While researching SEO strategy data recently, I uncovered some performance indicators that I though were worthy of sharing. This particular strategy is only valuable when pairing a trending topic buzzword, in this example, Chipotle, with a more niche long tail keyword that is relevant to both your title and content strategy. Creating informative and valuable content is vital. However, keywords can impact discoverability when embracing an objective-driven content strategy that focuses less on exact match keywords and more on keyword roots that are most valuable and descriptive to your brand and your audience(s) interests. In modern SEO, your keywords must be synergistic to your content strategy, messaging and objectives.
From an SEO and discovery perspective, a good blog post relies on three criteria:
- Valuable, well-written content
- A title that is both a headliner and summary of the post
- Clicks and shares
Most B2B companies focus their content strategy around niche topics and verticals. Therefore, many business blog posts have a limited shelf-life:
When a blog post is new, the post gets read, shared and when the sharing and clicks slow down, so does the interest to the post and consequently, the traffic and ranking. However, if a blog post sustains interest, Google is going to favor it’s search result page ranking, which in turn drives traffic back to your website over a much longer period of time due to more discovery:
So how do you create a content strategy that helps your blog posts generate and build sustaining traffic back to your website and build discovery?
- The content has to be interesting and valuable to your audience(s)
- Use content driven strategies in making the title and content highly relevant to each other
- Your post is easy to share, increasing your probability that it is shared on the web
Pairing a Buzz Word with a Niche Keyword
To discern the value of using this particular content strategy, I drilled down into Google Analytics data to compare two blog posts written around the same branded keyword that was generating a lot of traffic across the web. Last year, Chipotle was a hot topic in the media and general conversation following the launch of their sustainability cause campaign. This media buzz translated into a large spike in their organic search results, which has maintained organic search to over one million searches to their site per month:
Two blog posts were created around Chipotle on two different domains with different but similar content strategies:
By pairing the high ranking brand name “Chipotle” with a more niche keyword phrase created a long tail keyword within each title (Chipotle ad campaign in the first post and Chipotle cause marketing in the second), both posts rank in US search results on page one rankings nine and six months respectively after their publish date.
The Real Value of Niche Long Tail Keywords In the Title
Both posts have several common denominators:
- Neither of these long-tail keywords are very competitive
- Neither ranks in the top 100 keywords in their domain’s SEMRush results
- Neither generates more than 200,000 search results in Google
- Both posts were written more than six months ago
- Both have longer than average “time on site”
- Both use the same strategy of pairing a high volume keyword with a niche market keyword variant
- And most importantly, both continue to consistently send traffic back to their respective websites as much as nine months later
The volumes are different, but the patterns are similar. Each post continues to drive traffic with more than 90% of the traffic coming from organic search results. There are a lot of variables to a good content strategy. This is just one and only works if the title and the keyword within the title echo’s around what your post is written.
If you have any content-driven SEO strategy stories to tell, please share in the comments below.