The SEO industry seems to undergo rapid changes from time to time. Google had just recently brand its ad network from AdWords to Google Ads. This is a perfect example that the industry is dramatically shifting from a keyword-focused model to a topic-driven approach. This sentiment was supported by a study conducted by Backlinko when its lead authors found little association between the presence of a target keyword in the page title and organic rank. However, this is not enough to conclude that keywords have already lost their significance in SEO. Instead, the two approaches can be done hand in hand in order to level up your SEO strategy at hand.

Selecting the Right Topics and Keywords

There is no question that using keyword planners and working on keyword optimization are two of the most important steps. It can help you reach your target audience. However, there are times that it can limit you from incorporating new content ideas because the scope of your information hierarchy tends to be limited.

What are the advantages of focusing on topics first?

Undisputedly, keywords will always play important roles for search engines and users. But if you want to be able to gain an advantage over your business competitors, then you might as well focus on the content topics first before picking the most appropriate keywords. This SEO strategy can help you rank for new semantically related keywords that can be discovered from working on new sub-topics. Moreover, you can unearth new opportunities to provide more valuable content that can attract traffic.

How can you effectively mix a topic-driven content and a keyword marketing approach?

Website Audit

When it comes to revamping your current SEO strategy, you must first understand where you are winning and where you are failing. Run an audit on your current website to be able to know what areas need improvement. There’s a high possibility that your website has some core service pages. There is also a top-level ones that appear on the second page. You can improve their rankings by:

• Provide sub-topical content and link it back to that specific page.
• Work on getting backlinks. There are lots of link building techniques that can help you work this out.
• Improve existing content by providing more information in a more user and reader-friendly manner.
• Work on enhancing user engagement on these top level pages.

Keywords’ Organic Presence

Your core web pages have keywords. However, those that have no bearing on your business must go away. You have to perform an evaluation of how your keywords rank. You can use a tool such as SEMrush or Google Keyword Planner to be able to identify what keywords can give you the most opportunities to scale up in the rankings. In optimizing your existing content, you must choose keywords with high volume but bear low competition. To be able to seize internal links and backlinks, you must also check the other key metrics on a page-by-page basis. Among these is the Page Authority.

Users’ Behavior

You would find it hard to improve your signals without knowing the behavior of users as they land on your website first. You can use tools such as Google Analytics to measure important metrics such as page views, bounce rate, average time spent on your page as well as conversions. Keep in mind that the more information users can find from your content, the more likely will you get a high bounce rate. To boost your content’s ranking, make sure to expand the information available by adding additional references or resources. This can also attract your audience for a longer engagement.

Content Purpose

Each piece of content that you will create will have its own purpose in your SEO strategy. So before everything else, you must establish goals to be able to know if you’re content marketing is heading up to something great.

Here are some of the goals you need to target:

• Your content must be created and optimized to bring additional website traffic.
• The right keyword terms must be placed within striking distance.
• There must be semantically related keywords to improve ranking.
• Your content must be able to provide assistance in funneling conversions.
• You must be able to establish authority and thought leadership over the topic at hand.

Using a topic-driven content with the most appropriate keywords, you can leverage the information that you can provide to your target audience. If you want to be able to create content that can bring more in-depth value, MojoSEO is here to help you develop a more coherent SEO strategy. We can also help you come up with an entirely unique approach when it comes to the presentation. It will surely be appreciated by your target customers.