Following this five-step process can help you de-risk SEO and content planning, ensuring that you focus on what is most likely to produce results.
There is no such thing as a spammy SEO who guarantees anything. The most spammy of spammy LinkedIn InMails are home to “guaranteed” first position rankings, “guaranteed” traffic estimates, and “guaranteed” ROIs. Only naive, ignorant, and, frankly, willfully ignorant businesses fall for these blatant lies.
However, you can’t foretell or predict page rankings, traffic estimates, or search ROI. Nuance and context are crucial.
Before creating a single piece of content or establishing a link to a keyword, you may forecast the likelihood of success or failure if you are familiar with what you are doing. In this post, I’ll explain the framework I used to help scale seven, eight, and nine-figure businesses into 10-figure ones.
It Takes So Long To Rank Because Of The Following:
Ranking for something new can take a long time. Sites of all sizes may need weeks, months, or even years, which is why securing SEO results is tricky. Here are some common reasons why.
Catch-22 – To build a large site, you must first rank for good keywords. However, you must be a significant site before ranking for good keywords. That is where your first problem lies.
Inputs vs. Results – A lagging indicator lags behind other indicators in predicting the outcome. In other words, we should focus on leading indicators like keyword and topic selection before we see “outputs” years later rather than rankings, traffic, and sales.
Balancing Act – The “right” keyword words are selected by balancing the following factors:
- Competitiveness
- Demand
- Relevance
- Buying intent
- Authority
No matter how much you strive for perfection, you must often prioritize or forsake different elements based on your short-term and long-term objectives.
Less ‘at bats.’ – SERPs that require no clicking (zero-click SERPs), knowledge graphs, instant answers, new advertising spaces, People Also Ask questions, blended SERPs, and more are becoming more common:
- There are fewer organic positions for you to rank in.
- Those are being driven well below the fold.
The Standards Keep Getting Higher
Every company, brand, and person trying to rank anything nowadays faces an arms race to the top. Your direct and indirect rivals are getting smarter and investing more money. These issues currently affect every firm, and all of these issues will undoubtedly turn out worse in the coming weeks, months, and years.
The Ranking used to be simple over a decade ago. Then, Panda and Penguin and other algorithm updates changed everything. Now, we must grapple with an increasingly intricate world driven by AI and search monopolies’ whims.
Predicting Success Reliably
Pattern recognition across time and context results from working with hundreds of businesses over the last decade, allowing me to see what works and does not produce results. (Arbitrage refers to exploiting temporary advantages instead of creating something that works once for one company in a specific context.)
There are five decision-making criteria listed below in order of importance:
Harvest Demand – When and why are your customers searching for something? What are the relevant keywords, how many are there, how difficult are they to rank for, and how much do they cost per click?
SERP Competitiveness – Is the SERP you want to target currently easy or difficult to rank, and will it be in the future? Are you considering domains with high SDRs and many quality referring domains as realistic competitors?
Topical Authority – Do you already have established topical authority in these areas, or will you require to make it from scratch? (i.e., Are you already ranking for the same queries or hitting a glass ceiling? )
Organic CTR – Is it possible for you to rank among the top three results for this keyword now and in the future, assuming that competition increases?
Payback Span – What are your desired payoff period and risk level? (0-6 months, 6-12 months, 12-18 months, greater than 18 months, etc.)
It may seem not very easy at first glance. However, it will be simple once you grasp how to deconstruct them. Let’s begin.
1. Harvest Demand
According to the SEO community, ‘You cannot generate search demand; you can only harvest it.’ In other words, the vast majority of the population (i.e., 99% of the people reading this) will need help to create a new category of searches from scratch. It’s too complicated and expensive. In contrast, we must identify what is already being searched for and is already available and how they align with each other.
- Our customers.
- Our widgets or products or services.
When customers make a purchase, you can consider the decision-making process as a journey or a jobs-to-be-done process, where you analyze the following:
- People can develop an awareness of problems in their lives.
- Begin looking for potential solutions and their advantages and disadvantages.
- Choosing the best option to meet your needs.
Using this approach, you can identify all the issues, irritations, alternatives, and solutions your customers may face. In addition, it should provide you with dozens or hundreds of new keywords to target (or thousands if you have multiple personas, segments, products, or services).
These should be broken down into types of variables, such as:
- [Customer segment vertical] + [problem or pain point]
When you create an account, you can expand upon these initial keyword ideas to create all the possible long-tail variations, weighing up their relative relevance, volume, KD, and CPC. Since CPC is 100% focused on advertising, it can be used to gauge the potential purchasing intent of keywords.
2. SERP Competitiveness
They are attempting to do what Google does, which is nearly impossible. For example, the “keyword difficulty” metric helps gauge the difficulty of ranking for a keyword. It’s an excellent idea in theory.
Nevertheless, in the real world (where we all live), the balance is badly skewed. For example, a keyword may have a KD of just “6” out of 100, yet it would be challenging to rank for. This is because it largely relies on links as a measure of strength (and page-level referring domains, in particular).
Even though the ranking sites (domains and content quality) have high domain-level strength, the average/median referring domains might suggest that the keyword is “less competitive.”
You should remember to target a keyword if your site’s strength is significantly lower than the ones already ranking.
Position 5 may as well be position 50 today, provided how long it takes to rank for these terms. In the fourth section below, I’ll discuss organic CTR as a measure of organic authority. Let’s see if we can use our personalization of keyword difficulty to measure our pre-existing topical authority on these terms.
3. Topical Authority
Despite being widely credited with pioneering ‘inbound marketing,’ HubSpot did not invent it. Seth Godin pioneered ‘permission marketing’ over a decade before. The Michelin Guide did over a century before that. What is old becomes new again.
Whether you prefer hub-and-spoke models, pillar-based content hubs, or some other charlatan’s content hub scheme, you can describe them all using the exact words: hubs with hubs. These hubs or clusters or whatever-have-yous are related to site architecture and content hierarchies, resulting in densely connected webs of information that can help you establish your subject-specific authority.
Rather than creating a handful of random grab bags, you should be intentionally preparing new keywords and topics in groups like this in bulk, so you can manage them with internal links to develop these silos.
All vessels rise with the tide when authority is on the rise. However, the opposite is true: lack of authority makes Ranking against those who already possess it more difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.
You may ask yourself:
- Do you already have some level of topical authority if you’re already ranking for similar terms? A lot of stuff Ranking higher in one cluster is more likely to help you rank faster for new stuff in that space.
- With MarketMuse Inventory, you can also examine your personalized topical authority (and, therefore, the problem of ranking for it). Using vague, general group scores from random SEO tools is an alternative to relying on them.
A keyword may benefit your competitor, but there might be better choices for you now. It might be beneficial for you now, but it might not be wise in the future if you want to make money. It is crucial to consider the context and nuances when selecting a keyword.
4. Organic CTR
The fifth position on a SERP is virtually the same as the 50th position. Why is this? Because you will receive the same amount of traffic (nothing whatsoever). Why? Because based on SERP CTR studies (the number of people who click on different positions), the top three results net around 70% of the clicks, eyeballs, and credit cards.
So, what does this imply?
- The only thing that matters is whether you ranked in the top three.
- Choosing less popular and less competitive yet more relevant keywords is often preferable because Ranking in the top three is more likely to be successful. You can rank more stuff faster and reduce the time to value(traffic, leads, sales), saving time and effort.
Being big instantly or going to another place to feed off the scraps of the competitors’ scraps is required to compete for the most lucrative keywords in your sector. Why is this important?
An SEO and content marketing investment is worth creating if the benefits outweigh the costs:
- How much does Ranking in the top three for a given keyword cost?
- What are the rewards if and when you succeed?
The term “international SEO” is an excellent example of a keyword. (In addition, it includes a meta-reference you cannot miss.)
Now, ask yourself if you can crack the top 3 in ~12-24 months. To do so, we must evaluate SERP competitiveness.
It’d take a lot of work to achieve, especially considering the low traffic you’d get even if you ranked in the top three. Furthermore, there needs to be a purchasing intent.
Honestly, it’s not worth bothering to rank for this keyword in the next ~12-24 months (based on topical authority). Unless you sold “international SEO” services or similar, it’s unlikely that it would be worth it for most websites. Please adjust your expectations accordingly.
- Choose a new keyword and subject to target.
- Build a big site and enough topic authority to rank for this keyword one day if your patience, budget, and timeline allow it.
You might also like: A Google My Business Profile Can Generate Revenue.
5. Payback Span
Marketers and C-suites are both lazy and impatient. People love and pay the most for paid searches because:
- You can see which keyword resulted in which specific conversion and the amount of money you made.
It’s harder to track the payback period for organic SEO and content because it could take up to 18 months to see real ROI. However, it still has a defined payback period.
You must determine:
- Are any keywords worth the investment (the first four criteria listed in this article)?
- Is the ROI worth the time, money, and resources invested?
- Can you hold out that long to see the results?
You can easily decide how to proceed by following this simple decision-making tree:
- You should go boldly if the answer is “Yes” and create hundreds or even thousands of new content pieces (~18-24+ months) to dominate your space.
- It’s time to get creative if the answer is “Maybe.” Which new keywords and content can you prioritize in the next ~12 months to deliver satisfactory results that equip enough of a positive ROI to double down on in the future?
- It’s time to focus on what you already have if the answer is “No,” namely updating existing content that ranks at the bottom of page one or the top of page two or creating new content exclusively in areas where you have topical expertise, to generate some real momentum within six months.
Is it that simple? No, it’s not. That last bit is entirely subjective.
It's Possible To Predict Future SEO Success
Today, Ranking is strict. Unfortunately, it will become more expensive and complex in the future. As a result, most websites outside the web’s top 1% must show results within six, twelve, or eighteen months.
Early success can often win you more time and money to invest later, whether it’s from your boss, clients, spouse, or your gut instinct. This often means going back to the drawing board and restarting at the top of the page, and then:
- Choosing the right keywords can help you target less competitive keyword phrases, filtering down the traffic and buying intent.
- It’s crucial to examine SERP competitiveness to know whether the domains and content you’re competing against are as “easy” as link-biased KD makes them out to be.
- Focus on areas where you already have content ranked or some subject matter authority validation.
- It’s possible to get into the top three by publishing enough, building enough links, and improving content quality faster than everyone else.
Long-term, stay-the-course goals might be just what the doctor ordered. However, re-examine your payback period expectations if you are seeking short-term rewards.
It’s complex. It cannot be guaranteed. However, it is feasible. If you carefully weigh each category, you can predict future success.
Read next: Here Are Five eCommerce SEO Trends To Keep In Mind For The 2022 Holidays.
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