If your business has any type of online presence, you will know the importance of keyword research. You may realise that Google and Bing use these keywords to rank individual web pages and show results to searchers based on relevancy. Yet, it is tough to understand the science behind the process so that your website ranks as highly as possible for your relevant words. Those canny people in charge of rankings keep their cards very close to their chest, and the rules seem to change regularly as well, but if you’re going to take keywords seriously as you should, you need to bear in mind NLP and clustering. Where do you start?
Crunching the Data
If you were a data scientist at Google, how would you approach their Herculean task – to make sense of the billions of web pages around today? You’d want to make things as logical as possible and try to get into the mind of the average searcher.
People who search online are typically looking for the answer to a particular problem – how to, where, when, why, how much, etc. Yet, they can ask the question in a myriad of different ways and will rarely get straight to the point as they type into the search box. After all, they may use alternative words to describe the subject in question or refer to an element of the problem that is, in some way, related.
It may be possible to address the particular problem in many different ways, and there could be several steps involved. Consequently, they may need more than one individual source of information, and it may be beneficial for the search engine to suggest some alternatives.
Developing Algorithms
As thousands or even millions of people worldwide search for information on a given topic over time, software programs at Google HQ gather this information and create new algorithms. As part of the process, analysts will assign relevance to the secondary and tertiary searches, and these may become “long tail” keywords in a complicated natural language processing graph.
Much of the work is highly technical and top-secret, but the boffins do leave clues along the way. These clues help content marketers who can then create highly relevant material related to the subject in question. This material can address the primary keyword but, with some careful planning, can also address secondary or longtail keywords in those all-important clusters.
On-Site Structure
Site management is also crucial in the world of search engine rankings. It is, therefore, important to link each individual article or blog post to each other carefully so that the search engine robots can follow the trail. They will see that one subsidiary blog post covers a longtail subject but that it relates to a separate blog post within the cluster. That blog post may, in turn, link up to a silo or pillar post, covering the entire topic in much greater detail. This hierarchy is the essence of a keyword cluster and takes into account natural language processing as well.
Your Plan
What is the takeaway for the average business?
Do a deep dive into keyword research. Understand the terms that your prospects are using to try and solve the problem that you fix.
Determine the value of each longtail keyword that you find. See how many people search for it in any given month to determine whether you should try and rank for it.
Research detailed content for each keyword.
Understand how each longtail relates to the master keyword above it and make sure that you link correctly from the lower document to the higher one. You may find it easier to create a mind map or a graph of some kind to help you with your planning.
Once you have your keyword clusters, writes the blog posts. Use the appropriate keyword in the title and first paragraph. Sprinkle other longtail keywords into the text.
In the modern era, the more in-depth the content piece, the better. You may find it advantageous to write longer articles or blog posts than you did before, as length may be one of the (many) ranking factors employed by the search engine.
Don’t forget on-page SEO. Make sure that the metadata details are correct and that your links all work. Try to get authority pages outside of your domain to link to your content as well.
Dynamic Search
The world of SEO has changed beyond all recognition in the last 10 to 15 years. The search engines are now highly sophisticated, and the algorithms improve every day. Ensure that the content you develop to help market your business is top-notch and optimised as carefully as possible.
Your Move
Car Copy can help you create articles and blog posts with NLP and keyword clusters in mind. Why not get in touch with us today, and we will help you to develop a plan?
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