Keywords and Content – How They’re Frequently Misused #firesidecontent

We recently had our very first Twitter Chat #firesidecontent with Nick Eubanks, founder of From the Future, and MarketMuse Co-founder Jeff Coyle. Jeff and Nick spent time talking about some common misconceptions about keyword research. Here’s a summary of the chat.

Q1: What common data points in keyword research are outdated?

Keyword research has been around, it seems like forever, yet the majority of content marketers approach this in the wrong way.

Nick responds with what he sees as the three major issues:

1. Search volume (too many 0-click searches).
2. By inference from #1; using keyword planner data for SEO planning.
3. Aaaand by inference from #2; people still using kw planner competition data

To which Jeff adds, “The use of PPC data (primarily accessed from GAKP) like PPC competition, average CPC, and # of ads shown as a proxy for the organic competition is a shocking disaster that enterprises from small to large still use as their North Star. Also blindly believing that Global Broad Match Search Volume correlates to potential traffic = trainwreck.”

Q2: How is TF-IDF misused?

TF-IDF stands for Term Frequency Inverse Document Frequency. We’ve written about TD-IDF before and created a TF-IDF FAQ page too. Nick offers a succinct perspective on this as well.

“When people think unigrams, bigrams, and trigrams made good keywords. Ouch. It can be a useful barometer for surfacing topics.. but it’s NOT a keyword research tool or process.”

Jeff cautions people against “believing that you can game the system with the data –avoid a research process that only looks at rankings for inspiration or smooshes together multiple user intents…. Most folk’s sites aren’t strong enough to get away with low-quality content. Don’t mimic your idols.”

A couple of other people weighed in on the conversation including MarketMuse’s very own Camden Gaspar, who brings up another misused concept, LSI (latent semantic indexing) — saying “I think we can put LSI in the same bucket.”

Q3: How is search volume misused?

In Nick’s example of the term “covid cases” we see that it receives a huge number of searches with no clicks. This is case where searchers can get the answer they’re looking for straight from Google without needing to click through to a website. That’s never good news for a marketer!

Step 1) Look at your content item’s target topic search volume Step 2) look at the total traffic to that item did you predict #2 with less than 50% error? We’re you close? Repeat for every page.

Q4: How do you prioritize topics to pursue?

Finding something to write about is rarely the problem. Often, when it comes to content creation, there are too many opportunities to explore. That’s when you have to make critical decisions about what topics to pursue and which ones to defer.

Nick says “Start with the fastest path to revenue (or ROI, if that means something other than $$$ in the scenario). Start with lowest difficulty terms (not lowest difficulty overall, lowest difficulty *for the target ranking domain*) and work backwards up the funnel from bottom to top.”

Jeff suggests, “Use a personalized metric for difficulty. How hard will it be for YOU to rank….do you cover the whole funnel? Do you deserve to rank? Don’t just look at link profiles of the SERP.”

Q5: What is the advantage of prioritizing high intent topics?

One way to prioritize involves setting criteria in terms of the level of intent behind specific search terms.

Nick thinks the “Fastest path to delivering on ROI, since they are most often the most qualified terms for conversion. Even if the cost is 2x to rank for a high intent keyword over it’s less qualified counterpart, the increased probability of conversion is likely 5x.”

Jeff adds, “Know what content you need as infrastructure to open up the doors of opportunity to perform for high intent topics/keywords. You can’t just publish one page for those.”

Q6: How do you map content for lead generation?

Unless you’re Stephen King, your writing needs to generate leads at one point or another. Mapping content to the user journey is one tactic to ensure this happens.

Nick explains that he “Could go so deep on this but I actually really like to take modifier pattern scoring outside the spreadsheet and start to look at the most common query journey’s based on a mix of suggested searches + refresh rate scores from Ahrefs”

Jeff adds, “Refresh rate scores included here from @ahrefs will make @timsoulo and @patrickstox pretty happy. to know the intent requires knowledge of the journey.”

Q7: How does keyword research differ between new sites vs existing sites?

One size does not fit all, as Jeff and Nick point out. Even existing sites can vary substantially depending on their age and authority.

As Nick explains, “New sites require a lot more creativity and initial audience research *outside* of search… this usually means doing a SWOT analysis (OMG old school!) and then finding out who your audience is to figure out the nomenclature / query universe you need to pay attention to. For an existing site it’s much easier to look at existing term overlap against competitors and usually find big ol buckets of new organic demand that you can go after.”

Jeff elaborates that “You have to know what you are about (semantically) today to do great, efficient research. If you don’t have a site, it’s about competitive cohort analysis and realistic expectations.”

For an existing site it's much easier to look at existing term overlap against competitors and usually find big ol buckets of new organic demand that you can go after.

— nick Ξubanks (@nick_eubanks) December 1, 2020

Q8: What is your perspective on black hat strategies like cloaking, Google bombing and parasite hosting?

Well, it looks like there’s no easy button here folks!

Nick cautions that “They still work, but it’s almost always unsustainable.. with “parasite SEO” being the nuanced strategy in there because, when done well.. can still be massively valuable in controlling the narrative across more of the purchase journey.”

Jeff points out that “‘When done well,’ – the first few words in every answer about link building/development and SERP manipulation.”

Q9: What advice would you give people weighing SEO and content investments for 2021?

Nick suggests to “Speak with multiple different agencies / consultant / practitioners about different strategies for different channels. Think more along the lines of “what will maximize my investment of $x the most in y months” …it’s usually a mix of buy *and* build.”

Jeff cautions that, “Got any guarantees? If yes, run away. Willing to talk about uncertainties, risks, and how you project? Let’s talk. Buy and build — or the people buying will move faster and have more data.”

Q10: Keyword density or topic modeling?

My first response, like Nick, is keyword density really even a thing anymore?

Nick apologizes, “Sorry for the delayed response, I honestly thought this one was a joke. I mean, is this even really a question / discussion at this point?”

Jeff chimes in, “Sadly…It is and is still being touted as part of the strategy.”

I hope you enjoyed our very first twitter chat. Look for more #firesidecontent coming your way in the New Year.