How important is Keyword Research in PF blog postings? What to do in a highly competitive topics? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

My feeling is that you should pick topics based on what you know and have a string opinion our unique insight on. Write about those topics, do dime basic optimization, be authoritative, and the rest well take care of itself.
I have one post that is currently contributing roughly a third of my traffic and is ranked #2 for it's keyword, only behind the company I'm taking about in the post. And it happened just the way I described.

My personal opinion is that I write for the moment.  I don't really care about rankings and all that anymore.  I've also found that the articles in which I do rank are ones that I never would have guessed, and for the few times I've actually thought I would rank high, I get nothing.

In other words, I wouldn't focus on it, but that's just my approach and how I stay interested.

I use scrapebox a bit for keyword research.  one of my go to weapons when i am struggling.  I also use ultimate niche finder for somethings on my niche sites and to set up as pages on the site…

ms and ltp are my main weapons though.

PK @ DQYDJ said:

Anyone know how many people do explicit keyword research with an external tool?  I'm sure it happens, but I wouldn't say a majority of us use an LTP or a MS for our sites.

Sometimes if I can't come up with a good title for the 'Search Engine' title box (I'm using the Genesis theme framework, there is something similar with other plug-ins) I will take a quick look at the AdWords tool to come up with a better title.  (What DO people search for when they look for food shopping by income?  Beats me!)

Anyway, four years of being a bad blogger have led to a few observations:

1. 'Newsjacking' will let me get search results almost immediately.  I posted a "2012 S&P 500 Return"… on January 1, 2013 and I posted a "Who Won the 2012 London Olympics" article.  Newsjacking is the Neil Young strategy – "it's better to burn out than to fade away" (hijacked in Kurt Cobain's suicide note – Neil Young is still very much in the music business).
2. 'Timeless Content' takes longer, but… 4 years, this is most of my stuff, heh.  I've been seeing some article gain prominence 3 months after the fact, but the big switch (what Sam and I called 'the fine wine') takes six months.  This is the Rolling Stones strategy – you'll constantly be getting traffic for your older stuff, but not as much search love for the newer things.

Actually, the band metaphor is incredible – 'subscribers' are like your hardcore fans, they'll "buy" anything you put out, the clingers are search traffic.

 

Okay, I need to stop there – this is too hilarious to not turn into a Yakezie article.

Thanks for the meaty reply PK.  Your blog looks pretty established and authoritative.  When you say 4 years of bad blogging, are you referring to this site as well?

PK @ DQYDJ said:

Anyone know how many people do explicit keyword research with an external tool?  I'm sure it happens, but I wouldn't say a majority of us use an LTP or a MS for our sites.

Sometimes if I can't come up with a good title for the 'Search Engine' title box (I'm using the Genesis theme framework, there is something similar with other plug-ins) I will take a quick look at the AdWords tool to come up with a better title.  (What DO people search for when they look for food shopping by income?  Beats me!)

Anyway, four years of being a bad blogger have led to a few observations:

1. 'Newsjacking' will let me get search results almost immediately.  I posted a "2012 S&P 500 Return"… on January 1, 2013 and I posted a "Who Won the 2012 London Olympics" article.  Newsjacking is the Neil Young strategy – "it's better to burn out than to fade away" (hijacked in Kurt Cobain's suicide note – Neil Young is still very much in the music business).
2. 'Timeless Content' takes longer, but… 4 years, this is most of my stuff, heh.  I've been seeing some article gain prominence 3 months after the fact, but the big switch (what Sam and I called 'the fine wine') takes six months.  This is the Rolling Stones strategy – you'll constantly be getting traffic for your older stuff, but not as much search love for the newer things.

Actually, the band metaphor is incredible – 'subscribers' are like your hardcore fans, they'll "buy" anything you put out, the clingers are search traffic.

 

Okay, I need to stop there – this is too hilarious to not turn into a Yakezie article.

I love the music references. BTW, saw the Stones a couple of years ago, aaamaaaazing!!

What the heck is:  an LTP or a MS for our sites.

Financial Samurai said:

UberSteward, if it helps from another blogger's perspective, I've never done any keyword research apart from thinking in my head what someone might logically search for. Often times I question whether the title should be this or that, but I've never bothered to check out Google Tools, Market Samurai, or whatever to see which words have more or less searches etc.

Part of the reason is because it feels like work, and that's the last thing I want to feel like I'm doing for my hobby. Another reason is that my site has grown without doing any research so why bother. Maybe my site would have grown further if I did do research, who knows.

Market Samurai and Long Tail Pro are good affiliate programs for bloggers whose main focus is to make money blogging, as well as for niche sites which have really gotten hit after the EMD update last fall. I should put them up on Yakezie.com, but I'm also lazy as well :)

I recommend just writing what you think makes sense. More fun and better longevity!

Sam

Thanks Sam for another refreshing take.  I actually found myself losing motivation past week overwhelmed and intimidated by all these other great blogs and bloggers that I came across.  Out of nowhere, it just felt like work and a daunting task.  Soooo much to do…  I'm just glad I somehow stumbled on Yakezie early on.  Thanks for the input.

I'm new to the blogging scene, so my opinion is probably not as authoritative as the other posters', but I do both – I write about what I want to write about, but I also optimize every post for a particular keyword/phrase. I first pick a topic that I'm interested in, then use Google AdWords Keyword tool and Google Trends to see what people are searching for and what is the most popular/least competitive. This helps me refine my topic.

I use Yoast WP SEO plugin and am very happy with it. After picking my keyword and writing my post, I work on getting as many "green lights" as possible – making sure the post is maximally optimized for SEO.

Now I know that I'm not going to rank high for every keyword I choose. And, as the others pointed out, my most viewed posts may not be the ones best optimized in the future. But my logic is that by doing my best to optimize each post for SEO, I set myself up for as much success as possible.

This is a question that also plagues me. I'm using the free SEO Yoast Plugin, and it seems to help me, but I've been struggling with all of this Meta Tag optimization stuff. I installed the "All in one SEO pack" to help me with the meta tags, but to be honest it just makes things a lot more confusing. 

The overwhelming response here seems to be don't worry about Meta and all of these other more specific SEO tools, but is that a mistake? There does not seem to be any truly easy to understand tutorial out there that teaches beginners about SEO – I'm thinking because it's just basically really freaking confusing. 

I think you should consider a combination of both. If you have a really good slant on a highly competitive topic, still write it and promote via social networks. With regard to keyword research, look for longtail type of terms which will give you a better chance of ranking.