Keyword research is usually our first and foremost step to start writing a blog. We have been told that keywords are critical to getting a blog on the top ten SERP’s and relative keywords are essential to get quality organic traffic and results. But the question is: “Does keyword research actually matters, or it’s just like a tradition to follow?”.
The straightforward answer is, Keyword research matters, but it’s not as important as it has been surfaced in the last decade. There are a lot more things to do while starting blogs.
Keyword targeting strategies have way more disadvantages than advantages, especially for new blogging sites. In this blog, we will try to explain the tricks, one should apply as a blogger instead of blindly following a keyword targeting strategy.
Keyword competition
Keyword competition is a standardised way to know the business saturation on a specific keyword. It’s nearly impossible to find a keyword with a low competition level. If few keywords still exist, it may take hours & hours to find any keyword with a low competition level.
If your site domain authority is below 90, you will not be able to rank your site against any keyword. And all your efforts and time to find a keyword will go in vain.
Quality Content
Quality content is what you need to get converting traffic on your site. Keyword stuffing bars you from writing natural and quality content.
Keywords research enforce you to go out of your comfort zone for targeting the keywords. This strategy takes you away from the context and essence of the blog. To write quality content, to write one’s thoughts or experiences, you need to get rid of keyword research, as its content quality that always helps more to get quality traffic instead of keywords.
Quality content gets you a quality user experience that ultimately ranks your blog on top search engine result pages. You can look at Jon Loomer’s blog as an example. He is a Facebook marketing expert and writes quality blogs to share his knowledge instead of targeting keywords, and boom…. his blogging site is ranking on Google and other search engines.
That’s the reason we suggest writing what you know instead of running behind keyword competitions. Writing in a micro-niche of your interest will help you to raise and maintain your writing standards.
Google SEO Metrics
There was a time when stuffing keywords in HTML tags let your site get ranked on Google, but now, your site can be permanently de-ranked for doing so.
Google is continuously improving its standards by setting up evolving SEO metrics policy. Google will scan your blog not to find the keyword density but the relevancy of content with users’ search intent. A blog will get ranked if it is worth reading. It has some answers to the user’s search intent.
Google may be smart, but it is a software, not a human. How can Google determine the quality of a blog post without giving priority to keyword densities?
Yes, you’re right. Google is smart. It knows how to determine the quality of the content without focusing on keyword densities. Google looks at the relevant keywords map. A comprehensive map of relevant keywords helps you to get your blog ranked on top SERPs. But wait, it’s not the first & last thing examined by Google to rank a blog. It may also look at other factors like average time spent by visitors on a blog, click rate, etc. to rank a blog.
Natural content writing is the actual way to achieve the essence of a quality blog and to meet the ‘Google SEO metrics.’
User search intent
Whether you’re writing for a campaign or a blog, search intent is what matters for both PPC & SEO. Don’t get confused. Keep it simple it works like the physical markets, like the actual world businesses.
In physical markets, you sell what people are interested in buying at a specific location instead of selling shoes in a food street. Similarly, focus on user search intent in this virtual space to interact with actual users through your blogs. Write what users want to read. It will increase the click rate and average time spent by users on your site.
Increasing conversion rate or user’s interaction with your blog will let Google rank your blog on top SERPs.
What if a blogger failed to target a user’s search intent but get his blog ranked on a particular keyword?
It could be an exceptional case to get a blog ranked without focusing on users’ search intent. But it will be a temporary success as Google will de-rank such website after looking at the other factors as discussed below,
Quality traffic – A blogging site will fail to get quality traffic without answering or interacting with users’ search intent. We have searched a query as ‘best Shopify apps to increase sales’ on Google.
When a user type ‘best Shopify apps’ it means they already know about Shopify. So, there is no need to target them for an awareness campaign. At the same time, ‘best Shopify apps’ does not show the intent of buying a Shopify subscription.
The keyword intent is to find a blog that differentiates some top-rated apps to clear the user confusion regarding the best app to choose.
Click Rate – When a blog will not interact with user search intent, it will get a lower click rate to ultimately get the site de-ranked.
Average time – Users will not spend much time on a blog to read if it failed to interact with users’ search intent. Lower average time will hurt the blog SEO and get it de-ranked.
Final Words
Keyword research is important but not the only subject for setting up an ideal SEO strategy. You may need to do keyword research for getting an idea of users’ search intent instead of looking for keywords with low competition levels.
Natural content writing is what you need to do. As natural content writing keeps writers in their comfort zone and it helps the writer to interact with users’ search intent by writing focused content.
