Most marketers who are not search focused tend to ignore SEO.
Because they don’t realize how powerful it can be and don’t prioritize time and investment for it.
Even those who do it, think of it as something that can be done without investments.
Even those who are well-intentioned, understand its importance do it wrong, get impatient and drop it before they can reap the benefits.
The biggest mistake most marketers when it comes to SEO, is going after head keyword i.e. difficult to rank two-word keywords.
There is a better approach where you won’t miss out on search traffic and see some early wins that will motivate you to keep going.
Keyword Selection Based on Stages of SEO
In this approach, instead of starting with head keywords, you start with long-tail keywords because they are easy to rank.
When following this approach, choose the keywords based on – difficulty vs search volume – the way I have shared below.
- Day 0 – long-tail keyword, easy to rank, low search volume
- Day 90 – mid-tail keyword – 3-4 words, moderate to rank, higher search volume
- Day 180 – head keywords – 2 words, difficult, highest search volume
Use multiple keywords related to one topic, on day 0 in such a way that on day 90 / 180 with the same pages you can create topic clusters for a tough to rank keyword.
If the long tail pages are ranking already then they will push the topic cluster page up in the rankings.
And, know the value you get from SEO, increases quickly after you build initial search juice which may take anywhere between 4-8 months.
Wish you success with your traffic generation efforts.
