In Episode #66, Neil and Eric sit down to discuss the fundamentals of effective keyword research. They’ll talk about what tools you should use, why your focus should be on the quality of your content than the quality of your keywords, and how heavy, thoughtful blogging can seriously amplify your website ranking.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:28 – Today’s topic: How to Do Effective Keyword Research
• 00:52 – Eric recommends Google Keyword Finder
• 01:22 – Neil uses Ahrefs
  • 02:01 – Ahrefs shows you keywords your competitor gets traffic for and their rough rankings
• 03:15 – Create better content using Brian Dean’s Skyscraper Technique
• 03:32 – Optimize title tags
• 03:49 – Ahrefs added new features
  • 03:52 – Content gap analysis
• 04:16 – Two free tools: Ubersuggest and Google Trends
• 05:15 – Don’t over analyze with keywords
• 05:29 – Traffic doesn’t come from just one keyword
• 05:55 – Neil and Eric are heavy on blogging
• 06:48 – Don’t just think about the keyword, think about the content you should be writing
• 07:01 – Quora
• 07:11 – Twitter
• 07:17 – The importance of long-tail keywords
• 08:05 – That’s it for today’s episode!

3 Key Points:

1. Creating better content will help you rank.
2. It’s easy to over analyze keywords.
3. Great keywords—even long-tail keywords—aren’t going to be a cure-all.

Resources Mentioned:

• Google Keyword Finder – Online tool for keyword research Eric recommends
• Ahrefs – What Neil uses for his keyword research
• Brian Dean’s Skyscraper Technique – Guide for better content creation
• Ubersuggest – Tool that shows different permutations for analysis
• Google Trends – See keywords that trend up and down
• Quora – Tool where you can look up questions that can be used to base your blog post
• Twitter – Search for questions people are talking about in the space

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