The 4 Step Keyword Research Process For Ranking Your Blog Content

Writing a piece of content is difficult enough. But ranking, promoting and sharing that content? That’s incredibly demanding.

Promoting your content is a big ask, yet it’s precisely what’s expected. If you’re working feverishly towards your conversion (i.e. financial) goals it’s time to bite the bullet.

You’ll need to promote your content.

Why Most People Neglect Their Content

So, exactly how much promotion is required? Here’s a good rule of thumb:

You’ll want to spend 50 percent of your time creating content and 50 percent of your time promoting it.

I know, it seems a bit unreasonable, and if you’re like most people, you simply don’t have the time. You have a business to run, payroll to meet and customers to serve.

Which is why you outsource a significant chunk of your content promotion…

To search engines.

Exactly how much promotion is required? Here’s a good rule of thumb: You’ll want to spend 50 percent of your time creating content and 50 percent of your time promoting it.

This isn’t news. Most business owners understand the importance of promoting and ranking their content on search engines (Google). So why aren’t more businesses taking the time to do this properly? Four simple reasons:

They don’t know how
They don’t have the time or resources
They’re not convinced their efforts will be rewarded
They tried it once and it failed to produce results

4 Simple Steps For Ranking Your Blog Content

Today we’re going to share a simple plan you can use to create a consistent keyword strategy. The best part? We’ll show you how to do it for cheap (or even free!) and it takes under five minutes.

This plan is crucial.

Your keyword research process will dictate a.) who sees your content, b.) whether they take the time to read and digest your content, and c.) whether your content moves them to the next step in your conversion funnel.

Let’s get started!

Step #1: Choose high-value content topics.

Readers come to your site for one specific thing:

Value.

They arrive with a very specific set of questions and a problem to solve.

But content marketers have their own problem – one they’ve created for themselves.

They start with a list of keywords, pick one with the greatest amount of potential, and then attempt to write content around that keyword.

Which usually fails to produce results.

Content marketers spend their time bouncing from one keyword to the next, furiously writing content with the hope that they’ll rank for their selected keyword.

So, why doesn’t it work?

Because keyword driven content tends to beone dimensional and narrow. This content fails to convert readers into customers because it fails to answer the important questions.

Let’s look at the keyword “best investment accounts” as an example. Google states this keyword:

Receives 10 – 100 searches per month
Has medium competition in Google Ads
Is relevant to other queries (i.e. “best online brokerage”100 – 1K searches per month)

Now let’s look at how most content marketers approach this.

Option A:

Content marketers write a blog post about the “best investment accounts” online. They create a list or review post, outlining businesses with the best rates, terms, incentives, etc. They create a helpful post, and they bust their butt to get their piece ranked.

The issue?

Their content isn’t actually serving their audience. It’s a cheap money grab, at least that’s how most readers see it.

Sounds harsh, I know, but hear me out.

Keywords are angles. A topic is broad. General. A topic needs filters like sub-topics to further refine your content.

They focus on this keyword but they’re not entirely sure how or what their readers want (eg. search intent), or even who they’re speaking to (their target buyer persona). If they’re lucky, they win the battle but they lose the war.

Yikes.

How do conversion-oriented content marketers approach this issue? Let’s take a look at our next option.

Option B:

These marketers focus their attention on the overall topic.

How’s that strategy different? Aren’t keywords simply topics?

Nope.

Keywords are angles. A topic is broad. General. A topic needs filters like sub-topics to further refine your content.

Keyword research is a helpful way to flush out key subtopics. If we dig a little more we find there are many subtopics we can use here.

best investment accounts
best investment accounts for kids
best investment accounts for minors
best investment accounts for a child
best investment accounts to start for a child
best investment accounts for grandchild
best investment accounts for grandchildren
best investment accounts for college students
best investment accounts for young adults
best investment accounts aggregation
best investment accounts at chase
best investment accounts companies
best investment accounts credit cards
best investment accounts self directed
best investment accounts for
best investment accounts reddit
best investment accounts in usa
best investment accounts in canada
best low risk investment accounts
best performing investment accounts
best investment accounts 2019
best investment accounts offers
best investment accounts promotions
best investment accounts providers

See the difference in goals and interest? That’s a mountain of content for just one topic! Is it possible to cover all of this in a single blog post?

Not a chance.

Most readers wouldn’t bother to read through it anyway. This is why you choose your topic and subtopics first. Choosing your topics first gives you the opportunity to:

Create a delivery strategy. Which channel should you use? Blog posts, guest posts, quizzes, videos, presentations, etc.? The right strategy gives you a chance to saturate your market, at low cost if done well.
Set the delivery platforms. Will content be distributed via platforms you own/control? Or will you syndicate things to readers via helpful third parties?
Tie content to your offers. Are you creating content for a specific customer or product? Do you need to ask readers to opt-in at the end of your offers or should you go for retargeting via Facebook Ads?

Choose your topic first.

Doing things this way gives you the chance to rank for more of your target keywords.

Step #2: Make a list of keywords and competitors.

Once you have a shortlist of the topics you’ll cover you’re ready to move on to step two. The keyword research you’ve done in step one is an idea generator. It’s designed to flush out subtopics and angles. Using our list above, we see we’ll need content for the following segments.

Americans
Canadians
Grandparents purchasing for kids
Parents purchasing for kids
General purchasing for kids
Performance-driven accounts
Promotions and offers
College students and young adults
Listicles outlining providers and terms

Start by making a list of keywords for each segment. Next, you’ll want to segment/sort your keywords by searcher intent. Here are the four choices:

Information. These readers are looking for education or information. They have a specific question or objection that needs to be answered.
Navigation. These readers are looking for a specific website, offer, product or data point. In short, these customers know what they want.
Intent-to-purchase. These readers are interested. There’s a very good chance they’re going to make a purchase in the near future, just not today. These readers are prime candidates for autoresponder and follow-up sequences.
Purchase. These readers are interested/ready to buy a relevant product or service that’s based on the content you’ve provided.

You’ll want to choose the keywords that are most relevant to (a.) your topic and (b.) your readers’ query. Your ideal keywords should have appropriate search volume, from100 to 1k searches per month(this varies by industry).

Your keywords should also have moderate competition for head keywords and low competition for longtail keywords, which are easier to rank for.

Don’t overuse your keywords! Avoid stuffing them into as many places as you can. Instead, use content styles (e.g. stories, data, and how-to) to make your content compelling.

Competition is crucial.

You’ll want to look at the search results for each of your queries to gauge your competition. You’ll also want to check the sites listed on the first page of Google. Then, ask yourself the following questions.

Can I create something better? If so, how?
What are readers looking for with this keyword? Do these websites meet their expectations?
How do I meet and exceed their ultimate expectations?
Are the websites I’m competing with attractive?
Do these competing websites have a lot of social signals or inbound links? If so, how many?
Which sites do their readers frequent?

You’re looking for a crack.

Anything you can use to overtake content that’s already ranking well in the search results. Give readers the value they’re looking for. Find simple ways to share that value and you have everything you need to overtake competitors in the search results.

Can you provide helpful a resource, checklist or download?
Do you know something they don’t?
Can you gain access to important influencers and/or thought leaders?
Are your educational materials actionable, thorough or more precise?

You’ll want to look for an opportunity to provide more value. Take notes and write down any ideas that come to mind.

At this point, you should be ready to…

Step #3: Write your post.

Select a single, high-value keyword for your post. You’ll want to provide your readers with actionable or practical content by focusing your attention on a few distinct areas.

Solving a problem
Delighting and/or entertaining your readers
Providing value (e.g. tangible/intangible, emotional/logical)
Teaching readers

You’ll also want to weave your keyword into your content naturally and avoid keyword stuffing and unnatural phrasing in your content. Here’s what I mean:

A bad example: We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com

You’ll want your content to be compelling for people first, search engines last.

Why?

Because people are the ones with the money! They’re the ones who are willing to pay you for your product, service or expertise. Search engines, not so much.

Outsourcing your content and promotion to the right team gives you the leverage and support you need. It’s a surefire way to produce conversions and secure revenue.

Include your keywords in:

Title tags
Meta description tags
H1, H2 and H3 tags
The body of your content (sprinkled appropriately and where relevant)
Images and captions (where relevant/appropriate)

A word of warning… Don’t overuse your keywords! Avoid stuffing them into as many places as you can. Instead, use content styles (e.g. stories, data, and how-to) to make your content compelling.

Step 4: Ranking content with promotion.

Remember our formula?

Spend 50 percent of your time producing content, 50 percent of your time promoting it. There’s a reason for this post. If you’d like to outrank competitors for your postyou must put in the work. This means you’ll need to build links to your content.

How do you do that? Here are a few strategies to help you get started:

Make a list of five to ten similar articles. Use tools like BuzzSumo to export a list of people who shared these articles via social media, search, blog posts, forums, etc.
Reach out to these people via email. Give them a compelling reason to share your post (e.g. it has more data, it comes with a checklist or an app, it’s an emotional piece, etc.)
Use broken links to build inbound links pointing to your post
Create a list of experts. Ask them if they’d like to contribute to your piece. Include those who accept in your post. Email everyone with the final result, thanking them for their help and asking them to share
Create helpful tools and resources to go along with your post

There are thousands of strategies, tactics, tips, and tricks you can use to improve your content’s rank in Google. You’ll want to spend a significant amount of time promoting your piece.

Make it a priority.

Writing is Only Half the Picture

Like I mentioned earlier, writing is difficult on its own, but ranking, promoting and sharing that content is incredibly difficult.

Unless you have help.

Outsourcing your content and promotion to the right team gives you the leverage and support you need. It’s a surefire way to produce conversions and secure revenue.

Can you do it on your own?

Sure you can. Content marketing comes with hefty requirements. You can do it – if you’re prepared for the steep learning curve and the necessary work you need to do. If you’d like to convert readers into customers faster, you’re going to need help.

Start with the right process and you’ll have the step-by-step details you need to rank your blog content effectively.