The Fastest Shortcut to Finding Awesome SEO Keywords

In this newsletter, I break down the exact technique I used to take one of my company's sites from 150 Top 10 keywords to over 500 for terms that targeted qualified leads. This technique also boosted our Top 100 rankings from 1900 to over 6300 keywords.

Keywords Are the Key

Keyword research is the crux of an SEO strategy. Without knowing what your prospects are typing into Google and Bing, the content you create can be off base. You could spin cycles creating articles and videos on topics that aren't very popular. Or you might miss opportunities where there is a demand for information but not enough useful material available.

Doing the work to find keywords can be time-consuming, often taking weeks of methodical effort. But there's good news. I mean, really good news. You can shortcut the entire process down to a few hours. Let me show you how.

How SEO Firms Do Keyword Research

The most common method to identify keywords for your business is to use a tool like Semrush (my personal favorite). You can type in "seed terms" and quickly find dozens or even hundreds of related terms.

More importantly, you can see the estimated monthly search volume. But most importantly, you will discover the term's keyword difficulty. This is a number between 0-100, the higher being more difficult to get ranked.

When you find keywords with decent search volume and low difficulty, that means you've hit keyword research gold. Start creating content that uses these terms, apply Technical SEO (detailed in Module 6 my SEO Crash Course), and you stand a decent chance of getting ranked well on Google.

Finding these terms takes a good bit of time. It includes talking to customers about words they use to describe your products and services, running multiple queries in keyword databases, and iterating till you find your ideal terms. The entire process can take weeks.

But there's another way.

And it's really fast.

A Competitor Already Did the Work

SEO isn't a new type of service. Companies have hired search engine optimization experts for years. That means there's a strong chance that one of your competitors has already hired an SEO firm to help them get ranked for terms that are relevant for you, too.

When I was building up the SEO footprint for WealthEngine, I found that one of their competitors had done an incredible job in getting traction for hundreds of high quality terms. That company was ranked in the top 5 or 10 for an enviable list of keywords. They were also ranked between 11-20 for another large list of keywords.

Using Semrush, I easily downloaded their list of the ranked terms along with their keyword difficulty and spent a few minutes sifting through and deleting terms that weren't applicable to us.

In Excel, I sorted all terms with search volume over 100 per month and ranked them by keyword difficulty so the easiest to rank terms were listed at the top.

And bingo, my first cut keyword list was ready.

The competitor's SEO firm had already started getting traction so all I had to do was find the keywords they identified that also mapped into our buyer's journey. Then, I would go down my sorted competitor keyword list to find the easiest ones to rank on that could generate traction due to a decent search volume.

The whole process took a few hours and had a list of about 25 hot keywords that would provide wonderful traffic and lead generation opportunities once we created solid content.

Grouping Similar Terms

It's important to remember what Google wants you to know before you create content: they want it to be helpful. As you sort through your keywords, you can spot related terms and group them together, each group comprising your focus per article.

You'll need to do standard SEO tagging, including H1/H2/H3 tags as well as other technical SEO page structure enhancements that send Google signals about your page's topic (too much to go into detail here - see my SEO course for specific examples).

The beauty of this competitive analysis approach is that you're not cheating or doing anything unethical. You're simply using publicly available data to gather information about the content you should create, then prioritizing what you write about.

The Results Speak Volumes

As I noted in the opening of this newsletter, our Google rankings skyrocketed quickly as we created content using our newly found keywords.

This approach was significantly easier and faster than it would have been had I started with the painstaking task of researching every keyword option individually.

I was asked to join WealthEngine's executive team because of my work in SaaS. I was not an expert in their target market. This process enabled me to learn about a new industry quickly while also getting us some fast wins to build momentum.

Once we started to get more rankings, I expanded our keyword research using the standard meticulous method I mentioned earlier. Because we were building our site's authority in Google's eyes, each time we added a well-optimized article, it would get ranked in the Top 20 within weeks and inch up from there.

This fast-track search engine optimization technique can kick start your SEO strategy.

If you need help, connect with me on LinkedIn or just Google "SEO coach" and I'll be there on page 1 under MoreBusiness.com.