates you to irrelevant content. 

Additionally, if you use bad anchors for internal links, your website’s bounce rate will increase. Once users realize the link does not bring them to the relevant content the anchor text promised, they are likely to leave the webpage immediately.

Anchor text should be an accurate description of what lies on the other side of the link. An optimized anchor text SEO strategy will also help Google better understand how your multiple blog posts and content assets interrelate.

Break Up Longer Posts with Rich Media

A long, uninterrupted wall of text can be intimidating for users. Infographics or images that contain helpful information can make your content appear more easily digestible, regardless of word count. 

Consider using rich media to support your blog ideas and encourage users to interact with your content. Even a simple screenshot can be the visual stimulation needed to keep readers engaged. 

This practice can also boost your visibility in vertical searches by allowing your content to appear when searchers use the images or video tab on the search engine results page to narrow down their results. Make sure you add optimized alt text so your images can show up in relevant searches.

4. Elevate Authority By Building Backlinks to your Blogs

After your blog is completed and published live on your site, improving the PageRank on the page will help elevate it in relevant keyword searches.

Every time another web page links to yours, it passes along a portion of its PageRank. Earning links on other websites is key to helping improve your overall keyword rankings and positions in the SERPs.

So how do you get other webmasters to link to your blog? Through a manual outreach and public relations strategy. 

Build Backlinks through Original Outreach

By adding in-depth, relevant, and comprehensive blogs to your website on a consistent basis, you will have more content assets that live permanently on your site. Most likely, other webmasters will find those blogs relevant and want to link to them!

Reach out to those webmasters and see if they will be interested in linking to your blog in their relevant content! Review this list of LinkGraph approved link building strategies to learn how to do manual outreach for link building purposes.  

Share your Blog Assets Across Multiple Channels

Blogs also mean more opportunities to share valuable content on social media channels and email marketing campaigns. Plus, sharing informative, useful information is often more effective in driving revenue growth and brand loyalty rather than more sales-driven emails. Adding conversion-optimized elements to your blogs like CTAs or sticky bars can help you turn those blog readers into leads or customers.

Scale up your Blog Posts with AI Generated Content

To start writing optimized blog posts even faster, leverage the AI features in your SearchAtlas dashboard. Although AI content should not replace your content writers entirely, it can help you produce first drafts more quickly, giving you a start point so you don’t have to always work from scratch. Check out the below tutorial on how to draft a blog post using AI in your dashboard.

Final Thoughts on How to Write SEO-Friendly Blogs

Due to the benefits to keyword rankings, industry authority, and brand awareness, there is really no reason not to be publishing blogs on your website.

But we realize some site owners don’t have a team of in-house writers to be regularly crafting optimized blog content.

If that’s the case for you brand, LinkGraph is always here to help. Our editorial team can create useful, optimized content for your target audience. Learn more about our blog writing services with one of customer success managers to learn more.

The post SEO-Friendly Blog Posts: How and Why to Write Them 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.