Insights on SEO

More keywords aren’t the point

You can easily rank for 100 keywords, but if those words aren’t the words your customers are using to find what it is you’re selling, ranking for those words won’t help. It’s better to rank in the top spots for a handful of core keywords that are super-relevant to what you offer than to rank for any number of words that have little—if any—search intent.

This is especially true for local businesses—since you can rank for hundreds of keywords that aren’t localized (meaning they don’t target a specific geographical area)—which implies that the searcher doesn’t care to find something that’s close to home.

Sometimes, SEO isn’t the answer

You can only rank for a query that exists. If you’re an innovative business with a new product or service, your customers may not know enough about what you offer to know what words to use to search for your solution. So, your next step shouldn’t be to write content that’s search optimized—your next step should be to distribute educational content that informs them enough to find out what those queries should be.

Engaging content doesn’t always rank

Before there there was smartphones or VR or cryptocurrency, or even behavioral economics, regenerative agriculture, or air fryers —there was nothing. Nothing on the web that indicated these would one day be keywords with massive volume. The same holds true for dozens of content ideas and concepts that are perfectly relevant to your business.

The lesson: if your coming up with content that’s mean’t be engaging (or educational, but about an entirely new thing) don’t treat keyword volume as the be-all, end-all heuristic. It’s not. There are hundreds of content deliverables you could create that have little if any keyword volume that will naturally engage your audience just the same. Whether your goal is social shares, likes, or conversions.