by: AskPat 185 Episode Transcript
Pat: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 185 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.
All right now lets get to today's question from Dean.
Dean: Hey Pat, its Dean Wisdom. My website is WisdomProCounseling.com. I watched your webinar on Market Samurai, it was awesome. I got my own discounted copy so I appreciate that. The webinar was really great. During that, you mentioned writing 75 blog posts that had your research on there, your improved research from using them, Market Samurai and SEO. Was that just to improve your site authority? Just wanted to know what the purpose of that was. Thanks so much. Love your blog and all your writing. Thanks.
Pat: Hey Dean, thank you so much for this question; very specific question about this webinar actually. But before I get to that, I want to talk a little bit about keyword research and how it might be used to increase your site authority, which is exactly what I was doing with the 75 articles you were talking about, so I have a lot to say about this.
So let me just start from the beginning. Keyword research is important because you want to know what people are searching for, about, and in and around the particular topics that you're talking about on your website or on your podcast or on your YouTube videos. Whatever platform you have, keyword research is very important. It's harder on places like iTunes and video with YouTube, because it's just Google for web search. They're very open with everything. There's tools like the Google Keyword Planner, which you can get for free and use to discover what search terms are being searched for and how often and, even how much advertisers are paying to be found with Google AdWords.
And that's for free. You can go to AdWords.Google.com and sign up there. You don't have to pay anything, you don't have to run any campaigns to be able to use the Google Keyword Planner, so you can check that out there.
There are other tools like I mentioned earlier, like Market Samurai, which is cool, which you can find at KeywordResearchWebinar.com. I also love Long Tail Pro, if you go to AskPat.com/longtailpro, that's my affiliate link for that, and that one I find—you know they're both great—but Long Tail Pro is much more beginner savvy, but not quite as powerful as Market Samurai. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]
But whatever one you use, keyword research is important because, let's say, for example, you have a blog. You have a blog about fishing, fly fishing for example, fly fishing in North America. Great, good topic, something I've always wanted to do, and haven't had the chance to do it yet. I'm actually an avid fisherman, I go ocean fishing quite often, you know deep sea fishing, and also lake fishing here in San Diego. Never did fly fishing, so I don't know why I said that right now but it's kind of the example I always use in this type of situation.
But what you can do is if you're talking about fly fishing, you can enter in keywords like “fly fishing” into these keyword research tools and find a whole list of other related keywords that people are also typing in, related to fly fishing. So you might find that it's going to be things like “fly fishing tools,” “fly fishing equipment,” “how to tie a fly fishing fly,” all these types of things. And all those are going to be signs that those are things you should be talking about because people, like actual human beings, are actually writing those things into Google. You'll find that the more that you do keyword research, the more you dig deep into the keywords and the semantics all around your niche, the more topics you're going to find to write about, and the more you write about those things, the more you provide value and answer people's questions, provide solutions in and around all of those different topics and those words and terms, the higher you're climbing Google. Just the more authoritative your site will be.
No matter what Google does, they're always changing their algorithm and so many rules and private blog networks this and that, backlinks this and that. The truth is, if you write about what people want, the search engines will eventually catch up and this is something Neil Patel said in his interview with me on SmartPassiveIncome.com. Just write what people want and there's a lot of ways to figure out what people want to know about in and around your topic. One thing is to survey your audience, another is to do research around forums and go on social media platforms and discover what discussions are being talked about, but another thing to do is get right to the heart of what people are looking for answers about, and that is keyword research.
So there's a lot of examples in the past where I've done keyword research to then, direct the type of content, the exact blog posts I should be writing. There's actually a great post on the Smart Passive Income blog that was published recently called The Backlinking Strategy That Works in 2014 and Beyond.
And in that, there's a whole section that Brian Dean, who is from BackLinko.com, he was the guest post author of that particular post. Massive post, 6,000 words, but the first section is all about creating that “wow content,” and if you can have that approach in that particular episode. Well make sure to link to it and the show at AskPat.com. Again, this is episode 185, so you'll see it in the show and know it's there.
But that particular section in that particular post is just, I mean, it's gold, it's gold, and if you can have that approach with the type of content in and around those keywords that you find related to what you're talking about, you're going to do really well, and that's one advantage that a lot of us have especially in the internet marketing space have over many other people is, a lot of people just write what they think people will want to hear about and a lot of times they get it right, especially if they are in their own target audience, but a lot of times we don't actually understand exactly what people want, and like I said keyword research is great for that.
I did this with SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com, in a site that I created, I used keyword research to determine that not only should I be writing about all the requirements and all the different states but its helped me to determine which states were most important by finding out which ones were actually being searched for more. It also showed me that I shouldn't just talk about unarmed security guard training but I should also talk about armed security guard training. It also gave me another term that people were searching for, related to security guard training that I didn't know anything about which is called the “PERC Card.”
I discovered that this was a card that in certain states you need to have in order to become a security guard. So I wrote posts and created a resources about that. Again, keyword research determining what content to write, and also what to put in the title of those particular posts. I mean, that's sort of obvious right, if you're targeting certain keywords you want to put that particular keyword in the title but you also want to put it in the meta description.
If you're using a tool like the All in One SEO plugin or Yoast, which is even better, you want to make sure that those keywords are in. I mean this is just basic SEO. You want to make sure that those keywords you're using to direct the type of content that you want to create, put those in the title, in the description, and have it just make sense because you're not just writing for search engines but you're also writing for human beings too.
So that's where a lot of the content for Security Guard Training HQ came from. My other niche site that I created, which is doing really well right now and actually just last month launched its very first product and grossed nearly $4,000 at this point, is at FoodTruckr.com. That is a site that's helping people start food trucks, in that industry do even better with their food truck. And I'm not in the food truck industry but I used keyword research to determine what questions needed to be answered and then I did whatever it took, or hired the right people to make sure that they found the right answers for those questions. So again, keyword research determining the type of content and what to write about.
So yes, keyword research can lead to bigger site authority just from the fact that you're talking about things that people want to see, that improves your site authority and that also involves you getting into the positive effects of SEO when you do that.
So, Dean, thank you so much for the question. I hope that answers it, and a lot of great stuff there hopefully to help all of you improve your site, and a lot of people, we just kind blog to blog right? But why don't you blog and take maybe five minutes before you start determining what that topic you're going to blog about is, and maybe even if you do have a topic, punch that into these tools. The Google Keyword Planner on AdWords or Long Tail Pro or Market Samurai and discover exactly what other sections of that post should be talked about, what other terms people use, what language do they use, and then type into Google. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.] You need to know what those things are. So just spend five minutes before you write your next post and do that, and you're going to see much better results.
So, Dean, thanks so much for your question, and an AskPat t-shirt is going to be heading your way. For those of you who have a question that you'd also like potentially featured here on the show, just head over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.
As always, I like to end with a quote and today's quote is from Einstein and he said, “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid.” Cheers, thanks so much, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.