“Don’t worry about keywords…”
OK…yes, keywords do matter, but if you are new to Organic SEO, try not to let keyword strategy drive your content efforts too much,
1. Keywords should not drive your content, they should enhance it.
Are you getting stuck on keywords? Do you experience analysis paralysis with your SEO efforts? Getting paused because of indecision from over-analysis is one of the worst things that could happen to your website….You already know your business better than anyone else—you know your customers pain-points and how the services you offer solve them…focus your content efforts on that first, keywords are the icing on the cake.
The mentality and approach we are pushing here doesn’t worry about Keywords…and yes, at one-point in time…a long long time ago (in SEO years) keyword strategies like “Keyword Stuffing” worked. But that was ages ago, (here’s a good read on why keyword stuffing is a “Dinosaur tactic” that needs to be retired)
Have you already had someone do an SEO Audit of your website? Resulting in some PDFs and spreadsheets with lots of keywords, rankings info, volume stats, and unfamiliar metrics like Domain Authority or Keyword Difficulty? You might have even been given a strategy to follow.
The problem is, unless you are actively focused on digital marketing, it’s possible this was unhelpful information. Maybe you and everyone on your team thought it was really interesting, but did that intrigue turn into action?
The point is that many businesses I’ve helped don’t know what to do with all the information they get from Keyword Research. It’s important to remember that when push comes to shove winning at SEO is less about gaming the system and more about being consistent and relevant.
Don’t get stuck wading through all the different metrics and SEO terminology that you don’t have time (or desire) to digest, understand and geek-out on SEO stats…its totally ok…you can still win at SEO by creating relative content consistently.
2. Consistency and Quality are more important
A website with many pages, that updates often will outrank a small static website with very few articles on a topic.
3. Keywords don’t matter more than the user experience
User behavior metrics are continuing to climb in influence on how search engines evaluate and score each domain for the search rankings. When users have a bad experience on your site, not only do you risk losing that individuals business, you also have sent a signal to the search engines to favor another competitors website for that search topic over yours…user behavior