DaedTech

The Challenge of Working Backward From a Post Title to a Keyword

Something we’re asked all the time is how to match a keyword to an interesting title for a blog post that someone has brainstormed. A client has an idea for an article title, such as “Why ChatGPT Will Actually Increase the Demand for Human Writers,” and then asks what keyword they should target, or, more generally, if ranking and traffic are possible. I’ll explain how to evaluate this.

But before going any further, let me say something, full stop. The answer is almost certainly “No, organic traffic isn’t possible for your title.”

I will, of course, get into why, but I want to set expectations right up front.

Courtesy of https://unsplash.com/@cdd20

Editorial Premises vs. Search Query Premises

As someone now in my second decade of posting discursive rants to anyone willing to listen (by which I mean blogging on DaedTech), I’m very used to coming up with novel or provocative titles. I like to think I’m decent at it, and it’s fun.

I work in literature or pop culture references, I riff on other famous titles, I offer novel premises, and I do it all in pursuit of editorially interesting titles and content. I’m guessing you do this too, and probably better than I do.

Editorial premises are how people and brands tell interesting stories. They tend to share a thematic undercurrent of “Here’s a novel idea you’ve probably never thought of before” and a title that teases the surprise, interest, and a-ha moment that the reader will experience. This is, after all, how newspaper columns work and how you can build interest—and thus readership and a following.

It is, however, categorically not how people use a search engine.

Content that addresses searchers’ intents (and thus ranks and drives traffic) has tactical, boring, straightforward premises and does well not to tease anything in the title.

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How to Project Organic Search Traffic and the Cost of Acquiring It

Today I rolled up my sleeves and made a spreadsheet.  I know, I know, try to contain your jealousy.

But in all seriousness, it was an interesting exercise.  A client of ours was interested in assessing the relative cost of a few scenarios.  Specifically, they wanted to know the cost of the following:

• Sustaining the traffic with periodic new content and content refreshes.
• Increasing the traffic by 50% over one to two years.
• Increasing traffic by 100% over the same period.

Never one to back away from a Fermi problem, I figured I’d extend our modeling library to cover this scenario.  If nothing else, it’d be good practice for a future hypothetical job interview to show some too-clever-by-far interviewer “how I think.”  I kid—if an interviewer ever asked how I think, I’d show them a gif of a hamster running on a wheel.

Anyway, I now have this utility in hand, so I thought it might be interesting to share.  I’ll go through the thinking and the methodology here, and I’ll link to a Google sheet that you’re welcome to use for your own modeling.  And incidentally, the numbers that I’m using in this post are made up and not related to the client that asked for this (or any other specific client).

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Why SEO Consulting Shouldn’t Exist

This isn’t a clickbait title.  I genuinely stand by the position that “SEO consulting” is a service that shouldn’t exist in the economy.

But before I dive into specifics and my case, I do want to offer a couple of important caveats.

1. I wouldn’t dispute that some SEO consultants offer some economic value and provide helpful services.  There is economic value to increasing the visibility of content.
2. The fact that I don’t think the role should exist isn’t a commentary, per se, on people occupying that role.  I don’t think “bathroom attendant” should exist as a role, either, but I’m sure many of them are lovely human beings with friendly demeanors and a good work ethic.

With that out of the way, let me build my case for why the role shouldn’t exist—and what should exist instead.

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Creating a Company-Engineer Blogging Program

(Editorial note: I originally wrote this post over on the Hit Subscribe blog.)

I’ve been on a listening tour of late, talking to product marketers that own their business’s content production, among others.  My aim has been to discover subtle pain points, identify patterns, and possibly develop productized services to help.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard something interesting.  “We have in-house engineers that want to contribute to the blog, but there are some barriers.”

This is exactly the kind of tidbit that I like to dig into, and it exemplifies what I mean about looking for patterns.  Hit Subscribe has been around for six years, and we’ve occasionally, on request, taken on client engineers as if they were in our author pool to help produce content for the company.  And, as a long-time blogger before that, I’ve also observed companies, often app dev consultancies, try to tease a steady content stream out of their engineering groups.

I suppose I could hurriedly try to roll out a productized service and scoop up the opportunity, but that’s not really my style.  Even if we didn’t phase productized service rollouts (alpha, beta, general), I like to run lean.  Why roll out some kind of offering when I could just write about it and see if anyone finds this interesting?

So today, I’d like to explore the idea of using internal engineers to create content.  Assuming you have folks that are interested in creating content (I wouldn’t try to force it), here’s a series of steps I’d recommend to establish a successful program.

Courtesy of Danial Igdery (https://unsplash.com/@ricaros)

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