Best Keyword Strategy for Lower-Authority-Ranked Domain
-
Hi,
What should a lower-authority-ranked blog (DA - 21) who is trying to increase general traffic focus on above all when selecting keywords: difficulty, monthly volume, opportunity, or priority? I know that all are important factors to consider, but I fear that without an already consistent following our new content will just get hidden behind more established domains if we select too difficult of keywords. I'd love to hear from someone who's built up a blog audience as to what strategy they used here.
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the suggestion (and the initial response). This was a really helpful explanation of what quality content entails!
-
Ross Hudgens has a good article that describes what it takes to be competitive.
-
What exactly did you mean by 'ability to compete' though?
Ability to compete is the ability to create spectacular content, promote it with titles and headlines that people will respond to and spontaneously share, and have a tribe that will do that for you, or an ability to ask for and get valuable links.
Most people can't do this.
Most who can do this only achieve it with a fraction of their articles - even though they work hard at every one of them.
A lot of people think that they have "good content". Perhaps an English professor would have given the writing and the presentation a "good grade" but that isn't enough. You need writing and images that people see and say... Wow!... then they share it because they want their friends to know what they have found. For that to happen you must have content that is at least one clear step above all other competition.
-
Thanks for the response! At this point we're primarily going to be doing informational. Our tribe is about 15,000 spread across various social media platforms (not so much email yet, unfortunately).
It's encouraging to hear someone say that it is indeed possible to rank for difficult keywords with good content--which I'm confident we can create--when there are already juggernauts out there. What exactly did you mean by 'ability to compete' though? And is there a difficulty score that would be considered too high right now for a beginner? I'm looking at publishing an article this week focusing on a keyword with a difficulty score of 39 and a priority of 46 (the highest score I've found for the topic). the competition for which would be some fairly established websites, including NBCNews. I've also looked at similar keywords with with lower difficulty scores, but they also have somewhat lower priority scores.
I look forward to your response.
-
I believe that the strategy is better determined by 1) the type of site you are working on (transactional vs informational); 2) the quality of content that you are best able to produce; 3) the investment that you are willing to put into the content; and, 4) the strength of your tribe.
For informational, you can pick and choose the keywords to where you have the ability and resources to defeat the best content on the web, or at least compete with it. If you don't have the content-producing ability or the ability to pay for it, your chances of success are greatly diminished. If you can compete with the best content of the difficult keywords then you should attack the biggest keywords where you have the ability to compete. Don't fear competition because where there is a lot of competition, there is usually a lot of traffic and a lot of money changing hands.
If you don't have the ability to produce or pay for highest quality content and intend to attack with prattle, then your chances of success are greatly diminished. Just sayin'.
In transactional, a good method is to publish content that is highly useful for the people who are about to make a transaction or have made a transaction and now need information. How to select the product, how to use it, how to fix it, how to enjoy it are very good fields for transactional websites. They earn respect of shoppers and earn respect of people with an interest in the products you are offering. They pull links, traffic, social engagement and make your site a "go to place" on the web.
Your tribal resource might be current traffic who will share your content or current social strength that will enable you to share and that sharing be spread. Here, again is where highest quality content succeeds and prattle is not worth much.
It's not about the authority that you have today... its the authority where your content can take you.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why am I ranking high for a keyword that is nowhere on my page?
There is a specific keyword phrase that I am ranking in the top 10 search results for. When I run page optimizer in Moz, my page is given a score of 73 and I'm predictably told I need to include this keyword somewhere on the page. This specific keyword phrase is not included anywhere on the page - not in image files, image alts, anchor text from inbound links (that I can find), text content, meta-titles or descriptions - it's nowhere. Meanwhile, a keyword phrase which Moz' page optimizer tells us we are scored 96 for we aren't even in the first three pages of search results for. What's going on here? On the surface, this seems to be telling me the Moz page optimizer is kinda...broken? Why am I ranking in the top 10 for a keyword phrase nowhere on my page? Thanks in advance for any help.
Moz Pro | | Closetstogo0 -
How do I change the update date for keywords ranking?
I need my data reports to be fresh every Monday morning. Now, the newest data dates from Thursday thx!
Moz Pro | | solarian0 -
Why have my rankings dropped on my keyword report but there is no change for the same keywords on google??
I received a keyword ranking report over the weekend, was horrified to see some of my keywords have dropped ranks by 20+ for some 😮 I checked them on google and they haven't moved (confused.com) Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Moz Pro | | Anthonykal-group0 -
How Long For New Keyword Rank Data?
I have a PRO account and added the initial keywords and got the immediate rankings for those. Then I added new keywords and those have not been updated. How long do I have to wait to get Keyword Ranking data on those keywords. I know it says they are updated every Friday, but does that mean I have to wait until next Friday for my first run of data on new keywords?? I ask because I have to present to a client before then and I require the data for that meeting. Any insight is appreciated.
Moz Pro | | mc418720 -
Strange Ranking On 1st Page Of Google For Competitive Keyword
Hey all, So, I've noticed a site ranking on the first page in Google for a keyword that I have been targeting for years. The keyword is "mixtapes" and pretty competitive. The site, http://www.newyorkmixtapes.com is ranking around #4 in Google. It seemed odd to me so I looked into the site using some of the tools here. Open Explorer showed that they have minimal links. The actual site is pretty spammy also. Does anyone have any idea how this site ranked so high so fast? Is it ranking because I am located in New York? Does Google still put lots of weight on exact match domains? It's just been bothering me because it's a keyword that I put a lot of work into and then the site rolls around an ranks well for it with barely any backlinks. I just wanted to put it out there and see if I'm missing something obvious. Thanks everyone!
Moz Pro | | getrightmusic0 -
How to crawl the whole domain?
Hi, I have a website an e-commerce website with more than 4.600 products. I expect that Seomoz scan check all url's. I don't know why this doesn't happens. The Campaign name is Artigos para festa and should scan the whole domain festaexpress.com. But it crels only 100 pages I even tried to create a new campaign named Festa Express - Root Domain to check if it scans but had the same problem it crawled only 199 pages. Hope to have a solution. Thanks,
Moz Pro | | EduardoCoen
Eduardo0 -
Ranking better
Hello there, I am after some specific guidance on how to rank well for the keyword ‘Translation Services’. I have managed to get the site www.pstranslation.co.uk to page 2 of google UK for this key term. The difficulty is I seem to have run out of steam now on how to get higher rankings. After spending a considerable amount of time creating content and gaining links I managed to get the site from around page 15 on google uk to page 4 then to page 2. That’s where it seems to have stopped. I (think I) have got the onsite SEO pretty well nailed. I have got some good linkable content (http://www.pstranslation.co.uk/infog_languages.html,http://www.pstranslation.co.uk/language_resources_indus.html) and have plans to produce a more. Experience working within the language industry tells me that a top 3 position on page 1 for this keyword can very lucrative so my main focus of SEO is to rank well for this key phrase. There is a very good chance you reply will simply be get more (better) links and if it is that’s fine but is there anything else I can do? Am I missing a very obvious trick anywhere? Looking forward to your reply.
Moz Pro | | bigtimeseo0