Episode 523: Enterprise SEO Level Keyword Research Tips by Brad Smith #524

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Berth, one of the owners of EWR Digital. And my name is Matt Bertram, the lead strategist at EWR Digital. And I'm sorry I have like light hitting me right in the eyes at this time of the day. I just can't help it. So I'm wearing a hat. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 524. Are we should we do some sort of celebration at number 525? Why do people do celebrations on like round numbers? What's that about? I feel like I don't know. I think we're wired. We're like hardwired because of our numeric system to to to actually, you know, celebrate when we hit those numeric intervals. I think that's just all it is. Well, you know, a five, though, is is like a prime number, right? It's like a it's like an odd prime number. So that's not really round. But if you divide it into fours, it is like okay. So 25%. It's just interesting, Chris. No, I agree. Like, and there have been societies that use different number systems. And you have to suppose that they're like focus of celebrations was on, you know, those intervals instead of our intervals. That's just this is becoming a history podcast. It's kind of kind of kind of interesting. Matt and I we are broadcasting live from Houston, Texas. And we're excited because we have a sponsor. Yeah, like it's an actual sponsor who's sponsoring a podcast. And it's not even just a sponsor. It's Ahrefs. So first off, if you guys haven't used the tool Ahrefs, go use it. Let me read this little section. And then that'll kind of convince you more to use it. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a powerful and free tool. Ahrefs created AWT again, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for website owners who can't yet afford a marketing budget for a professional SEO tool, but need organic traffic to their websites. Almost 300,000 people signed up. Oh, look, Matt's

showing it for AWT the last year. That's since it was the product was released. All of them use almost half of Ahrefs product functionality for free. Seriously, at zero dollars. Not even a credit card is required to sign up. That's always a biggie, right? That can be a hangup. TechRadar said that AWT makes SEO more accessible to others. Go check out the tool. Matt uses this tool regularly. And as we've actually kind of got a story to tell over the next bunch of podcasts, and we'll be telling more of that story. In the meantime, you should go to Ahrefs.com forward slash AWT. And again, check out that free tool. We have a sponsor. How cool is that? Very cool. Started at podcast 524. We've got an article that we're going to talk about, and it's a keyword research. You know, if you didn't know, SEO, keyword research, kind of important, right? We're really kind of delivering value to a lot of enterprise level clients. And we thought it would be good to go back and touch on keyword research. So that's the article we're covering. Patif to Brad Smith, who wrote the article. We do have, you know, it's been a bunch of podcasts so far that we've been saying there's no review. And I'm kind of sad to say that there is a review now because it's only one star. It's from John OC. Its title is misleading. These are stabs to the heart. Sorry. Very sketchy to title an episode after Lily Ray and then read her tips from a third party blog. Um, so I guess this person, John, maybe dating Lily Ray. I don't, I don't know. Is, is very fond in following her and is upset. She's good, Chris. Like I've listened to some of her stuff. I think she's, she's, she's on point with a lot of things. Well, you know, one way, you know that she's good. Well, you listen to her and she puts out articles and people are talking about her. We're promoting her stuff. We

covered her in our podcast. That's one way that you know that she creates great content. Um, and that's actually been what we've been doing from the beginning. This is a resource to SEOers who don't have time to go out. I mean, we typically read five to 10 articles before we decide which article we're going to cover for the podcast. So we're curating that information and sharing with it you. Uh, and if you listen to the podcast, you should have realized that we didn't just say, Hey, Lily Ray says this and, and that's it. We actually add our comments and our experience to that. Uh, so it is a curated, uh, curated content. You know, on YouTube, um, our podcast comes up, uh, like after, like actually it comes up, uh, right with a number of hers and Lauren Baker, who's, um, the editor and founder, I guess, uh, search engine journal, uh, did an article with her and, uh, we did a article with Lauren a year or so ago. Um, we should really have, uh, Lily Ray on. I think that that's a great idea. I'm glad someone pointed that out. So, but that makes me happier. Yeah. Let's, we'll reach out to her and, uh, see if she's interested in joining us on the show. That'd be awesome. Yeah. If you're interested in leaving a review and we're hoping that that review is five stars, I feel like we timed that right, but who knows how it comes up. Um, then all you need to do is go to, uh, EWR digital.com forward slash review, or you can go to our Facebook page, facebook.com forward slash best SEO podcast, and you will find a place to leave a review and we will appreciate you very much. Let's just, it's always funny because the live thing starts turning on now. Like we've been live six seconds and I know on your side, we've been lying this whole time. It's an interesting artifact of StreamYard. Let's jump into this article, uh, timeless keyword tip research

tips. There's 10. We're only going to cover five today cause they're good and we're going to dig in deep. Um, and again, most of our audience is kind of well-versed in SEO. If you're not well-versed in SEO, uh, I like what Brad Smith has to say. So listen up. Keyword research isn't a blog post thing. It isn't a website redesign thing either. Instead, it should be an everyday thing, a continual harvesting of data so you can make better marketing decisions. So yes, keyword research today, keywords research tomorrow, keyword research the next week, like ongoing. Uh, it never, it's kind of like your website. It's never done. Uh, this isn't about tools, this particular article, it's about principles, simple strategies that work now and will continue to work into the future. Let's jump into these keyword research tips. The first one is the funnel stage. Hmm. So keyword research should start really with a spreadsheet and on the left side of the spreadsheet, you drop, I mean, there's more sophisticated ways, but this is what Brad Smith is walking us through. On the left side, you start with the URL of the pages that you're going to do some work on. And on the right, you'll put the keyword phrase for that page. And then you'll tick off the usual boxes like volume and competition, how much search volume is there and how much competition is there for those keywords. And he makes the point, you want more visitors. That's easy. Just talk about celebrity gossip, right? You'll get lots of visitors. The problem is that none of those will stick around. None of those will convert. And at the end of the day, we're not just doing SEO for traffic. We're doing SEO for conversions or to get results. So instead that volume number needs to have some context, some long tail variations, some stuff in the middle and bottom of the funnel that would bring in people who are already primed to convert because we want those conversions. And he gives a, it walks

us through an example. Let's take Las Vegas. If you want to talk about the city generally, you're going to get tons of visits, right? People are searching for Las Vegas. They want to know stuff. If you want to talk about Vegas odds, that would bring you a particular type of audience, a segmented audience that's obviously thinking about, hey, I'm on my way to Vegas. I'm going to do some gambling. Let's make sure that I can pay for my trip while I'm there. And then finally, if you focused in on Vegas hotels, this is going to bring you a smaller subset of people who aren't just planning on it. They're ready to pull out their credit card and actually get to the hotel. So he breaks this down into there's an awareness, you know, 10 shortest Las Vegas celebrity marriages. That would be Las Vegas awareness consideration. Vegas odds for blackjack. It's an ebook, 10 insider secrets to beat the house. By the way, I feel like I should download that book, right? And then finally decision phase, Vegas hotels pricing. Right. So this is, this is all good, but just understand not all businesses are similar. This means search intent might shift up or down the funnel depending on the industry. So I think it's really important, like, and what he's talking about is laying it out on a spreadsheet. He's really talking about the customer journey, right? And he's talking about depending on what people are searching for, where they're at. Can y'all hear me? All right. I'm just going to hold it right here. All right. Um, so, so basically the, the customer journey, you have to map out, like where, what touch points are they going to find, uh, as they move through the decision-making process, Google calls it micro moments. Um, and it's really something we do in a workshop where we figure out who the target persona is and then what is that customer journey and then map out what are the pieces of content that they may run across

at each decision-making phase. Right. And I think that, um, that is really what you need to talk about or understand and understand what keywords are associated with those things. Yeah. And he does give an example, like actually there's a tool that he references, which unfortunately is no longer available. It's actually kind of a neat tool, uh, customer journey to online purchase. Uh, but he gives the example that, uh, organic search plays a huge role when people are evaluating products. Um, like when you're trying to compare one product to the other, like, Oh, when you hear or understand that this is another product and it's a competitor to the one you're considering, then you want to start doing research on those particular products. And that's, that's typically done with an organic search. Cool stuff. Number two. All right. So this is Tim, 10 timeless keyword research tips. Number two, it's just labeled PPC performance. He could probably work on his titles a little bit. Cause I'm like, okay, well, how is that a timeless keyword search? And really what he is saying is this start with the product or service name, you know, the super commercial one that nobody, that, uh, that nobody searches for. Then look up related keywords to balance the relevance, uh, something pretty close, but hopefully a little more popular, right? So you're starting from super long tail and honing in on what might actually have search volume, then load those keywords into AdWords and use their tool, right? Marketing after all isn't okay. This, I actually disagree. And I highlighted this marketing after all is no science. It's a guessing game. How do you feel about that sentence, Matt? Those two. I feel like when I talk to people that do traditional marketing, that is an accurate statement because, uh, I've seen many times they're like, we think you should spend a bunch of money on this print article or this radio article or this TV article. And it's like, like there's no data to support. It's just what they believe,

what they think. Right. And there's no way to measure it. And so PPC, I think it's phenomenal as you're tying back to keyword research, you can test out a lot of keywords. You can also see what the market is of what people are bidding on. Um, I mean, really long tail keywords are going to convert better from an SEO standpoint. That's maybe where you want to start, but the more targeted you are, the higher likelihood they're going to convert, which will show better data to Google. It's all kind of like a chain reaction, but as far as a guessing game, um, maybe there's some art to it, but it's more and more a science and more data driven than anything else. That's why I love it. It's like, we don't trust our gut, right. Or we have some best practices of what we think, but we ultimately let data tell us what the right thing to do is from keyword research to conversion rate optimization. It's all data driven. So, um, yeah, I, I could disagree with that statement as well. Well, and I think you can break it into like two phrases, kind of the way I look at it is even, even science starts with like a guess, right. Like the, the, the process is a hypothesis, right? Like, and then you go out and you prove it or you disprove it. And so, yeah. And, and, and, and this is something that we have, what I love about our team when we're in team meetings and we're talking about marketing for somebody, everyone will defend their idea with a lot of passion. And then you get a little bit of data and you're like, Oh, I guess that didn't work. Like you go on to the next thing or more, more likely, I guess option A worked better than option B. They both worked because we have enough experience. Spend more time on option A because the data shows that option A is the right thing to go on. Well, that's, that's

one of the really great things that you can do with AdWords, certainly. And before you commit to something with maybe a SEO strategy is you AB test, right? You AB test, uh, keywords, you AB test ads for meta descriptions for titles. Um, there for, you know, there's, there's a lot that you can do and let data tell you what it is. And so, yeah, in our team meetings, people, uh, defend different points and they bring data, uh, to the fold. And, um, what I love too, is that it's, it's really, uh, best in breed. It's the best, uh, suggestion wins, right. Or the best idea wins. It's not someone's idea because of X, Y, Z. And, and so really just data tells the story. You can always see in the data what's happening. And then that's the key is trying to understand that data. And that is what we help, um, enterprise level companies do a lot is help them understand and track their data better to understand where their marketing dollars are going and, uh, how they should be dividing up that marketing mix. And in a lot of cases, the traditional agencies, if I'm partnering with them and we're kind of the digital player at the table, they don't always like everything that I have to say. Um, and, and it's not, you know, it's not me saying it. I'm just the messenger, right? Like it's the data. So. Yeah. It's gotta be uncomfortable going from a, a position of, of having little or no data, uh, to having a lot of data that doesn't necessarily agree with what you, you know, your initial hypothesis. Well, well also, I think that sometimes when you're looking at a lot of raw data, it's hard to understand what it all means. Right. And so, uh, sometimes data can be overwhelming, right? And so you need to create different kinds of filters, um, or different metrics or goals to be able to understand what is happening. Uh, so yeah, I think, uh, data is certainly, uh,

a science, uh, as well as an art. Uh, but I have tried to move away as much as possible from a guessing game or best guess. There's certainly best practices where we start, but that's certainly not where we end up. So, yeah, it's, it's, you know, I love, uh, a company called action coach teaches marketing is math. Like it's math. Like it's math. I feel like I've said that enough. Right. Number three time, 10 timeless keyword research tips. Number three is existing page topics. And in this, in this particular, uh, piece, uh, Brad was talking about how categories can group your page and, and you can look at categories that you have in your system. And he gives the example of choose a popular page. In his case, he chose whiskey sours, by the way, I like whiskey sours. Very, very delicious. Um, you've taken it and then let's build from that whiskey sours page. The first thing to keep in mind is, Hey, you know, in a whiskey sour, there is whiskey. So let's kind of look up, let's do some keyword research and understand whiskey. Right. And this isn't, this is how do we narrow down into like the kinds of keywords that we should be targeting? So you start researching, let's say whiskey cocktails. And he gives a list of two, four, six, seven, uh, keyword results. That's got some search volume. And he notices that there are three related to season. So there's whiskey cocktails for summer, whiskey, whiskey cocktails, summer, and whiskey cocktails fall. So maybe it's a good idea to like seasonal whiskey cocktails. Um, and, and that is a way that you can do research from starting on a page that's popular, starting on a page that, you know, uh, would be is broad based and then narrowing down into something that, uh, has some volume and you have an opportunity to take advantage of. I feel like I need to go do some research on the seasonal whiskey sours. I didn't know that seasonally there's different ones

to drink. And I certainly, to be fair, it's, to be fair, it's whiskey cocktails for summer. Now it's whiskey. And he brought in, um, well, this goes into seasonality. So number four, again, this is 10 timeless keyword research tips. Number four is seasonality. Right. And, and this is, you know, not that hard to think about, right. There's different seasons and, uh, different seasons for different topics. You've got, you know, he makes the point that flat screen TVs become a very high searched item during, uh, Black Friday. You do. Oh, interesting fact. Do you know when the best time besides Black Friday or Cyber Monday to buy a big screen TV day? Uh, uh, right before the Superbowl? Yeah. No, that was a guess. Boom. Boom. Well, especially if you're here in Houston, there's a guy who's, his name is Mattress Mac and he, he typically will make a bet on, uh, on the Superbowl. And certainly if Houston's in it, the Texans are in it, uh, if the Texans win the Superbowl, any furniture you, you bought for the previous three months, including TVs, uh, is free. So that would make it a really good deal. If you can't do the math. All right. So he talks about, uh, a hub page targeting whiskey talk to cocktails. So we're back on this, um, might be too tough, right? It's you're going after the big brands like Bon Appetit, all recipes.com buzzfeed, but there's long tail variations that you could do like whiskey drinks for summer, maybe crisp and refreshing and those in fall, which are warm and full bodied. Now you, now you want both of those drinks, right? The summer ones. Chris, next time we get together, we're going to have to, you know, make, make some whiskey sour drink. I make it, I make a mean whiskey sour. Um, so think about seasonality in terms of affinity or what your customers are into. So what is it in that season that your whiskey drinker, gin drinker, vodka drinker, or whatever might be looking

for? What are the signatures of that sentiment and go after those key phrases and actually do the research on those and make sure there's enough volume to be worth it. Cause you don't want to just come up with and say maybe there aren't any warm, full bodied vodka drinks, right? Like I don't think warm when I think vodka, I think more like cool. Um, so make sure you do the keyword research and understand if those are good targets. Well, I think, you know, just kind of expounding upon seasonality, right? Black Friday's right around the corner. Uh, Christmas right around the corner. I've seen a lot of advertisers start advertising early and earlier. There's going to be supply chain issues. Uh, people are running different kinds of, uh, specials trying to get their message out sooner before it gets really noisy. Um, seasonality plays big into retail businesses or even seasonality businesses. And I think that, um, you should be thinking about and planning out a content calendar, ad calendar in advance, right? It shouldn't be, Oh, we need to run an ad. It should be, okay, what are we, what are we running? What are we trying to achieve? Um, who are we trying to reach? When does, uh, that search volume start to peak? Um, because a lot of retailers, that's why I think it's called black Friday because right. They, they're in the red money. They get out of the red and into the black, uh, the, the last quarter of the year, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Let's, uh, let's talk about number five, 10 timeless keyword research tips, trending topics. So sometimes we think our campaigns and strategies and content pieces need to be so creative or breathtaking or interesting. Again, that goes, kind of goes to maybe the mindset, uh, of it being an art versus a science. Uh, I think you've got to have some of those pieces. And at the end of the day, the science of it will tell you what to do. He

mentions a guy, Jesse Quay helped him simplify, uh, his thought process, which is it's a mix of doing good work and talking about an Uber trendy topic. I got an idea. You got an idea. Yeah. So I can share, I can share a topic for any of those out there that are into crypto. Um, I used, I literally used, uh, Google trends, uh, on how many people were searching to Bitcoin to figure out when the top was last time. And like, basically based on how many people were searching like Bitcoin price, Bitcoin, all these types of words. Um, when it, when it got up to a certain level, like it had peaked, we're at about 25% of where it was when it peaked last time, right. In 2017. Right. And so that's where I believe we're at in the cycle for all of those into crypto. 25% percent up the way. Now the searches are happening in 2017. It was kind of like fever pitch based on how many people are searching for it. Um, and so I'm kind of using that to, to time the market right now and kind of, I don't know, interesting for those of those that care. We'll talk about that offline. Cause that's very interesting. I'd like to look at that data as well. That's I love looking at that type of data. Um, so he's talking about again, trending topics, maybe it's breaking news stories, sporting events, major indecisions or whatever. Uh, we once, and we should probably do it again. We once did an Astros post, um, just to be, you know, the Astros are actually, they're rushing it. They won that year. It was amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and they've got, they're going to, you know, beat the Red Sox tomorrow. I don't know if there's any Red Sox fans out there. I'm sure there's one or two. Um, but yeah, you know, we beat them and we go on to the, to the world series. It's going to be exciting times for Houston. We should

all get on our Astros hat and take a picture and do some posts and maybe talk about, I don't know how the Astros impact SEO. Those two things go like hand in hand. It's like a glove. It fits perfectly. All right. So those are five of the 10 tips. We're going to cover five tips today. We'll cover the, the next five tips in our next podcast. Um, I want to thank our sponsor again, Ahrefs. Make sure you go out and check out that tool. Uh, that's Ahrefs.com forward slash a W T, uh, as an Ahrefs webmaster tools. Uh, go out there, check out that tool. Uh, like over half of the tool is free. Uh, so, um, you know, you can afford it. Go, go check it out. It's got some good stuff in it. Um, we would also ask that if you enjoyed this content or any of our content, uh, make sure if you're on YouTube, make sure you subscribe to us, make sure you click that notification bell. Uh, and also please leave a review. You can leave some comments maybe in, in a YouTube video. If you're watching it, uh, two places to leave a review right now, EWR digital.com forward slash review and facebook.com forward slash best SEO podcast. Do you have any wrap up, uh, comments, Matt? Go SEO tips. Go Astros. Go Astros. Well, uh, until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye for now.