Welcome to the lesson #5.
How to optimize your article for a target keyword and generate maximum search traffic with it.
Here's what we're about to cover:
The all-important "searcher intent" and how to match it with your article;
How to optimize your article for a given keyword so that to make it perfectly-relevant in the eyes of Google;
How to squeeze maximum search trafficout of your article;
And, finally, how to audit your existing content and get the most out of it.
So let's go!
Part 1. What is "searcher intent" and how to match it.
In Lesson #3 I said that the Biggest mistake that keeps bloggers away from getting search traffic
is writing articles about things that no one is searching for.
Well, as soon as newbie bloggers learn about the keyword research and how to identify
the total search traffic potential of a certain topic which we have covered in Lesson #3,
they start making their Second biggest mistake: targeting the wrong keyword.
How is that even possible, you may ask?
Well... let me share a quick story with you.
Once upon a time we received a guest- post pitch from one of our customers.
He wanted to write a post on how to use Ahrefs for advertising research.
We have this Paid search section in Ahrefs' Site Explorer tool, which shows you the keywords
that a target website is advertising for via Google AdWords.
Along with their ads and landing pages, where they send this paid traffic.
And this is what he was offering to cover in his guest article, along with some nice examples.
I thought it would be nice to have a post on Ahrefs Blog featuring this functionality,
so I forwarded this email to my team and asked to do a quick keyword research & find a good keyword
that we could possibly target with that guest article.
And they got back to me with a keyword "advertising research," which has the monthly search volume of
450 searches per month in the US and around a 100 visits from search to some of the top-ranking results.
So that's a green light, right?
Wrong!
By looking at the top 10 ranking pages for this keyword I can see that they talk about
advertising research in general.
While the guest article that we were suggested was going to talk about researching the AdWords
Pay-per-Click strategies of your competitors.
Which is a very specific and narrow topic.
I mean, people who are searching in Google for "advertising research" are not neccessarily
interested in Pay-per-Click advertising specifically.
Otherwise, they would Google for "pay- per-click advertising research", right?
So we would make a big mistake if we try to target the keyword "advertising research"
with an article about Pay-per-Click advertising research.
That article would not meet the so-called searcher intent, which Google can easily figure out
by looking at how users behave after clicking on your article in the search results.
They would simply bounce if they won't see what they were looking for.
So which search query would be the right one for that article?
I brainstormed a few relevant searches, tested my assumptions in Keywords Explorer, and got these:
"adwords competitor analysis," "pay-per-click competitor analysis," "pay-per-click competitor."
Sure, the search volume on all three of them is not particularly exciting, but at least they are
perfectly relevant to the suggested guest post.
And the top-ranking pages for these keywords do get a little bit of traffic from search,
according to Ahrefs.
Which I am reminding you is always an underestimation.
Unfortunately, we didn't end up publishing that article, so I can't show you the results.
But at least I have a cool story that illustrates the importance of targeting the right searcher intent.
Way too often newbie bloggers would try to optimise their article for the keyword with
the highest search volume, ignoring the fact that their article doesn't really match the intent
of the people who are searching for that keyword.
And while they think they're making a smart decision, they're actually shooting themselves
in the foot, because Google is pretty smart at figuring out what people want
when they search for something.
And if your page doesn't give them that, it won't rank at the top.
So, if you have a great article idea, but there's not much search demand for that topic,
don't try to trick Google and optimze it for something it is not - a broad topic with
high search demand.
You should pick the most relevant search query, even if the search volume seems low.
At least this way you get a good chance of actually ranking for that keyword and getting
some highly-relevant search traffic.
Here's a small exercise, that will help you to re-confirm that you're targeting the right keyword.
Take the draft of your article and send it to a few friends or co-workers, asking them
what it is about.
The words that they will use to describe your article will help you understand what kind
of search queries it deserves to rank for in Google.
But what if you don't have an article yet?
What if you just discovered a cool keyword and you want to write an article on that topic
and make sure it would pefrectly match the searcher intent?
In this case, the best thing you could do is put yourself in the shoes of people, who
would search for that keyword in Google and ask yourself a few simple questions:
What are people looking for when they search for that keyword?
What goal do they have in mind?
What is their motivation?
What kind of search result would perfectly satisfy them?
In other words, think of the "searcher intent" behind that keyword.
For many keywords it is plain obvious.
Like "how to tie a tie" - clearly, people need an instruction on how to do that.
Preferably visual, because it's almost impossible to explain that with words.
But sometimes the searcher intent can be quite ambiguous.
Like the keyword "violas" - it can be a music instrument or a flower.
And if you're unsure about the right searcher intent for some query, the best thing you can
do is put it into Google and see what comes up.
Google has invested years of work and billions of dollars into figuring out what people mean
when they type something into the search bar.
And they are actually quite good at it.
For "how to tie a tie" they suggest a short video clip, because their data and use behavior signals
showed that this is what the vast majority of searchers want.
And for "violas" Google gives a mix of search results: some about the musical instrument
and some about the flower.
This means that the searcher intent for that keyword is actually two-fold.
And there's nothing you could do about it.
So that is "searcher intent" in a nutshell.
It really boils down to putting yourself in the shoes of searchers and using logic
to understand what would satisfy them.
Make sure you always check the search results for the keyword that you decide to target.
If the pages that rank there are entirely different from what you were going to say,
you probably misunderstood the searcher intent behind that keyword.
And once you choose the right keyword for your article, here's how you optimize for it.