DaedTech

Keywords 301: Campaigns, Roadmaps, and Funnels

Alright, once more unto the breach, dear non-scumbags.  I’m continuing this series, and with slightly better cadence than once every 9 months.  We’ll get ‘er dun yet.

Here’s a recap of the three most recent posts:

1. I introduced the idea of “keywords” as searcher questions.
2. Then I introduced the granular mechanics of evaluating individual keywords.
3. And, finally, I talked about how keywords relate to one another.

All of that is valuable groundwork, but it leaves an important, dangling question:

How do you turn all of that into an actual, editorial plan for content?

That’s what I plan to talk about today.  And to nudge the conversation along, I want to start by defining three concepts: campaigns, roadmaps, and funnels.

(As a slight caveat emptor here, I am defining and using these terms in the way that Hit Subscribe defines and uses them, in applied client situations.  Digital marketing textbooks, assuming that’s a thing, might use them differently).

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Keywords 201: Tails, Association, Authority, and Cannibalization

Editorial note: Believe it or not, I haven’t forgotten about this series or the DaedTech blog.  I just let it all languish for like 6 months to prank you, dear reader.  Gotcha!

In all seriousness, I realize I’ve created a bit of a ghost town.  I’m hoping to remedy that, but it will have to happen on a pretty shoestring budget, in terms of time.

In my last post, I introduced you to the basics of keyword research.  This included the essential pillars of difficulty, volume, and segmentation.  You’ll need that backstory because today I’m going to build on those concepts to create an intermediate-level treatment of keyword research.

My aim here is for you to come away with a thorough understanding of how keywords relate to one another.

You’ll need that knowledge in order to start thinking of your site and your traffic holistically, rather than simply as a mish-mash of posts addressing a mish-mash of keywords (searcher questions).

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Keywords 101: Difficulty, Volume, and Segmentation

More content today, in keeping with a cadence that one can only describe as “halting, at best.”  But, in spite of my failings, on we go with the SEO for non-scumbags series.

Defining the Important Terms

Last time out, I introduced the idea of keywords, focusing on searcher psychology as the foundation.  In this installment, I’m going to get more into the nitty-gritty of keyword selection.

But before doing that, let’s define some terms of art. And I mean really define them, rather than just saying that “difficulty” describes how hard it is to rank for a keyword.

Keyword Volume

I’m listing these concepts in order of ease of understanding, from easiest to hardest.  So, let’s start with a softball in the form of keyword “volume.”

Keyword volume is simply the approximate number of times per month that somebody types this keyword into the search engine and examines the results.

I say approximate because none of the tools you’ll use will know the exact number.  And, even if they did, they’d know historical numbers and, obviously, not be able to predict the future.  As for why “per month” is the standard denominator convention for this, I must confess, dear reader, I do not rightfully know.

Mystery conventions and approximation aside, searches per month does give you a sense for the traffic potential to your site, should you write content targeting this keyword.  (Recall from the last post, “targeting the keyword” really means answering the question that you deduce the searcher is asking with this keyword.)

As you brainstorm keywords, I definitely suggest tracking them and their stats with a spreadsheet.  When you do this, you’ll acquire enough data to view the keyword volumes in relative terms which, I would argue, is more important than the actual number, per se.  In other words, the value in recording keyword volume comes less form the actual number and more from having a sense of “high volume” and “low volume” keywords.

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Game Theory in SEO: Building A Ship of Strategy in a Sea of Tactics

Editorial Note: this post is part of my SEO for Non-Scumbags series, which I began here.

It might seem a bit aggressive or presumptuous to write off an entire discipline as tactical.  But, I guess, here we are.

I’ve spent the last 4 years absolutely immersed in the world of SEO, largely with one simple goal in mind.  I’ve wanted to make Hit Subscribe’s clients happy by bringing well qualified traffic to their websites.

My effort has done two things:

1. Worked
2. Exposed me to enough digital content about SEO that the electrons in it probably add up to a metric ton.

And during all of that time, I can’t recall ever seeing anything that actually rises to the level of strategy.  The entire SEO world just seems to be a person blundering into a tactic that works through trial and error, doubling (tripling, hundred-ing) down on it and taking advantage of a brief arbitrage before the entire rest of the field rotely copies the tactic.  Then, repeat.

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