- Nearly everyone who's trying
to compete in SEO makes this mistake.
They fail miserably because what they're doing
is nearly impossible to achieve.
And yet, most people think that it's the right approach.
Hi everyone, I'm Neil Patel
and today, I'm going to teach you
the number one biggest SEO mistake nearly everyone makes
and you should avoid at all costs.
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We're in a time where SEO and digital marketing
has become more saturated and more competitive than ever.
With over a billion websites on the web,
SEO is no longer an easy or open playing field.
A lot of times, I see many of these new websites
making the same mistake that'll ultimately give them
little to no SEO result and just waste their time.
What is it?
It's targeting keywords that are too competitive.
These days, effective keyword research
is an increasingly important skill for digital marketers.
Not only do they need to know
how to develop a good keyword list,
but using keyword research to find out
what topics they should write about
or what phrases they should be using while writing
is super important, especially figuring out
which ones aren't competitive.
Nowadays, doing keyword research effectively
is a top priority for any website or SEO.
If you look up a competitive term, such as car insurance,
you'll likely see some big brands pop up.
If you're a new website,
it's going to be almost nearly impossible
to compete with those brands.
What's the answer?
Target long tail keywords.
Some marketers keep aiming for highly competitive head terms
and they're wondering,
hey, why is their search traffic not growing?
When I start targeting long tail keywords,
I increase my searching in organic traffic
to 173,336 visitors per month.
Nowadays, I'm getting well over a million.
You're missing out on a lot of search traffic
if you're not creating blog posts
around longer search terms.
You're probably wondering,
hey Neil, is it really worth it?
Well before I break down how you can go after these terms,
let me tell you one interesting stat
to show you how profitable it is.
According to Search Engine Guide,
Amazon makes 57% of their sales from long tail keywords.
That's because longer tail keyword variations,
especially those that have commercial intent,
convert really well.
For example, let's say you have a dog food business
and you're trying to break into the dog food online space.
Most likely, you want to go after keywords
like dogs, dog food, pet food,
because that would get a lot of search traffic.
The monthly search volume for dog food
is roughly 135,000 searches per month.
But the pay difficulty is 100
and the SEO difficulty is 77.
That's incredibly high.
Coming in as a new company,
there's very little to no chance that you're going to rank well
unless you have an established brand
and high domain authority, which most new companies don't.
Instead, you want to focus on long tail keywords,
like dog food for allergies or dog food for senior dogs.
These keywords have a lower monthly search volume,
but higher quality search traffic
because they're more specific
and they're going to convert because they're more specific.
For example, dog food for allergies
has a monthly search volume of 9,900
and a SEO difficulty of 38.
That means it's going to be easier to rank for.
If you're trying to figure out
how you can rank for these terms
or where to find them, check out Ubersuggest.
Type in an head term that you're thinking about going after,
you don't need to know the long tail variations,
just look at the head terms, type them in,
and then go to the keyword ideas report.
It'll give you all the other longer tail variations
and it even breaks down the SEO difficulty.
Look for terms that have a SEO difficulty score
of 40 or under.
Those'll be easier for you to rank for.
You also want to look for ones that have volume
at least in the few thousands per month
because volume doesn't always mean clicks.
And, when you do all of this,
it'll help give you more ideas
and more ideas for you to produce content.
There's also a questions tab on Ubersuggest,
prepositions, comparisons.
These are also more places
where you can find more keyword ideas, more content ideas.
That will drive keywords that convert into revenue.
Here's another quick tip that I love doing
to find the right type of content to produce.
On Ubersuggest, there's a content ideas report.
When you go very specific,
it'll show you all the content that's already been created
around the web based on social shares,
back links, and search traffic.
It even tells you, when you look at the estimated visits,
all the keywords that the article ranks for.
When you click on back links,
it shows you all the people linking to that article.
And when you look at social shares,
the more social shares, chances are,
the more people that like it.
When you're trying to figure out
what keywords you should go after,
also look at all the content pieces
that have some of those similar keywords
because this will give you ideas of what you can create
that can help you not only generate traffic
from all three, right?
You don't want to just generate traffic from Google.
If you're going to create content,
might as well get traffic from the social web
and might as well get referral traffic.
Referral traffic is other people linking to you, as well.
Keep that in mind
because this will help you craft content
that does well for more than just Google.
Don't just create content for users and Google,
create content for users, for Google,
for social media sites, for other people
who own websites and want to link to you.
This will all help you do better in the long run
and generate more sales.