Using Keyword Competitiveness to Guide Your Content Strategy
In today’s digital age, content is king. Every business aims to create high-quality content that resonates with their target audience and helps them achieve their marketing goals. However, creating content isn’t just about writing a piece of text and publishing it. It requires planning, research, and optimization to ensure that your content reaches the right people and achieves your desired outcomes.
Keyword research is a vital component of any content strategy. It helps you identify the wording that resonates with your audience and drives traffic to your website. However, not all keywords are created equal. Some are more competitive than others, meaning that it’s harder to rank for them. In this article, we’ll explore what keyword competitiveness is and how you can use it to guide your content strategy.
Understanding Keyword Competitiveness
Keyword competitiveness refers to how challenging it is to Keyword competitiveness rank for a specific keyword in search engine results pages (SERPs). The more competitive a keyword, the harder it is to rank for it. Conversely, the less competitive a keyword, the easier it is to rank for it. It’s important to understand keyword competitiveness because it directly affects your content strategy.
If you’re targeting highly competitive keywords, you’ll need to invest more time and resources to outrank your competitors. On the other hand, if you’re targeting less competitive keywords, you may be able to achieve higher rankings with less effort. However, targeting low-competition keywords can also mean that there’s lower search volume, which may affect the reach of your content.
There are different tools you can use to measure keyword competitiveness. One of the most popular is the Keyword Difficulty (KD) score offered by tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz. The KD score represents a scale from 0-100, indicating how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword. The higher the score, the more competitive the keyword.
How to Use Keyword Competitiveness to Guide Your Content Strategy
Now that you understand what keyword competitiveness is, let’s explore how you can use it to guide your content strategy.
1) Find the right balance between keyword competitiveness and search volume
When using keyword competitiveness to guide your content strategy, the goal is to find the right balance between keyword competitiveness and search volume. You want to target keywords that have a reasonable level of search volume but are still less competitive than high-volume keywords.
To do this, start by creating a list of potential keywords that relate to your business, products, or services. Use a keyword research tool to identify the search volume and KD score for each keyword. Look for keywords that have a higher search volume but a lower KD score than your primary keywords.
For example, if you’re a real estate company, targeting the keyword “real estate” may be too competitive for your content strategy. Instead, you could target the long-tail keyword “best real estate companies in [your city]” which has a lower KD score but still has a reasonable search volume.
2) Focus on low-competition keywords for newer websites
If you’re starting a new website, targeting high-competition keywords may be challenging. This is because established websites have already gained authority and are likely to outrank newer websites.
Therefore, it’s advisable to focus on targeting low-competition keywords when starting a new website. This approach allows you to gain traction and visibility before gradually targeting more competitive keywords.
3) Optimize your content for low-competition keywords
Once you’ve identified low-competition keywords that are relevant to your business or industry, it’s essential to optimize your content to rank for those keywords.
Start by including your target keyword in your content’s title, meta description, and body. Use related keywords and LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords in your content to signal to search engines that your content is relevant to the search query.
When creating content, prioritize solving your audience’s problems, answering their questions, and providing value. If you create high-quality content that meets the needs of your target audience, search engines will likely rank it higher regardless of the keyword competitiveness.
4) Create content clusters around competitive keywords
While it may be harder to rank for high-competition keywords, they can also bring in significant traffic if you rank for them.
One way to approach this is by creating a content cluster around a competitive keyword. A content cluster is a collection of blog posts or pages that are focused on a particular topic or keyword. By creating a group of interconnected pieces, you increase your chances of ranking for the competitive keyword.
For example, if you’re targeting the keyword “email marketing,” you can create a content cluster with posts such as “Email Marketing Best Practices,” “Email Marketing Metrics to Track,” “Email Marketing Automation,” and “Email Marketing Examples.”
Final Thoughts
Keyword competitiveness can significantly affect the success of your content strategy. When targeting keywords, look for the sweet spot between keyword competitiveness and search volume. Focus on low-competition keywords when starting a new website and optimize your content for those keywords. Create content clusters around competitive keywords to increase your chances of ranking for them.
Ultimately, creating high-quality content that resonates with your audience and provides value is the most crucial factor in your content strategy’s success. By using keyword competitiveness to guide your strategy, you can increase your chances of reaching your target audience and achieving your business goals.