The Ultimate SEO Tutorial

Find “Question Keywords” to Generate Lots of Solid Keyword Ideas

Your first step is to come up with LOTS of keyword ideas.

Then, in the next step I’ll show you how to choose the best keywords from your list of ideas.

And the best way to come up with keyword ideas?

Look at questions that people ask online.

To find questions, you can manually scan sites like Reddit.

But it’s kind of hard to pull out the best questions that people are asking.

That’s why I recommend trying a few tools that specialize in bubbling up burning questions that people have.

First up, we’ve got QuestionDB.

All you need to do is enter a broad topic (like “keto” or “link building”).

And you’ll get a list of questions that people are asking online about that topic.

You can also try Answer The Public, which does basically the same thing.

Buzzsumo also has a solid “Question Analyzer” that specializes in finding common questions that people ask online.

Focus On Untapped Keywords That Are Trending Up

If you’re new to SEO, or just want to get an edge on your first page competition, I recommend focusing on trending topics and keywords.

Why?

Because new keywords aren’t super competitive (yet).

You can easily find dozens of trending topics and keywords with a free tool called Exploding Topics.

To use it, head over to the site’s homepage and choose a category that describes your niche.

Then, scroll through the results.

If you see one that seems like a good fit, click on it. And you’ll get more detail on the topic, including estimated monthly search volume.

If that topic seems like something that you’d want to write about, add it to your list of keywords. And move onto the next step.

Sort Keywords Based on Difficulty

Your first step is to figure out the keyword difficulty of each term on your list.

Fortunately, every major keyword research tool on the market, like Semrush, has a keyword difficulty score that takes the first page competition into account.

You can analyze keywords one by one or input up to 100 of them at once.

Either way, you’ll get an idea of how hard (or easy) each keyword is to rank for.

You can usually filter out a good chunk of keywords based on keyword difficulty alone.

For example, if your website is brand new, it doesn’t make sense to try to rank for super competitive keywords with a KD of 90+.

Choose Keywords With Solid Search Volume

At this point your list of keywords should be A LOT shorter than when you first started.

Which is good.

Now that you’ve zeroed-in on low-competition terms with high CPCs, it’s time to actually choose the first batch of keywords that you’re going to create content around.

And to do that, you want to go after keywords that get a decent amount of searches every month.

What’s a “decent amount” of monthly searches?

Just like with CPCs, “low” and “high” monthly search volumes are relative to your niche.

So I recommend looking at the search volume numbers for your list of keywords.

And you’ll quickly get an idea of what “high” and “low” is for your industry.

Then, choose a keyword that has the best combination of:

• Keyword competition
• CPC
• Monthly searches

For example, with this list of potential keywords, the keyword “link building” has a high CPC and search volume… but it’s way too competitive.

On the other hand, this keyword isn’t super competitive, has a high CPC and gets a decent number of searches every month.

Of course, you don’t need to go through your list manually like this. You can always filter out keywords with high levels of keyword competition and super low search volumes.

Figure Out That Keyword’s Search Intent

Back in the day I’d write content that I THOUGHT would rank on the first page of Google.

Sometimes I was right.

But most of the time I was wrong.

Today, I take all of the guesswork out of the equation.

Specifically, before I write a single word, I figure out my target keyword’s Search Intent.

For example, some time ago I wanted to rank for the keyword “local SEO”.

So the first thing I did was a search for that keyword in Google… and analyze the first page results.

(I paid special close attention to the top 3 results, because that’s where most of the clicks are.)

And I quickly noticed that most of the content on the first page were guides.

Which told me that people searching for “local SEO” didn’t want a list of tips, a case study… or any other content format. They wanted a complete guide.

Make Your Content 10x Better Than What’s Out There

Creating content that matches Search Intent is one thing.

But for your content to rank above the first page competition, it needs to be better than what’s out there.

WAY better.

Yup, I’m talking about “10x Content”.

What’s “better” depends on the content that you’re competing against.

For example, in the case of my post about local SEO, I made my content better by adding custom visuals that explained tricky concepts.

And used more real-life examples than most of the other sites that were on page 1.

Write a Title Tag That Stands Out

When someone’s scanning Google’s first page results, they rely largely on title tags to figure out what they should click on.

And when you write a title tag that stands out, you can get tons of clicks (even more than the sites that rank above you).

You can easily see if your title stands out using CoSchedule’s free headline analyzer tool.

Just pop your headline into the tool…

…and you’ll get a score along with a list of detailed recommendations.

Use Big Font

Font size is an underrated part of what makes up “great content”.

Specifically, I recommend using body font that’s AT LEAST 15px. And you might even want to test out 17px or 18px font.

That way, your content is super easy to read no matter what device someone is using. When you use a font that’s 15px, there’s no need to squint, pinch or zoom. The content is big enough for the vast majority of people to read comfortably.

Medium.com is my model for large, readable font.

Frontload Your Keyword On Your Page

This is a simple little SEO tip that I’ve found makes a difference.

All you need to do is write your keyword somewhere in the first 100 words of your page.

(Preferably in the first few lines.)

Why does this work?

Well, according to my own testing, Google puts a little bit more emphasis on words and phrases that show up towards the top of a webpage.

So when you put your target keyword early on, it emphasizes to Google that your page is about that specific topic.

Sprinkle In Related Keywords

Related keywords are also sometimes referred to as “LSI Keywords”.

Basically, these are terms that tend to “show up” next to your target keyword.

For example, let’s take a look at this post from my site: “Local SEO: The Definitive Guide”.

As you can probably guess, the keyword that I’m trying to rank for with that post is “Local SEO”.

So in addition to using that term a handful of times on my page (more on that next), I also added a few related keywords to the page.

That way, Google and alternate search engines can see that my page covers my topic in-depth.

You can easily find related keywords using Google Images.

Just enter a keyword that you want to rank for.

And take a look at the little tags that Google suggests.

These are words and phrases that Google considers closely tied to the keyword that you just searched for. And if you want to use a few of these in your content, it can help Google better understand your page’s topic.

Focus On Keyword Frequency

Back in the day, people would literally measure their keyword density: the percentage of text on a page that was dedicated to a single keyword.

(I was one of those people. I’m old… 😀 )

Now:

Google probably doesn’t use keyword density anymore. But that doesn’t mean that you should forget about using your target keyword on your page. It still matters.

But instead of worrying about keyword density, I recommend focusing on Keyword Frequency: how many times your keyword shows up on your page.

For example, take this page on my site that’s optimized for “SEO best practices”.

That page is 3,091 words. But I only use my target keyword 10 times on that page. Which is a super low (.003%) keyword density.

But because my keyword repeats 10 times, my keyword frequency is 10.

Which is more than enough for Google to understand that my page is about that specific keyword.

(Especially considering that the same keyword is in my page’s URL and title tag.)

Social Media Promotion Done Right

Is social media a great way to promote content?

It can be. If you do it right.

Unfortunately, most people just spam links on Twitter… and wonder why no one clicks over.

(I’m not judging. I used to do the same exact thing.)

If you want people to SEE your social posts, you need to get around social media algorithms’ biases against links.

You see, social media sites want to promote “native content”: content that’s original to their platform. And more importantly, they love posts that keep users ON the platform.

Which means that you want to add some native content to your social media posts. When you do, your organic reach will be MUCH higher.

Let’s look at a quick example.

A while back I wanted to promote one of our industry studies. But instead of just posting a title and link, I included a quick summary of what we found in a Tweet.

Which helped that Tweet get literally 5x more clicks than my average tweets. Part of this was the algorithm. But part of this Tweet’s success was that it had some interesting stuff in the Tweet itself. That way, people could Retweet it without needing to click over and see the post.

I do the same thing on Facebook and LinkedIn. Instead of just posting a link, I write a little compelling story first.

That way, I give social media algos some native content.

Which leads to thousands of views on every post.

And, more importantly, significant amounts of traffic.

Permission-Based Outreach

When I first got started with email outreach I’d blast out lots of messages like there was no tomorrow.

Today? I’m MUCH more careful about who I send to and how I send it.

Specifically, I’ve started to use an approach called “Permission-Based Outreach”.

Here’s how it works:

First, find someone that’s legit interested in your content’s topic.

Note: this isn’t somebody that mentioned your topic once in a blog post 18 years ago. You’re looking for people that consistently write about your topic.

You can easily find these folks using an underrated feature inside of BuzzSumo called “Influencers”.

To use it, search for a keyword that describes what your content is all about.

And BuzzSumo will show you folks that tend to write about that same topic on their blog.

Then, reach out with a permission email, like this:

This email lets the person know that you have a post coming out (or that just came out) on a topic that they’re interested in. And instead of shoving a link in their face, you ask them if they’d like to see it.

And when they say “sure!”, you can send them your link.

If your post is a good fit, you’ll find that many of the people that you email will be happy to share it with their audience.

Build Links From Broken Links

Broken Link Building is one of my go-to link building strategies.

To use this approach, you first need to find a page that you want to get a link from.

In my experience, pages with lots of external links on them (like a resource page or list of “best posts”) work best. In fact, I usually don’t even bother with traditional blog posts.

Then, once you’ve found a page with lots of outbound links, run Check My Links on that page.

And, if you’re lucky, you should find at least one broken link on that page.

When you do, use Hunter.io or another email-finder tool to find the best person to contact on that site.

And let the person know about their dead link (or links). And offer up your content as a potential replacement.

We recently used the Broken Link Building approach to build some really nice backlinks to Exploding Topics.

Because we sent SUPER targeted outreach emails, this little link building campaign worked super well:

Go On a “Podcast Tour”

A podcast tour is where you go on a bunch of podcasts as a guest.

This is similar to a large-scale guest posting campaign. But instead of publishing guest posts, you appear on podcasts in your niche.

You might be wondering: “I’m not a famous influencer or blogger. Why would a podcast host want to interview me?”.

Well, as I outlined in my guide to off-page SEO, you don’t need to have an audience for this to work: Daniel got interviewed on 60 podcasts even though his site was brand new.

Audit Your Site for SEO Problems

Yes, you CAN do an SEO site audit on your own.

In fact, tools like Screaming Frog exist for people that want to run DIY audits.

These tools are great… if you’re already an SEO expert.

But the problem with a tool like Screaming Frog is that it doesn’t dive into what the problem is or how to fix it. They only provide basic information (like the type of error).

Which is why I recommend using a more user-friendly SEO tool, like the site audit feature inside of Semrush. Or something user-friendly that specializes in SEO audits, like Raven Tools.

No matter what tool you go with, they all work pretty much the same way:

You enter your domain into it… and the tool will scan your site for technical SEO problems.

And depending on your site, you may find issues with duplicate content, page loading speed, robots.txt configuration, and more.

Once those issues are fixed, it’s time to head over to the Google Search Console…

Optimize Your Site Structure

Now that you’ve fixed your site’s technical SEO problems, it’s time to go on offense. Specifically, you want to set up an SEO-friendly site architecture.

Your site’s architecture is important no matter what type of site you run.

But if you’re in charge of an ecommerce site (or any site with 10k+ pages), architecture is SUPER important.

At a high-level, your goal should be to make your site as “flat” as possible. In other words, you want it so all of your pages are about 3 clicks away from your homepage.

For example, if you go to PetSmart’s site, it only takes 3 clicks to go from their homepage to a product page.

Which is exactly how you want your site’s structure to be.