- If you've tried link building,
you know it's really hard to do,
but they say it's a vital thing that you need
if you want to rank for thousands of keywords.
Hi everyone, I'm Neil Patel, and today, I'm going to share
with you how you can rank for thousands of keywords
without link building.
So, before we get started,
make sure you subscribe to this channel,
and if you're on YouTube, click the alert notification.
That way, when I go live, you'll get notified.
Now, I want to go over three main strategies
that'll help you rank for thousands and thousands
of keywords without you ever doing any link building.
The first strategy is what I like calling the land
and expand strategy.
In other words, you already have keywords
and pages that rank on Google.
They may not rank as high as you want,
they may not rank for as many popular key terms as you want,
but they rank for something.
The way you see this is you log into Google Search Console.
Once you log into Google Search Console,
they show you all the pages and the terms
that each page ranks for.
I want you to click through on one of those pages
and look at all the keywords that that page ranks for.
From there, I want you to go back to the article
on your site and see, all right,
what other terms that this article is showing
in Google Search Console,
for keywords that I'm already somewhat ranking for,
what are those terms, which one of them
am I not including in my content?
In other words, think of it this way,
the way Google's algorithm works is
if you have text on your page around a topic,
you're naturally more likely going to rank for those key terms.
But if you're ranking for some terms
and you don't have those words in your website copy,
in the text, what do you think that tells Google?
Hey, yeah, we should rank them, but maybe not as high.
If you add those keywords within your copy,
you're much more likely to rank higher from them.
So I want you to go through the whole list of keywords
that you're getting impressions and clicks for,
but not as many as you could.
You go through your article and make sure
the article expresses or covers all of those key terms.
Don't just shove them in,
you've got to naturally want to cover those terms.
At the same time, what you should be doing
is taking the most popular terms that you rank for,
putting them into Ubersuggest,
and you'll get a longer list of other long tail phrases.
If you rank for a head term,
the chances are it's really easy for you
to also rank for the long tail phrase as well,
because the head term is always usually more competitive,
from a rankings perspective, than a long tail phrase.
So by including those other long tail phrases
that is not in your article currently,
you'll also find that by leveraging the land
and expand strategy, you'll start ranking for more
and more terms, and articles that are already getting
somewhat traffic from Google.
The second strategy for you is content clusters, all right?
So, you've got these pages on your site.
Now, this strategy and this tactic is all about layout
and architecture.
So with content cluster, you got pages on your site.
I want you to create master pages, main pages,
higher goal pages that are on one specific topic.
So, for example, I may have a page that's just dedicated
to SEO, it's a broad, large term.
Then from there, I may link out from that main SEO page
to all the other phrases and terms and subjects around SEO.
Now, the way you figure out what other phrases
to link out to is you can use a tool
called Answer The Public.
Answer The Public, you put in a head term,
it shows you all the long tail variations of that term
that people are talking about.
These are questions, these are comparisons,
these are propositions.
And by creating pages on all the popular ones,
what you'll find is you can start getting more traffic.
Now, that main page, that SEO page,
whatever that main topic is, dog food, SEO,
you pick that main parent topic.
That page needs thorough content,
needs a ton of information, pictures, videos.
In other words, you got to make it amazing.
You can't just say this page is on dogs, here's five words.
Assuming it's amazing, you go above and beyond,
your page is more thorough and detailed
from all the other pages that already rank in the top 10
for that term.
Then, by using the strategy of the content clusters
and going to tools like Answer The Public,
and going and finding out all the other terms
that you could end up ranking for that are around that topic
using questions and answers, prepositions, comparison,
creating content around it,
and then linking to those articles from your main page,
what you'll find is they'll all start ranking higher
and you'll start ranking for thousands and thousands
of other terms.
The last strategy I have for you is content gaps.
There is content that your competitors talk about
that you do not talk about.
There's terms that you rank for that your competitors
also don't rank for.
That's just how the web works.
So, using Ubersuggest, I want you to put
in a competitors URL.
Then go to top pages.
Top pages shows you all their most popular pages
that they rank for and the terms that they rank for.
Then I want you to download all of this information
by exporting this data into a CSB,
and this will help you determine, all right,
here are the pages that my site talks about
but my competitors also talk about,
and here are the pages that my competitors talk about
that I don't talk about.
Take all the pages that they talk about that you don't
and delete the rest.
Now you have a list of topics that your competitors
are talking about, they're ranking for, that you want.
Now I want you to go back to Ubersuggest,
go to those pages, analyze them, see who links to them,
see the key words that they're ranking for,
and now I want you to start creating better pages,
on those same topics, than your competition.
Once you have that data, write that article,
you release it on your site,
I want you to go back and email all of the people
that have linked to your competition,
because in the Ubersuggest 200 top pages
it shows you who linked to them.
Now, you don't need to hit these people up
and get them to link to you because, as we all know,
the more you hit up people and ask them to link to you,
sure, a portion will link to you,
but the majority will not.
But, instead, I want you to shoot them a simple email.
Hey John, I noticed you linked to X, Y and Z article.
I have one that just got published,
mine covers A, B and C that theirs didn't.
You can check it out here.
If you like it feel free and share it.
By doing this you'll get a lot more social shares.
People are much more receptive to sharing on Twitter
or Facebook, any of those social sites.
As you get these shares, what you'll find is
your articles will be seen by more people,
some of them may even link to you naturally,
but in general, you'll start ranking for extra terms
that you weren't before.
So if you follow all those three main strategies,
you'll start ranking for thousands of keywords
without building links.
And if you want to get advanced, start combining them.
So, for example, when you're leveraging things
like content clusters,
and you find that some of these clusters are ranking,
I then go back in and use a land and expand strategy
on those individual pages.
When you do all of that, that's how you can rank for
not just thousands, but hundreds and thousands of keywords
without building links.
If you want to boost your rankings, you need more traffic,
check out my ad agency Neil Patel Digital.
If you have any questions, leave a comment below.
Thank you for watching, make sure you like
and share this video as well.