When it comes to SEO, content is still king. Doing a little bit of keyword research to create few pillar pieces of content on your blog can lead to thousands of pageviews and sales leads over time.

Adding keywords to headers in content may be the single best way to try and rank for multiple keywords. The more content you have, the more headers you have – so longer content usually ranks better than shorter content. When a keyword is used in headings, it brings more emphasis to the meaning and importance of the keywords. Keyword marketing in content. Keyword marketing is a popular strategy to boost SEO efforts. It is the bridge between the content on a website and what users are searching for on a search engine, like Google. You started with keywords and user intent research, of course, so this is not about figuring out which keywords apply to the piece of content in question. This is about examining how that keyword.

Content And Keywords List

When it comes to search engine optimization, content is still king. Doing a little bit of keyword research to create few pillar pieces of content on your blog can double your blog traffic and sales leads over time. Which is why it’s important to build a solid content strategy—one loaded with content ideas that will interest your target audience and high-ranking keywords for your industry.

What’s the point in writing amazing content if no one is ever going to find it, right? (Your family and close friends don’t count.)

So the question becomes, how do we create a content strategy that delivers the content our readers crave and rank in search? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Last month we sat down with our super-smart friend Tommy Griffith of ClickMinded and he gave us a fail-proof method for creating a content strategy based on actual data from keyword research. Believe it or not, keyword research isn’t as hard to do as it sounds, and we’ve broken down his process for you below.

Find your keywords

If you’re going to build a content strategy for your business, you need to know which keywords you should target. And while you could channel your high school test-taking self and just start guessing, it’s better to use an online tool that will give you actual data. One of those tools is called Keyword Finder. This free tool provides actual search data to help you make more informed keyword targeting decisions.

To get started, visit KWFinder.com and insert a common keyword or keyword phrase that your typical customer would type into Google. For example, if you owned a photography business in Austin, you might use “Austin photographer” as your targeted keyword.

KWFinder.com will then deliver a list of additional keywords to consider based on your original keyword. You’ll also notice that it provides the monthly average search volume, paid ad metrics, and a keyword difficulty score. For the sake of your content keyword research, you’ll want to focus on the average search volume metrics and keyword difficulty to give yourself an idea of how many times a keyword is searched and how easy it will be to rank for that keyword.

From here, you’ll need to refine your list of keywords by selecting only the ones that pertain to your business. So, if you are a family lifestyle photographer, you’d have no business targeting “Austin wedding photography.” However, you would definitely want to include “Austin family photographer” and “Austin newborn photographer.”

You’ll want to add all of the keywords and phrases from the list that your target audience might search for. (Don’t worry about sorting and organizing, we’ll do that later.)

Narrow Down Your Keywords

After you’ve created your list of keywords in KWFinder.com, you’ll want to export that list and open it up in a spreadsheet. You can use Google Sheets, Numbers, or Excel. This is where we will start narrowing down and organizing our keywords.

The three columns in your export that you want to pay the most attention to are Keywords, Search Volume, andKeyword Difficulty.

Using those columns, you can start to organize your keywords based on content ideas. For example, there are several keywords based on “Austin newborn” and “Austin Baby photography.” You can put all the keywords that have to do with newborn photography into one group and then develop a content piece utilizing all those keywords.

As you can see in the image above, creating a content piece for Austin Baby Photography could result in 668 new visits to your website every month, assuming you captured 100% of the traffic. But because perfection is an illusion, you can use ClickMinded’s free spreadsheet to estimate the amount of traffic you actually can get depending on where you fall in Google. We know that a #1 spot on Google generally results in about 30% of the click-thrus. So if you were to create content for Austin Baby Photography and held the #1 spot, you could assume that you would get roughly 2,400 visits per year for that piece of content. Which is an amazing amount of traffic!

Content And Keywords Generator

Look at the Data and Build Your Content Strategy

Ok, you’ve got an idea of how much traffic each of your proposed pieces of content could get. Now it’s time to add in your business metrics.

Let’s say you have a 10% opt-in rate on your website and a sales conversion rate of 2%. With these metrics, you could assume that the Austin Baby Photography content piece would bring you about 240 new leads and 5 new sales a year, which, depending on your business model, may or may not be a good return on investment. You can use this method to determine which content pieces will have the highest impact on your business and are worth creating.

Here’s a quick recap:

• Use a tool like KWFinder.com to find new keywords
• Group similar keywords into content buckets/groups
• Determine the total search volume and potential traffic for each group
• Layer in your own business statistics to determine the ROI on each piece

Want even more SEO education? Click Here to watch the entire 1 hour SEO Masterclass with Tommy Griffith, or grab this free SEO strategy guide from ClickMinded to get started.

1. Identifying your research question
2. Structuring your manuscript

The Importance of Titles

The title of your manuscript is usually the first introduction readers (and reviewers) have to your work. Therefore, you must select a title that grabs attention, accurately describes the contents of your manuscript, and makes people want to read further.

An effective title should:

• Convey the main topics of the study
• Highlight the importance of the research
• Be concise
• Attract readers

Writing a good title for your manuscript can be challenging. First, list the topics covered by the manuscript. Try to put all of the topics together in the title using as few words as possible. A title that is too long will seem clumsy, annoy readers, and probably not meet journal requirements.

Example:

Does Vaccinating Children and Adolescents with Inactivated Influenza Virus Inhibit the Spread of Influenza in Unimmunized Residents of Rural Communities?

This title has too many unnecessary words.

Influenza Vaccination of Children: A Randomized Trial

This title doesn’t give enough information about what makes the manuscript interesting.

Effect of Child Influenza Vaccination on Infection Rates in Rural Communities: A Randomized Trial
This is an effective title. It is short, easy to understand, and conveys the important aspects of the research.

Think about why your research will be of interest to other scientists. This should be related to the reason you decided to study the topic. If your title makes this clear, it will likely attract more readers to your manuscript.
TIP: Write down a few possible titles, and then select the best to refine further. Ask your colleagues their opinion. Spending the time needed to do this will result in a better title.

Abstract and Keywords

The Abstract is:

• A summary of the content of the journal manuscript
• A time-saving shortcut for busy researchers
• A guide to the most important parts of your manuscript’s written content

Many readers will only read the Abstract of your manuscript. Therefore, it has to be able to stand alone. In most cases the abstract is the only part of your article that appears in indexing databases such as Web of Science or PubMed and so will be the most accessed part of your article; making a good impression will encourage researchers to read your full paper.

A well written abstract can also help speed up the peer-review process. During peer review, referees are usually only sent the abstract when invited to review the paper. Therefore, the abstract needs to contain enough information about the paper to allow referees to make a judgement as to whether they have enough expertise to review the paper and be engaging enough for them to want to review it.

Your Abstract should answer these questions about your manuscript:

• What was done?
• Why did you do it?
• What did you find?
• Why are these findings useful and important?

Content And Keywords Search

Answering these questions lets readers know the most important points about your study, and helps them decide whether they want to read the rest of the paper. Make sure you follow the proper journal manuscript formatting guidelines when preparing your abstract.

TIP: Journals often set a maximum word count for Abstracts, often 250 words, and no citations. This is to ensure that the full Abstract appears in indexing services.

Keywords are a tool to help indexers and search engines find relevant papers. If database search engines can find your journal manuscript, readers will be able to find it too. This will increase the number of people reading your manuscript, and likely lead to more citations.

However, to be effective, Keywords must be chosen carefully. They should:

• Represent the content of your manuscript
• Be specific to your field or sub-field

Examples:

Manuscript title: Direct observation of nonlinear optics in an isolated carbon nanotube

Poor keywords: molecule, optics, lasers, energy lifetime

Better keywords: single-molecule interaction, Kerr effect, carbon nanotubes, energy level structure

Content Keyword Optimization

Manuscript title: Region-specific neuronal degeneration after okadaic acid administration
Poor keywords: neuron, brain, OA (an abbreviation), regional-specific neuronal degeneration, signaling

Better keywords: neurodegenerative diseases; CA1 region, hippocampal; okadaic acid; neurotoxins; MAP kinase signaling system; cell death

Manuscript title: Increases in levels of sediment transport at former glacial-interglacial transitions

Poor keywords: climate change, erosion, plant effects
Better keywords: quaternary climate change, soil erosion, bioturbation

Content And Keywords Management

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