Thread by @GiordMarco96

Some considerations about Keyword Research, SERP analysis, entities and whatever you can think of.

This #SEO thread is about my personal advices and considerations for research 🧵

Spending hours on Keyword Research is boring, start from a topical map instead. Then, look for those keyword clusters you were missing and update it.

[Ecommerce] If the Search Volume is low, add a facet/filter or even a heading in a page. You don't need to create a subcategory for everything, it's a waste of time, especially when the competition is super low.

Compare different SERPs to understand which ones are similar. Do keyword mapping, i.e. map keywords to specific pages and expect to rank for variations, if that's the case.

Try different internal links to rank for some keywords.

If there is a featured snippet, stop and see how your competitor got it. Kinda boring but it needs to be done.

If a set of keywords doesn't fit your purposes, drop it. Go for long-tail keywords and understand what you can do with entities.

Form good sentences and be sure to avoid repetitions across pages.

Some languages do not have that many data, check forums or what your customers usually ask. Use common sense for blog content...

Or check what they do in other countries.

Some SERPs are not even worth it, focus on the part that matters for your goals. Drop large terms and try to niche down whenever possible.

Read PDFs/presentations or watch YouTube videos to have more ideas.

Super useful for technical category pages or articles like buyer guides. Can be true for scientific article as well.

Check groups of keywords with tools or use clustering in #Python or any language you like. Find a way to get group of queries and build pages around that.

Regroup them if necessary and spot patterns.

Check Google Search Console before you even start. Find what queries are good, which ones are totally random/misleading and which are suitable for another related page.

Continuously adjust the research and see what you can merge/split or add. Sometimes, it's better to publish something and wait some time to gather intelligence.

Then, you have some good data to work with.

If in doubt, check super popular competitor pages and replicate them, but do it better.

Last resort but it works very well for articles.

Test ideas where you have no volume but a good marketing reason. See if you can get some more keywords and store your data somewhere (BigQuery).

For generic queries, you can get away with cool articles about the topic. This is super frequent for online magazines, so don't go after Wikipedia, do what you would do according to your model.

Usual part of a thread where I say that Search Volume is not so important.

Next.

Yes, LSI keywords are utter nonsense. Don't pay a tool or waste time on useless stuff.

Don't confuse them with entities, they're totally different concepts. >>>

>>> and no, they are not original SEO concepts. We mention them as SEO Specialists, but they come from different subjects.

This is quite true for a lot of mathematical/technical concepts tho.

If you don't have that super deep knowledge about entities, you can just be more specific in your language and describe the attributes of what you are talking about.

Super useful for category/product pages.

Be very fond of those SERPs where competitors have a bad backlink profile. This is where you should invest.

They are not so easy to spot in some markets but they can be super profitable.

Use keywords wisely, don't confuse them with entities and don't expect to see results with stuffing.

I mean, stuffing actually works in some cases, that's up to you. It's most likely due to websites with a super good backlink profile/reputation that can do what they want.

Some SERPs are dominated by stuffing, doorway pages and translated content. Try to understand why and if you can do any better.

Google is not perfect and the game is not always fair, it happens.

I am not a big fan of such strategies because they subtract value to the user. Some may disagree but I don't see SEO as a separate subject from business.

I cannot imagine suggesting some tactics to a big brand because they "work". >>>

>>> reputation is more important in the long-term and ethics as well.

You can try this stuff with your test projects or to see if it works. Never do that for other people.

Keyword research is tough, I will cover this topic in the future as well.

Be sure to group as much as possible and to create high-level overviews of what you are doing.