I am seeing signs from both the SEO chatter in the community and the tracking tools that the past day or so there may have been a Google search ranking and algorithm update. It might be just tremors or small tweaks to the Google May 2020 core update or it might be something totally unrelated.
Kevin Indig posted a poll on Twitter, which I retweeted, asking how much does position number one on Google matter today vs 10 years ago? I am a bit surprised to see the responses to this question. In short, it seems SEOs are super split on this.
In February we covered some complaints about Google showing “uploaded by” in some of the search result snippets. Often, the upload by will cite the person who uploaded the video and not the person who wrote the content on the page where the snippet is coming from. An SEO named Stephen said he was able to remove the uploaded by section with a meta tag.
April 2010, Matt Cutts who was working at Google on search, was asked how does he see search working in a decade from now. It is always fun to look at predictions from the past and see how they came out.
It sounds like the Google Search Relations team, aka John Mueller, Gary Illyes, Martin Splitt and others have started a podcast, in addition to the YouTube channel. The podcast was probably Gary’s idea, since he is camera shy.
Roombas are cool, well, they look cool. I owned a few over my lifetime and they tend to work for a while and then just stop. But hey, this is not a Google Partner Branded Roomba review. Here is a ph
Implementation of SEO changes can literally make or break a website’s growth. Yet 65% of respondents say it takes at least one month to get their changes made.
In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about how to successfully get your SEO recommendations implemented.
Paid advertising is a great way to guide more traffic to your site and increase business, but it can become expensive quickly if you aren’t careful. How do you make sure you are getting the most out of your paid ads?
A few weeks ago, I was talking to a business owner in my community. They recently started an aggressive Google AdWords campaign that was working, sort of. They getting tons of new leads, but the leads were for services they didn’t offer! The problem was their campaign was way too broad, and they were paying tons of cash for useless leads.
Don’t let that happen to you. Here are five simple things you can do to make sure you are getting the most out of your paid advertising campaigns.
What Is Paid Advertising?
Paid advertising usually refers to online methods a company uses to attract more customers by paying for ad space on search, other websites, or social media.
There are many types of paid ads but the most common ones are:
Paid Search: Businesses can bid to appear at the top of search—above organic results—for certain keywords. There are a few types of paid search ads, such as PPC ads, responsive ads, display ads, etc.
Social Media Advertising: Businesses can run ads on different social media platforms that are popular with their audience. The ad offerings and format varies by platform. The top social media platforms to advertise on are:
Banner Ads: Businesses can pay to put a “banner” at the top, bottom or sides of webpages. These are usually in the shape of a rectangle that looks similar to a header or footer.
Native Ads: Businesses can pay to run ads on other websites that have a similar look and feel to the “native” content on their own site.
Why so much? Well, there are many reasons you should invest in paid ads.
With paid advertising, you’re able to target your ads to very specific audience segments. In a survey with over a thousand respondents, 80 percent of said they are more likely to purchase from companies that run personalized ads. Paid advertising allows you to do this.
Furthermore, if you don’t advertise online, you’re likely giving your competitors an advantage. After all, the most common advertising formats for small businesses are social media (64 percent of small businesses) and other online mediums like search engines and other sites (49 percent of small businesses).
1. Understand (and Use) Long Tail Keywords
Longtail keywords are keywords that are several words long. Rather than targeting “plumber,” you might target “emergency plumber near me” or “plumber to unblock a drain.” These are critical because they are more likely to match the words searchers use and they also indicate the searcher is ready to hire or buy.
Ubersuggest is a great resource for discovering keywords in your industry.
When using Ubersuggest, remember that you aren’t necessarily looking for the highest-traffic keywords. You are looking for the words your customers use to look for you.
Be on the lookout for long-tail keywords that are longer, more specific keywords that make up the majority of search-driven traffic.
Here’s a simple system you can use:
Step #1: Enter Your Head Keyword and Click “Search”
Step #2: Click “Keyword Ideas” in the Left Sidebar
Step #3: Analyze the Results
In the example above, the term “social media marketing” is considered a “head” keyword, which means it is searched for very frequently. The much less popular term “social media marketing strategy” receives fewer searches, but indicates the searcher is looking for something more specific.
You might go even further and try something like “the best social media marketing strategy.”
To find even more keywords, click the “Related” tab next to “Suggestions.”
For this particular keyword, doing so gives you nearly 16,000 more keywords, the majority of which are long-tail. For example, here’s what you see as you scroll down the results:
Once you find a long-tail keyword that piques your interest, click on it for a better idea of your competitors, both for paid ads and organic search.
The big mistake that many first-time marketers make with SEO or pay-per-click advertising is choosing the wrong keywords.
When you purchase head keywords like “social media marketing,” you will spend significantly more money and reduce your ROI dramatically.
The key that you have to remember is you get a lot more bang for your buck by targeting a large number of lower-traffic terms than by targeting a small number of higher-traffic terms.
Finally, the best source of keywords can come from your own website. Consider using a survey tool like Qualaroo to find out what your customers are looking for or why they decided to do business with you (after checkout for example). The language they use can be very effective ad copy for internet advertisements.
2. Understand the Different Types of Paid Ads
There are a lot of places to buy ads and each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses. Before getting started, you should understand the major types of paid advertising as well as their pros and cons.
Display Ads or Banner Ads
Banner ads immediately come to mind when we think about online advertising because they stand out. They are very common and come in a variety of sizes. These ads can be effective, but they tend to target customers who are not actively looking for something new.
For example, a person may be reading a newspaper article and not be interested in a new social media course. Display ads can be successful, but they need to be used properly. Display ads can be purchased using a pay-per-click model or they simply can be displayed for a certain length of time.
Text ads are the type you usually see on the primary Google search page. These ads generally are less expensive than display ads and target customers that actually are looking for something specific. They can be very effective but depend heavily on good keyword research and A/B testing (a topic we will discuss later in this post).
Here are a few of the places you should try listing your ads, though there certainly are many others:
Google Ads
Google Ads (previously Google AdWords) are an obvious choice for many businesses. They offer display and text ads in association with highly targeted keywords. AdWords are a clear choice for any campaign.
Bonus Tip: Your Google Adwords ads will produce a better return on investment the longer you use Adwords. Google rewards long-term customers with better “quality scores”.
Bing or Yahoo
Bing and Yahoo both offer alternative ad platforms that work similarly to Google’s. They combine display and text ads with targeted search terms. Some brands find that, while these options bring less traffic, the overall ROI is a bit better.
Social Media Ads
Social media advertising has grown enormously in popularity over the last few years. These ads combine text and display elements and are targeted based on user preferences, demographics, and location. Depending on your business type, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok are valid options to consider.
BuySellAds or Direct Buy
BuySellAds.com is a great place to go to find additional display ad opportunities. These usually allow you to “rent” space on a site or a blog for a fixed cost. Additional opportunities like this can exist if you contact some of your favorite bloggers directly.
Can’t decide between Facebook or Google (two popular options)? Then check out this video for some guidance:
Start by trying several of these options and use hard data to make final decisions about where you want to put your money. Rely on hard data, not guesses, to understand what platforms provide the best return.
3. Track Your Paid Ad Results
If you aren’t able to see how each of your ads is performing, then you shouldn’t be buying paid advertising at all. The beautiful thing about online advertising is that you get the opportunity to track everything. Google Analytics is an absolute must when it comes to online ad buying. This analytics package is free and easy to install.
Once you have it set up, you should become very familiar with Google Analytics Custom Campaigns. These options allow you to create a customized URL for each ad that will help you see overall performance for all of your advertising. Using Google Analytics in this way will give you a single dashboard for comparing all of your advertising campaigns.
4. Create a Landing Page
It is important to send incoming visitors to a unique page (called a landing page) on your website, rather than your homepage. This may seem counter-intuitive, but there are three very good reasons for using this strategy:
Landing pages allow you to customize your message for incoming visitors. This means that you can continue the message you started with your ads, which creates a more cohesive experience.
Custom landing pages allow you to push visitors toward specific actions, such as downloading a free ebook. (Displaying traditional navigation may distract your visitors.)
Landing pages make tracking your visits very easy. This is especially important.
When you combine this strategy with easy funnel-tracking tools, you quickly can gain a lot of information about how to reach and sell to your new visitors.
In some cases, you can create a single landing page for an entire ad campaign. In other cases, you may want to create a specific landing page for each keyword that you purchase.
This landing page helps us track who comes to the page and exactly how effective our ads are.
It is important to remember to block your custom landing pages from search engines. This can be done with a simple edit to your “robots.txt” file. This is an important step that will make your ad tracking more reliable. If you allow Google and Bing to send non-paid visitors to your page, you may get a false sense of how your page is performing.
Here are two more tips to create high-converting landing pages associated with your paid ads.
Create a Call to Action
Once you have a visitor on your landing page, how do you convert them into a lead or a customer? Every page you send them to should have a clear call-to-action. Think about this one carefully, because it’s the difference between a sale and wasted money.
I like to decide what the “number one” desired outcome for each page is before I design a landing page. Simply ask yourself, “What do I want them to do the most?” Then create the page accordingly.
A good call to action will tell your visitors exactly what you want them to do.
Everything on your page should push your visitors toward the action you want them to take. Without considering this, you’re throwing money away.
Use A/B Testing
You may have launched your page, but you aren’t done yet. Small tweaks and adjustments can make a huge difference in your overall conversion rate. If you’ve followed the tips above, you should have the proper landing page and conversion tracking to make this task very easy.
A/B testing is being scientific about testing which methods work best. When you go about A/B testing, it is important that you make only a single, testable, change each time. For example, you could test the effectiveness of your page’s headline or button placement, but not both at the same time.
By testing a single change, you will be able to see conclusive results about what works best. A/B testing is an ongoing process, too, so don’t stop. Keep testing and modifying your page. You might be surprised at what it does to your overall conversion rate on your paid ads.
5. Review Your Paid Ad Results Regularly
Whatever you do, don’t look at your results every day. This practice can lead to hasty changes based on incomplete data. It is best to wait so that your analytics have time to accumulate accurate trends and information. Then determine a set time period for reviewing your statistics and making changes. It might be monthly, it might be weekly. Checking monthly is a good plan for picking up broad shifts.
Consider setting up spreadsheets to track your statistics. It’s easier to pick up on trends and understand what you’re seeing when you dig into your analytics to pull out the numbers for your spreadsheet.
Use simple spreadsheets to track your incoming ad traffic.
Be prepared to kill keywords that are under-performing. Remember, conversion rates are your most important statistics for paid advertising, not clicks. Clicks just waste money if they aren’t driving leads or sales.
In paid advertising, the longer you run your ads, the better your rates and quality score will become. This will be true particularly if you rely heavily on good A/B testing and are constantly refining your ad buy.
5 Steps to Getting Started with Paid Advertising
Time needed: 6 minutes.
Not sure how to get started with paid ads? Here’s five steps to make sure you don’t waste your investment.
Understand (and Use) Long Tail Keywords
Long tail keywords are less competitive and mimic the way people search.
Understand the Different Types of Paid Ads
Each type of ad has different costs, audiences, and reaches. Understand the difference so you don’t waste ad spend!
Track Your Paid Ad Results
If you aren’t able to see how each of your ads is performing, then you shouldn’t be buying paid advertising at all. T
Create a Landing Page
Landing pages help drive conversions and make it easier to track. Don’t forget to add a CTA and use A/B testing.
Review Your Paid Ad Results Regularly
Check your results weekly or monthly to make sure your ads are driving results, not just clicks.
Conclusion: Benefits of Paid Advertising
Paid ads are not a get-rich-quick scheme. Don’t expect to be finished in a week or two. Give your ads time and finesse your plan to get the best results. Cumulative trends and information will give you a clearer picture of which ads actually convert.
Start by setting a small budget, and increase it as you gain confidence in your paid advertising strategies. If you need help getting started, feel free to reach out to my team. We can help create an advertising plan that works for your business.
Are you considering adding paid ads to your online advertising strategy? What is holding you back?
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that the “nofollow is not a dampening factor.” Meaning, when you put a nofollow attribute on a link, it does not dampen the value of the link, it totally does not give any credit or value to that link at all.
Last month we spotted Google testing an audio based listen and translate feature for the local panel. It seems Google is now trying this out for standard knowledge panels. These will play an audio clip of the knowledge panel text in English or your local language, even if the language is written in English on the search results page.
Google promised to let us know when they expand when they use MUM in search and Google did just that yesterday with this new announcement. Google announced how they are using MUM for better detection of queries around personal crisis. And Google also said the search company used BERT to reduce unexpected shocking search results.
Investments in marketing technology continue to be a priority for businesses across the board, as they strive to meet increased demands for personalization and a need to collect, authenticate and analyze rapidly increasing amounts of consumer data to improve the customer experience (CX).
Overall marketing budgets dipped slightly to 10.5% of company revenue in 2019 as compared to 2018, as CMOs and VPs of marketing operations continue to focus on ROI and efficiency, according to Gartner’s annual CMO Survey for 2019-2020. Still, optimism for 2020 was high at the time of the survey, with 88% of CMOs stating they believed the future impact of the global economic environment would be positive, with more than half (53%) believing the impact will be strong.
The advent of COVID-19 wasn’t foreseen at the time of the survey, however, and it has already had a significant economic impact globally. That said, it remains to be seen how long the impact of the novel coronavirus will dominate headlines and mindshare, as containment or other factors could bring worry down to the level we see with the seasonal flu.
More about Marketing Automation
Digital marketing — which has the ability to reach remote workers and the self-quarantined — could benefit in the short term as people seek alternatives to in-person meetings and conferences. However, a general economic slowdown and continued uncertainty will certainly negatively impact businesses in general.
Martech still a budget priority
Though the proportion of the overall marketing budget going to marketing technology in 2019 slipped to 26%, as compared to 29% in 2019, martech continues to overshadow other areas of spending. Only media spending equaled martech investments, with labor costs (25%) and agency budgets (22%) attracting smaller amounts.
Global marketing automation spending is projected to reach $25.1 billion by 2023, up from $11.4 billion in 2017, representing an implied annual growth rate of 14%, according to Forrester’s Marketing Automation Technology Forecast, 2017-2023 (Global), published in April 2018.
Pamela Parker is Senior Editor and Projects Manager at Third Door Media’s Content Studio, where she produces Martech Intelligence Reports and other in-depth content for digital marketers in conjunction with Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and Digital Marketing Depot. Prior to taking on this role at TDM, she served as Content Manager and Executive Features Editor. Parker is a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since its beginning. She’s a former managing editor of ClickZ and has also worked on the business side helping independent publishers monetize their sites at Federated Media Publishing. Parker earned a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University.
According to PEW research, 58 percent of U.S. adults say in general, calling out others on social media is more likely to hold people accountable. While there are various shades to cancel culture, I dive into understanding the crux of this phenomenon and what brands need to do to safeguard their reputation and identity online.
Source: PEW Research Center
What is “cancel culture”?
Cancel culture is the contemporary movement of expressing public disapproval of someone’s public statement or action.
When canceling refers to a brand, people are basically encouraging the public to stop buying from them. Canceling means boycotting a brand.
Obviously, social media provides a perfect platform for the cancel culture, giving anyone a voice and the means to unite people around one common outrage.
The idea of cancel culture is controversial.
On one hand, it raises a lot of legal questions. Public shaming goes back to the concept of public square trials when an individual could have been punished without their guilt being proved.
On the other hand, cancel culture is considered to be an important tool in achieving social justice.
How to keep your brand safe?
1. Develop thorough communication policies
Anyone who can publicly speak or publish content on your behalf should follow strict rules as to what they can or cannot say, which topics to avoid, who to alert of public feedback, etc.
It is helpful if the company’s executives are following that document as well because in many cases CEOs cause all the trouble.
For example, American University has avery detailedmarketing and communication policy listing all kinds of rules their employees need to follow when sending email newsletters, posting on social media channels, and using third-party content, like pictures and videos.
Here are their communication guidelines for posting on social media – this will give you a sample of what your brand’s communication policy can look like.
Think twice before posting: Privacy does not exist in the world of social media. Consider what could happen if a post becomes widely known and how it may reflect on both the poster and the University… If you are unsure about posting something or responding to a comment, ask your supervisor for input.
Strive for accuracy: Get the facts straight before posting them on social media.
Be respectful: Understand that content contributed to a social media site could encourage comments or discussion of opposing ideas.
On personal sites: Identify your views as your own.
Photography and comments: Do not post any comment or picture involving an AU employee, volunteer or student without their express consent.
A communication policy is not something you can build in a day. It should tackle different scenarios, provide policies for different channels and explain clear steps on:
How to implementmarketing tactics like emotional marketing and create case studiesbecause these should be handled with extra care to protect your customers’ feelings and your clients’ privacy.
How to ensure smooth communicationwith email automation(to avoid being called out for spam)
Set up your policy as an internal andsearchable knowledge baseto be able to expand it as you discover new and new situations and processes.
2. Avoid controversy (if you can)
As a founder and member of society, you may be tempted to use your public image and following to support what you feel is right and fair.
It may come at a high cost, so think twice before you do so.
Your public words may end up working against your brand and cause a crisis your team may be unprepared to handle.
When in doubt, keep silent.
Yet, it is getting increasingly harder to remain neutral
In today’s polarized world customers often demand their brands take one side and publicly define their stance. We’ve seen this happen in front of our eyes when Coca-Cola and McDonald’s were both forced to leave the Russian market after what seemed like a silent hesitation.
In many cases,silence is not an option. These days, remaining neutral means being complicit, and not many brands can afford that.
When confronted with the need to react to a political climate, consider taking an action over releasing a statement. Areportclaims that customers tend to be more forgiving to brands that took action instead of trying to please their audience with empty talk.
In other words, instead of condemning any side, start a fundraiser or donate money to the cause you’re supporting. At this point, whatever you say may backfire on you but at least action will be respected.
3. Admit and own up to your mistakes
While cancel culture may seem really scary, we see lots of examples of brands recovering from any crisis by simply apologizing.
If your company is facing public outrage
Arrange a meeting with your employees and discuss whether you may have been mischarged in your previous statement and what is the best way to address the accusations.
If you don’t feel you did anything wrong, your PR, communications, and legal teams may have a different opinion, so listen to them.
If your case seems bad enough and the accusations are mounting rapidly, consider hiring a crisis manager. In some cases, you need an outside perspective.
4. Invest in a sub-brand
For years we’ve been giving the same advice over and over again: Don’t create multiple brands. Focus on one.
Well, the recent years of an immediate cancellation threat over a possible clumsy public reaction have clearly demonstrated one thing: Your (personal) brand may be ruined within a day.
Of course, most brand names may be restored with enoughreputation managementefforts but it can take months for the public to forgive mistakes and become loyal again.
In this climate, having another brand name to lean on in case of a possible reputation crisis seems like a good idea.
We’ve seen lots of examples of a new brand name saving a business
To name a few, we’ve seen Rowling take onanother penname to continue writing, and McAfee changing its name to Intel Security to distance the company from its founder. There arenumerous othercase studies proving one definitive point: You may have invested your life into building a strong brand but it remains vulnerable, especially now that your brand’s cancellation may go viral.
Even if you are a small business or an independent entrepreneur, considersetting up an anonymousdigital entity earlier to start building up yourorganic visibility. If anything happens to your main brand, you will have a backup to switch your focus on.
Worst-case scenario, your sub-brand will be never used but you will be able to use the site rankings to drive additional sales and leads.
5. Prioritize data privacy and security is a must
Privacy and security remain the biggest threat to any brand’s welfare. Even giants like Google Plus were forced to shut down after their data leak became public.
Cyberattacks may cause your customers to lose money and identity, which is very hard to overcome. It is especially dangerousin B2B marketingbecause it often involves working with a lot of sensitive data.
Create ahealthy culture of securitywithin your business for all your employees to be aware of data security protocols and protect customers’ private data.
Ensure a culture of transparency to keep your employees informed on the latest risks and growing security threats as well as to list steps onwhat to do after a data breach.
We live in interesting times when everyone has a voice and we are still learning how to live in a world where any argument can go public and become viral. It is both scary and exciting to navigate these unknown waters but the good old “hope for the best, get ready for the worst” is almost always a good strategy. Good luck!
Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Bee, Brand and Community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.
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If your business blog lacks organic visibility and barely registers the footprints of your target audience, you will no doubt be searching for ideas on how to attract them.
Unfortunately, many online resources suggest finding blog post ideas in random and often fruitless ways, such as browsing social media networks and comments, sending polls, and even making use of blog idea generators.
The main disadvantage of these methods, though, is a lack of data proving overall audience interest, which only leads to unmethodical insights.
How do you know if the topics you choose are capable of attracting and engaging a significant portion of your target audience?
One thing is for sure: Researching blog topics requires strategy.
Let’s get straight into the complete workflow for compiling a content plan for your business blog, using a strategic and data-led approach.
How to find blog post ideas:
Step 1. Outlining Your Blog Strategy
A documented strategy comes before all else. Here are the steps you will need to take to define one for your blog.
If you already have an all-encompassing strategy for your purpose, personas, and goals, you can skip to Step 2 to identify your blog’s core topics.
Determining Your Business Blog’s Purpose
This will help you set clear goals for all your blog content. Ask yourself:
Why do you need a blog?
What area of your business are you trying to improve with your blog?
What do you expect your audience to do after they read your content?
Consider how your blog’s content will fit into your overall content strategy and, in turn, what kind of content people should expect to see depending on which stage of the buyer’s journey they are at when they visit.
Your blog’s purpose might be:
Attracting quality traffic;
Generating leads;
Driving conversions; or
Educating users about your product.
Once you have identified the stage and purpose, you will develop a better understanding of which topics suit your blog and which might be better for other pages.
According to the CMI, 31% of B2B and B2C content marketers consider blog posts the highest-performing content type for building brand awareness. HubSpot also reports that B2B marketers who blog get 67% more leads than those who don’t, so it’s important to consider the potential a blog might have as part of your overall marketing mix.
Setting up Your Blog Goals
Think of a goal as one step on the path towards driving profitable action for your business, whether it is in terms of savings or revenue. Make your goals specific and measurable, for example:
Attract X% of the total addressable market (TAM);
Increase organic traffic by X%; or
Get X% more leads in a year.
Tip: To keep track of your progress and see the impact of your blog with the right metrics, choose a goal-setting framework that suits you best. For example, SMART, CLEAR, KPIs, or OKRs.
Defining Your Target Audience
Readers of your blog won’t always be buyers of your products.
Be sure to get to know what your audience wants on an individual level so you can work out how to appeal to them with targeted, optimized content.
Create a portrait of each persona specifying their age, gender, interests, education, and job title, and explore the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework as part of our Ultimate Guide to Content Strategy to develop an even deeper understanding of their needs.
Deciding on the Content You’ll Publish
Think about what value you’re going to bring with your content and how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors’ blogs.
Next, craft a mission statement for your blog. Include your company’s unique vision for content, the value that content provides, the audience it benefits, and the principles it upholds.
With all this in mind, decide on the content you are going to publish. One of the approaches to this is to consider two kinds of content strategies, namely Publications and Libraries, according to Andy Crestodina:
Publications cover the latest industry news and trending topics that may become irrelevant in the future. This content is mostly distributed by emails and social media to subscribed audiences.
Libraries focus on evergreen content, such as how-tos, best practices and guides. This content is distributed organically via search engines and makes your audience aware of your brand.
Devising how you are going to reach your audience — via search engines, social media or email, for instance — may give you a starting point for this.
Tip: You don’t have to choose between Publications or Libraries, but rather decide on a percentage distribution that fits your blog strategy. For example, Flying Hippo offers the 80 percent rule, which consists of publishing 80% evergreen content and 20% timely content.
Step 2. Identifying Your Core Blog Topics
Identifying your blog’s core topics allows you to get a bird’s-eye view of your future editorial plan.
Take the HubSpot topic cluster model as an example. The idea is to identify 5-10 core topics for your blog, and then expand on them using different data sources.
Introducing Topic Clusters
Topic clustering is an SEO tactic that focuses on topics (as opposed to keywords) that:
Improve your website architecture;
Make it easier for Google to discover related content; and
Boost your search engine visibility.
To recreate this model for your blog, you’ll need to publish:
A ‘pillar’ page that roughly covers a general topic, and usually targets a high-volume keyword (e.g. ‘SEO copywriting’); and
Several ‘cluster’ pieces of content that focus on specific, long-tail keywords (e.g. ‘How to write SEO content’, ‘What is SEO copywriting?’).
Here’s what a topic cluster may look like, according to HubSpot:
The main advantage of this grouping model is that it gives an organic traffic boost to the whole cluster if just a single cluster page from the group performs well — but only if the interlinking is properly optimized.
The pillar page should link to each piece of cluster content, while cluster pieces should link back to the pillar.
Determining Your Pillar Topics
To determine your pillar topics, think about them as they relate to your product or service.
In this step, you’ll need to review your product’s value proposition and persona portrait.
Merge your audience’s challenges with the challenges your product solves to find a common topic you could cover on your blog.
To identify the first pillar topic, start by analyzing a specific feature that solves a specific user problem. Next, formulate this problem as a general concept, as per this model:
Product (or specific feature) > Specific user problem topic > Pillar topic
To give you an example, let’s say I develop a blog for copywriters. I sell an SEO copywriting tool (product) that helps my users to write optimized texts (problem), a concept that is widely known as ‘SEO copywriting’ (pillar topic). Other pillar topics I might define are ‘content marketing’, ‘content management’, or others that are relevant to both my audience and my tool.
Formulate 5-10 pillar topics to keep your blog’s focus clear, and keep them in a file that you’ll expand on later.
Since this model is tied to organic activity, make sure your pillar topics are searched for online. To do so, analyze each topic with a keyword research tool to find more popular synonyms of these topics.
Liz Moorehead suggests that your core pillar topic should have substantial search volume, but not too much: 500 searches per month may not be worth your time; 1,200 to 6,400 is more on target; and 33,000 is too many to consider. Keep in mind that these are just rough figures and may vary significantly from industry to industry and country to country.
When you come up with your pillar topic, your next step is to find cluster topics you can cover using different data sources.
My recommended tools:
Step 3. Expanding Your Topic List
Identifying your core topics will have sent you in the right direction for finding more ideas for your blog.
Next, let’s look at topic research using multiple sources, such as:
Brainstorming;
Competitors’ keywords;
Search and social media trends; and
Keyword research tools.
Brainstorming Topics
You will probably already have a wealth of industry knowledge in your company to exploit for blog content topics. Invite marketers, product managers, and sales and account executives to pinpoint the most relevant topics for your users.
Think of topics as general concepts, not as titles. These will be the foundation of your future keyword research.
Tip: Don’t like brainstorming or don’t have a team? Come up with at least three topics of your own that answer the questions from each group below, and proceed to the next step.
1. Industry Topics
Content on these topics may help you attract people who are genuinely interested in your industry, searching for trends, or looking to apply best practices.
Ask yourself:
What topics are most discussed in your industry?
What are the latest trending topics?
What do the industry experts discuss?
What topics are the most controversial?
In my case, I’d start with these topics: ‘SEO’, ‘content optimization’, and ‘user intent optimization’.
2. User-problem-related Topics
Creating content around these concepts may help you attract people who are looking to solve a problem, or profit by overcoming it.
You can also relate to these topics as ‘issue or opportunity’ terms. Focus on your target audience’s pain points first, and then on the benefits they could get by using a solution to that problem. Think of what questions they tend to ask most frequently and what final goals they want to achieve.
Ask yourself:
What problems do people suffer from in your industry?
What fears do they have?
What are they trying to achieve?
In my case, the topics would be ‘SEO-friendly content’, ‘SEO-friendly blog posts’, ‘traffic driving content’.
3. Product/service-related Topics
Creating content on these topics may help you attract the attention of people who are looking for a solution to their problems.
Think of which solutions people are looking for, and how they search for them.
Ask yourself:
What products/services are you competing with?
How do users search for a product like yours?
What products/services are popular in your industry (even if you don’t compete with them directly)?
In my case, the topics would be ‘SEO online checker’, ‘article checker’, ‘SEO writing tool’, ‘writing assistant tool’.
What to do next: Collect all the topics you have identified in a file with your pillar topics. Make sure you’ve indicated the data source next to each one. This column will help you prioritize your topics, learn where to dig out more information, and consider article distribution. We’ll come back to this file later.
My recommended tools:
Topic Research to generate popular topics when I’m stuck, or to broaden a list of topics. Learn how to generate content ideas using the tool in a particular location and based on a particular topic you have in mind.
Collecting Competitors’ Keywords
The next step is to check relevant topics that both your direct and indirect competitors cover.
Remember that industry blogs are your competitors as well, even if they don’t sell a product like yours. You should keep an eye on them if you want to attract organic traffic on topics relevant to your audience.
Analyzing Competitor Blog Focus
Start by going straight to your competitors’ blogs and checking the categories to reveal their general focus. Remember to check tags and, if possible, filter them to see which categories are most prevalent on their blog.
Any of these tags or categories could be your competitor’s pillar topics. Consider adding a couple of them to your plan if they match your strategy and have sufficient volume.
My competitors’ blogs feature ‘writing’, ‘content trends’, and ‘content tools’ categories, which could also make up part of my list.
Conducting Competitor Keyword Research
Next, you’ll have to proceed to competitive keyword research to find gaps in your strategy.
This step is unthinkable without using analytics tools. To find keywords that your competitors rank for, take a free 7-day SEMrush trial and use the Organic Research report. You’ll be able to not only research more than 18 billion keywords, but also access other data-driven tools to create your content plan.
Check keywords for:
The entire website (competitor’s domain); or
The blog section only (competitor’s subdomain).
Now, collect the most relevant keywords that your competitors rank for in organic terms. To do so, filter keywords by a specific word, e.g. ‘SEO’. I focus on collecting high-volume keywords first, but I also add those that have quite a low volume, but are still strategically important for our business.
Some keywords I found included ‘plagiarism checker’, ‘readability’, and ‘copy editing’.
What to do next: Export your keywords and copy and paste them into your original file. Don’t forget to indicate your data source.
My recommended tools:
Finding Trending Topics
Now, search for trending topics relevant to your industry. For this step, you’ll need reliable tools that can help you spot organic trends that have proven to be of interest to your audience.
Detecting Trends on Google
The most obvious data source is Google Trends. One by one, enter your pillar topics, and those that you brainstormed in the previous steps. Then, check their trending status (you can compare up to 5 keywords at once) and find related queries.
Check queries that have the greatest increase in search frequency. Pay special attention to the results marked ‘Breakout’. Google describes these as queries that have had a huge increase in search frequency, as they are new and have had few prior searches.
If you see a spike in a particular month, the keyword may be seasonal. Mark it as such in your file, so you can schedule an article on this topic in advance.
Some keywords I found were ‘SEO copywriting course’, ‘SEO copywriting service’, and ‘SEO copywriting agency’.
Analyzing Social Media Trends
Depending on where your audience tends to spend time, the exact steps of finding trends on each social platform may vary. However, the general workflow is the same, since the social trends are mostly personalized and tied to your profile interests.
Subscribe to your industry influencers and media. Keep monitoring what’s being talked about and see what’s trending in your feed.
Evaluate posts by engagement. Compare the number of likes (or other kinds of reaction) to the number of subscribers to see the scale of the audience’s overall interest.
You may also want to check Reddit to see if there is a dedicated subreddit for your industry. If you’re lucky, you can sort posts by ‘Hot’ (trending) or ‘Top’ (most upvoted (liked)) topics within a preferred period.
Another way to learn about social media trends is to search for industry research reports, like the ‘Top Twitter Trends’ we did last year.
Some topics I found were ‘SEO online courses’ and ‘SEO freelance’.
Using Data-driven Tools
While the manual research in Google Trends may take hours, there are ways to find trending topics much faster. Using data-driven tools like Topic Research, which is available for trial, will help you find trending topics based on a particular location in no time.
Type a topic you have in mind and find topics that have been trending online for the last 60 days by using the trending filter. Trending topics are marked with a fire icon. Also, you’ll instantly see the topic volume, allowing you to assess the organic interest of your audience.
Some topics I found were ‘ranking factors’, ‘content marketing’, and ‘content relevance’.
To avoid manual research in social media, you can start tracking your competitors or industry experts using Social Media Tracker. This allows you to detect the most engaging posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, video on YouTube, and pins on Pinterest.
What to do next: Add new topics to your original file. Don’t forget to indicate your data source.
My recommended tools:
Researching Keywords
Now, it’s time to expand the list of all topics and keywords you’ve collected, and make them more specific.
For this step, you can use Google Autocomplete, one of the best free keyword research techniques, or take advantage of your free SEMrush trial. You can research keywords using SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, which features more than 18 billion keywords with volume, keyword difficulty, CPC and other metrics.
Broadening Your Keyword List
This step will help you find keywords or synonyms for your topics that you might have overlooked. Start broadening your keyword list by researching a single topic or keyword from your list one by one.
Search for expanded keyword phrases that include your queried term. Find long tail keywords that are more specific but less popular. Check for semantically-related keywords based on your list of seed keywords. If you’re using the Keyword Magic Tool, click on the ‘Related’ filter to see these.
Repeat these steps for each keyword for which you want more ideas.
Tip: What to get more specific? Head to our ‘Keyword Research guide’ and discover how to make use of SEMrush to research keywords.
What to do next: Export new keywords and paste them into your file.
My recommended tools:
Finding Related Questions
Be sure to search for questions that include your keywords, since questions allow you to better understand a searcher’s intent.
Answering specific questions in your blog posts will help you bring value to your audience, and increase your chances of ranking higher or getting into featured snippets and voice search results.
Using Question Keyword Tools
Aside from checking Google’s ‘People also ask’ feature in the SERPs, you can find common questions by using tools that collect people’s search queries, such as Topic Research. Simply type a topic and explore popular questions via the filters.
What to do next: Paste your questions into your original file. Don’t forget to indicate your data source.
My recommended tools:
Step 4. Filtering and Grouping Your Topics
Now that you’ve collected a list of topics and keywords, you’ll need to pick those that could bring the best results for your blog.
Next, you’ll learn how to clean your topic list based on keyword popularity and competitiveness.
We will also get back to the topic cluster model so you’ll be able to group your keywords by clusters.
Filtering Keywords by Keyword Volume and Difficulty
This is where you need a keyword research tool that tracks search volumes, so you can be sure that your content plan is based on the organic interest of your audience.
The key tactic here is to focus on keywords with:
The highest volume – the higher the volume, the more popular the keyword; and
The lowest keyword difficulty (KD) / keyword competitiveness – the lower the metric, the less competitive the keyword.
If you’re using SEMrush, the right tool for this task is Keyword Manager. Paste all the keywords from your file into the tool and update the metrics for each of them.
Aim for keywords with low KD (around 60% or so), since these should be the easiest starting points.
You should also keep the keywords that have both low volume and low KD. They may not bring you the most traffic, but you might have an opportunity to occupy the highest Google position for them in your niche.
Also, if any of your questions have no or low volume, don’t rush to get rid of them. They are probably too long, but still contain a popular keyword. Keep all the questions in a separate tab named ‘Backlog’, and get back to them when you start creating an article. These questions will help you come up with headers or subheaders for your posts.
At this point, you should be able to get rid of irrelevant, low volume or highly competitive keywords that won’t help your strategy.
What to do next: When you’re done, export the keywords to a file. Clean up your sheet — leave only the metrics that matter to you, which might be volume and KD, as illustrated above.
My recommended tools:
Keyword Manager to check up-to-date metrics for my keyword list and to prioritize keywords.
Grouping Keywords by Topic Clusters
The next step is to cluster your keywords into the 5-10 core topics you identified earlier.
To do so, you will need to manually tie each keyword to a general pillar topic. During manual filtration and grouping, you may come across a more general or popular topic that fits your pillar topic list. This is when you can substitute your original topic, or add a new one.
When mapping keywords, try not to think about headlines just yet, but keep the final goal in mind. The goal of this model is to surround your future pillar page with related cluster content.
HubSpot calls pillar pages ‘Ultimate Guides’, which give a comprehensive overview of a general topic. The cluster content would include a number of related posts on more specific topics and keywords, which are still related to the general pillar topic, but in a narrower manner.
Here’s what a final topic cluster may look like:
Working with your spreadsheet, introduce:
A pillar topic column with your 5-10 topics;
A cluster topic column with the remaining topics distributed by core pillar topics; and
A product/feature column for each topic.*
*Keep in mind how your product or feature relates to your pillar topics (we identified this at step 2). Each of the cluster topics may match the same product or feature as its pillar topic. However, some of them can also be matched with a different product if that product meets the users’ needs better and topic search intent more precisely.
You may also distribute your trending topics throughout the table, or keep them separate, since their lifespan may be quite short.
Step 5. Identifying Potential Headlines
To earn and keep high organic positions, your blog posts must meet your audience’s expectations — in other words, they must match search intent.
Understanding the intent allows you to create the right format and come up with attractive headlines (and, of course, content) for your audience.
Here’s how to identify search intent for your keywords, and decide on post types and headlines accordingly.
Matching Search Intent with the Buyer’s Journey
The specific intentions of search queries commonly fall into the following four categories:
Informational: The searcher is looking for specific information on a topic. The query may contain phrases like ‘guide’, ‘tutorial’ or question words, such as who, how, etc. (e.g. ’how to write SEO articles’). Informational keywords may indicate that the user is at the awareness stage (or pre-awareness, if they are not aware of a problem).
Navigational: The searcher is looking for a specific webpage or site. The query usually includes the name of a brand, product, or service (e.g. ‘SEMrush Site Audit’). Navigational keywords may indicate that the user is at the consideration stage, as they want to learn more about a specific product or service.
Commercial: The searcher is considering a purchase and wants to investigate their options. The query may contain product modifiers like ‘best’, ‘cheapest’, ‘top’, or ‘review’ (e.g. ‘best SEO writing tool’). Commercial keywords may indicate that the user is at the consideration stage, as they are comparing several products with the intention to buy one.
Transactional: The searcher wants to purchase something. The query may contain such words as ‘buy’, ‘price’, ‘coupon’, etc. (e.g. ‘SEMrush subscription plans’). Transactional keywords mostly indicate that the user is at the decision stage, so they are ready to buy a product.
Identifying Search Intent for Your Keywords
To identify search intent for your own list of keywords, check for keyword modifiers from the previous section (e.g. ‘how’, ‘review’, ‘price’) and, if you need to, type a keyword into the Google search bar to check for any SERP features. For instance:
Featured snippets may indicate informational intent;
People also ask may indicate informational intent;
Site links may indicate navigational intent;
Google Ads may indicate commercial or transactional intent; and
Google Shopping ads may indicate commercial or transactional intent.
You should now decide how to deal with keywords from your list that fall outside of your blog’s purpose, such as ensuring navigational keywords point to category pages or transactional keywords point to product pages.
What to do next: Refer to the infographic above to identify search intent for every keyword from your keyword list, and mark it with the appropriate journey stage.
Deciding on Post Types and Headlines
Now that the priorities are set, you can start thinking about the kinds of posts and potential headlines you are going to create for your future blog posts.
Remember to consider the searcher’s intent. No matter how creative your post headline is, when typing a search term into Google, a user expects to find specific information in a specific format. If you don’t provide this for them, you run the risk of losing both your audience and rankings.
Your topic list should already give you an indication of what people expect to find on a particular subject matter. Informational topics starting with ‘how to’ are expected to be covered with a how-to guide. Commercial topics containing ‘best’, ‘reviews’, or ‘cheapest’ are expected to be covered with a review or comparison article.
If you’re struggling to identify what content type you should produce, search for your topic to check what’s out there. Your competitors will certainly give you an insight.
You can also get back to your ‘Backlog’ tab and search for related questions that could serve as a title.
Concentrate on headlines that completely and clearly indicate what a reader will find inside, i.e. the problem they will solve or the benefit they will get from reading it.
My recommended tools:
Topic Research to find the most resonant headlines for a topic and to understand the user intent better;
SEO Content Template to analyze top-10 articles ranking for a keyword in a specific location, featuring an average word count, additional keywords, readability, and other metrics. All this data helps to get a full picture of what content type is more relevant for a keyword.
Step 6. Prioritizing Topics Based on Your Goals
Here are a few ideas on how you can prioritize your article publication in line with your business goals:
According to Your Cluster Topics
Pick a cluster that covers a specific user problem and create posts around it. You may want to choose a cluster that brings you the most visibility (high volume), so create a pillar page and then start writing cluster articles based on your comprehensive keyword research.
Alternatively, you can start with creating cluster content focused on low-competition keywords to get some visibility on a topic, and after that, create a pillar page that will give a broader view of a high-volume topic. Thanks to low-competition topics that rank well, your pillar page may stand more of a chance of ranking higher and boosting the entire cluster.
According to the Buyer’s Journey
If your blog is mostly focused on a specific stage of the buyer’s journey, you should start developing content serving this stage first. Ensure you help the reader move to the next stage of the buyer’s journey by including CTAs and inserting relevant links into articles.
According to Volume and KD
If you’re focused mostly on organic traffic, you should mostly publish content that targets keywords with the highest search volumes and the lowest keyword difficulties to stand a chance of appealing to more people.
According to Your Product or Feature Releases
To support your product or feature release with blog posts, you could start producing content on any specific user problems it solves or benefits it gives, which you should have already identified in the product or feature development stage.
Good practise is to serve every stage of the buyer’s journey with relevant, optimized content. Start from the pre-awareness stage’s topics and ensure you walk your reader through to the end, i.e. the decision stage, which may be another channel rather than a blog post. Make sure to interlink your blog posts, too, so the buyer’s journey does not get interrupted.
According to Trends
If your blog post is a news-oriented channel, you should publish articles on trending topics as quickly as it’s convenient for you to do so. Covering trends won’t allow you to create a content plan for a specific time period, but you can still produce evergreen content in the background to support your online visibility.
Do you organize your blog differently? Share how you usually prioritize your blog topics and how it works for you in the comments below.
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