If you want to earn a consistent income from your blog, you need to master the art of creating content that is perfectly optimized for search engines.
Great content that’s optimized for the right keywords, offers value to the readers, solves their problems, and gives them what they want can pull in millions of visitors every month from search engines.
But how do you create such content and optimize it the right way?
That’s what I’ll discuss in this article with a practical example.
Keep reading.
My Step By Step On-Page SEO Strategy
I now consider on-site SEO as one of my biggest strengths because I’m able to rank for so many different keywords with my articles that other people might not even think about when they set up their pages.
I’ve said this many times before. To get to a full-time income with Adsense, you need a lot of traffic.
Building a few sites based around a handful of 1000 searches/month keywords WILL NOT get you there. You need to target big keywords in big niches that have the potential of crossing 100,000 visitors per month.
Once you cross 100,000 visitors per month, it starts to become a really serious income.
But it’s tough to find keywords these days that get 100,000+ visitors per month.
There aren’t that many single keywords that get so many searches that are targeted at the same time.
The mistake I see with a lot of people is that they’ll target one keyword with their page. When I create a new page targeting a keyword, I have a list of about 5 to 10 variations that I target as well.
These are similarly phrased searches that should naturally rank well alongside the main keywords as long as I target them properly.
While a single keyword that gets 100,000 searches per month might be hard to find, it’s easy to combine similar phrases together to make your articles rank for EVERYTHING.
Here’s how.
Keyword Research: The Key To High Search Rankings
This is a little difficult to explain blindly so I’ll take you through an example.
Let’s say we wanted to write a post about kitchen renovations.
Instead of just jumping in and writing an article about kitchen renovations, I’m going to do some content planning based on keyword research.
I originally had kitchen renovation tips in mind as the keyword when I first thought of the niche.
First, let’s see what Google Keyword Planner brings back to see if that’s the best option.
Lower than I thought. Let’s see what else is available.
Now that’s more like it. Let’s shift to our focus to these bigger keywords.
Another reason why it’s so important to do your keyword research even if it’s a broad topic search.
Here are the keywords above listed in order of search volume:
- Kitchen designs – 90,500
- Kitchen ideas – 49,500
- Small kitchen design – 33,100
- Kitchen design ideas – 27,100
- Kitchen Remodel – 14,800
- Kitchen remodelling – 9,900
- Kitchen remodel ideas – 9,900
- Kitchen remodel cost – 6,600
A lot of people might look at that and say kitchen designs is the highest searched keyword so let’s target that one.
But we’re going to do it differently.
The days of creating micro pages around each keyword is over. What we want today is to fill our page with relevant and related topics around our keyword, essentially creating a giant resourceful page rather than a bunch of thin different ones.
We’re going to target everything. Instead of targeting our article for 90,500 searches per month, we’re going to combine everything and create our page to potentially target 242,000.
Combined with long tail traffic, this article has the potential to drive massive traffic to our site.
Breaking it down even further
We’re going to go one step further.
Another great place to check for popular searches that may not be returned in Keyword Planner is the Related Searches Suggestions.
These can be found at the bottom of the search results page on Google after you make a search.
Let’s search for a few keywords and see what it brings back.
Try it for a few different searches to look at various different results.
Already we have a bunch of ideas for our new page.
Okay, so looking at that, there are some keywords we might want to include:
Pictures, Photos, On a budget, counter tops, cabinets, update, before and after, condos
Find More Keywords With “People Also Ask”
The “People Also Ask” section in Google Search is an information goldmine if you’re looking for more keyword and topic ideas.
It lists the most common questions people are asking about a topic and looking for them on Google Search.
The screenshot above shows the common questions people have about kitchen designs. These are not keywords but broad topics that you can include in your content to make it more valuable.
You can use them to identify the points you need to cover in your article and also optimize it for position zero (rich answer snippet) by including them as H2 and H3 sub-headings and answering them one by one.
I personally like to include the most relevant questions from “People Also Ask” under a “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)” heading at the end of my articles. To give them more significance in terms of SEO, use the H3 tags for each question.
Secondly, use the FAQ Schema script on your page with these questions and their answers. It benefits you in a couple of ways.
- Google almost instantly indexes the pages that use Schema scripts.
- It gives you additional space in SERPs and helps your page stand out from the other search results (as shown in the screenshot below)
As you can see, the result with FAQ schema covers a lot more space on the search page, clearly stands out, and also appears more valuable. All these factors impact your search CTR and help you get more clicks to your site.
Create A Keyword Rich Title And Headline
The first thing I do is look at how relatable they are. This will take some judgement on your own to figure out.
From the top list, they are all combinable except for the last one “kitchen remodel cost” which I think we can turn into an article of its own. Designs, ideas and the root keywords can be combined quite nicely because they are all based around the same topic.
So taking out cost, let’s format our title first:
Small Kitchen Design & Remodelling Ideas
We’re doing this first (without looking at the Related Searches Suggestions) because they are the biggest keywords that we want to rank for.
Using the list of related searches
Now that we have a set title based on the big search keywords, let’s look at the Related Searches Suggestions.
Again, after checking which ones are combinable, I think pictures, photos, before and after can be used for a different post dedicated solely to images of before and after shots.
So we’ll leave those out.
But we can consider the other ones: cabinets, countertops, on a budget.
Let’s revise our title again to incorporate these in:
Old
Small Kitchen Design & Remodelling Ideas
New
Small Kitchen Design & Remodelling Ideas (On A Budget)
I decided not to add cabinets or countertops into the title because our article isn’t focused solely on those subjects. This is an article about kitchen design and remodelling ideas, not cabinets and countertops.
We’ll just target those keywords within our content.
Target The Secondary Keywords With Meta-Description
Lets target even more keywords with our meta description.
Design a beautiful new kitchen at a low cost, for people on a budget. Remodelling and decoration ideas for lighting, cabinets, countertops, and more.
Perfect.
Use A Search Engine Friendly URL
I like to keep URL’s short and simple. The days of stuffing your URL with keywords are long gone so I try to avoid that.
For our URL we’ll use:
www.domain.com/kitchen-design-ideas
Here’s what our search result should look like now
Looking good.
Use Different H1 and Title To Target More Keywords
One little trick I like to do is to make the H1 different from the Title to target even more keywords.
So our title is what will show up in Google’s search results.
The H1 is our main title tag on the page itself.
I’m sure everyone knows this already, but I’ll say it again: Use only 1 H1 tag.
I like to keep the title and H1 different to target more variations of the keywords we’re targeting.
Our Title:
Small Kitchen Design & Remodelling Ideas (On A Budget)
Our H1 Tag:
Cost-Effective Kitchen Design and Remodelling Ideas for Small And Large Homes
Not completely different, just using a slight variation of some of the keywords.
The other thing I do is adding the current year (or the next year if the year is about to end) at the end of the title.
There are two reasons for doing this.
Number 1, when people are searching for kitchen designs or any other renovation ideas, they usually look for the latest content and use the year in their search query as well.
So we’ll be able to rank for such keywords. You won’t find them in Google Keyword Tool or Ahrefs even becuase of recency and the fact they have a lower volume than other head keywords. But they’re still very useful.
Secondly, using the year in the title has a psychological impact on the searcher and improves your CTR because, as I said, people prefer recent content that has fresh ideas.
It’s a small change but can drive big results.
Add Image-Alt Tags To Rank For Image Search
Images and screenshots add a lot of value to a piece of content for both the searchers and Google.
It also gives you a chance to optimize your content for image search which can be a huge source of additional traffic to your site.
It’s also quite easy to do.
If you’re using WordPress, which you should be doing, just go to the image edit section in your media library, and add alt-text that best describes your image.
Use your primary, secondary, and related keywords in the image alt-text in a natural way that describes the image and the same time optimizes it for search. Also, use the same alt-text in the description section.
This is an often-overlooked optimization technique that can bring in a huge number of visitors to your site every month especially if you’re in a niche like kitchen designs where you need to use a lot of images of different kitchen models, designs and trends.
Use WordPress SEO By Yoast To Optimize Content
There are a few different SEO plugins out there, the biggest ones being All-In-One SEO and Yoast.
I choose to use Yoast because it’s just been what I’ve been using from the beginning.
It allows you to create custom titles and descriptions like this. All you have to do is fill them in.
For the H1, it will be whatever you put in here:
If you use WordPress, but aren’t using an SEO plugin, I strongly suggest you install Yoast or All-In-One to be able to easily control these kinds of things.
Are You Ready To Create High-Ranking Content?
As you can see, a LOT of planning and preparation goes into an article before writing it. Doing it this way, you can get so much more out of your content once they begin to rank.
This article alone, once it’s up and ranking, should drive at least 200,000 visitors per month easily. And that’s not even counting the long-tail traffic which can get pretty huge.
Of course, writing an awesome piece of content and getting high quality links is the next part in order to achieve this, but this is the way I prepare an article for massive search traffic before I even begin the content creation process.
looking forward to trying this! is the competition for those related keywords considered at all?
They are depending on the keywords taken from it. Usually, the search volumes from those keywords don’t come close to the main keywords. In the example above, they’re acting more as supplementary words in case people search using them.
Chris,
Do you write your own content or outsource?
Will you share with us the completed article from the above keywords?
I can’t wait to see how it is all put together.
Thanks
John
Hey John, for pages targeting big search volume keywords, I write all of those myself. I can’t seem to outsource properly where they’ll put in the amount of time and research into them like I can.
For smaller articles, I’ll outsource using sites like TextBroker and iWriter. I can’t reveal an article without revealing my sites, but the example I shows exactly how I set them up. The actual content part is just like any other article, just really well researched, well written, covering all the major points in-depth.
Hey Chris, thanks for your blog first of all, it’s difficult to overestimate the usefulness of it, a lot of direct-to-use guidelines, some of which could not even imagine.
And regarding your post and reply to John, so as far as you write main articles for big keywords yourself, then you have to become a real expert in your niche, which means great cost in time to gain knowledge in this area, am I right? So, do you have any unexpected ways to reduce the time of self-education or just learn a few pages of Google serp?
Hey Olli, thank you for the kind words.
You don’t necessarily have to become a real expert and be able to write these posts off the top of your head. You just have to do the research before you write them. Usually from other sites that wrote about the topic.
You do have to know enough to know what information is important and what you should really be writing in further detail. But that stuff is easy to pick up by looking over a few sources.
Hey, a little off topic…
I was wondering which WP theme do you use for this blog?
mike
Hey Mike, I’m using a custom theme I developed myself.
Thank God that I found the way to your blog. Really enjoy and definitely love it. 🙂
Thanks, Andy! 🙂
Thanks Chris, this is an eye opener for me.
Seeing your niche example “kitchen design ideas” made me wonder how can I find pictures for this article.
I mean, there must be like Idea A, Idea B, Idea C within that article. If you’re creating this article, how do you find pictures for each idea if you don’t have an original ones?
Do you prefer use other people images or not using images at all?
I use stock photos for most of my sites. For something like this – especially for before and after photos – you’re going to need to use other people’s photos kind of like the way http://www.freshome.com does. There’s a bunch of copyright debates this can start, but the best way is to get permission from the owners (which is easier and faster than it sounds) and give them a credit link.
Thanks, Chirag.
Two quick questions:
1. Do you build an email list with your major website? In case you don’t, why not?:)
2. Have you thought abought monetizing your site with affiliate offers instead focusing only on AdSense?
Thanks and good luck with your progress!
Hey Pat, I do set up email lists with most of my niche sites. Just basic popups through sumome and free accounts using mailchimp. I don’t do anything with them besides emailing them updates, but it’s nice to have in case I decide to change direction. There are a few affiliate programs I’m looking into to try promoting through the email list but not sure yet how they’ll perform.
Great info.
Do you give away any kind of lead magnet to build your lists, or do you just have a sign up form and say something like Get Updates or whatever?
Hey Paul, not at the moment. It’s just a simple “Join the newsletter. Get updates” opt-in form.
Really great info here. I can really see this website getting huge like SPI or SourceWave.
Some questions for you… When you create a site on the “Kitchen Design” niche and create a page with all those keywords, what pages or post do you make after that?
For example, would you create another page that’s targeting another major keyword with different variations? How would you create an authority site on a specific niche without basically rehashing your own content?
Thanks, Warren. Continue doing keyword research. There should more than enough things to write about without having to write about the same thing.
Great notes but I have an question how much keyword density we need to follow up in content part each keyword must have certain keyword density or we can have single time each one.Please do give us an example to use keywords on content
I don’t pay attention to keyword density. Just write naturally for humans, and your content will be so much better.
Great piece of information mate..
Looking to add same style in my post.
Will update you about the progress and results.
Cheers!
Awesome. Thanks for reading, Harry. Looking forward to hearing about your results with it.
Hello Chris,
I landed here from your Warrior Forum signature link. I have been reading most of your article and i am a newbie. Keep up the good work. I have a question about keywords to write about/target while writing your content. Do you target the high search volume ones or low ones – My understanding is that you target the low search volume ones so that you’ll have less competition and rank faster than the high ones. Please correct me If I am wrong? Thanks for the great job.
Emmy
Hey Emmy,
You should be targeting both high search volume and low search volume keywords. I target the high search volume keywords first because it eventually gets to a point where it ranks for most low search volume keywords without needing to backlink to them.
Hi Chris. Great article. I have been doing my content SEO using the methods above, but I have been seeing a lot of people also going to the “ad group” ideas in the google adwords. Was wondering if you ever use this section of Adwords to target for relevancy and how would you include it in your example above? thanks!
Hi Chris, yeah the ad group does help in a way in showing variations of root phrases. But it really only shows variations rather than suggest additional similar phrases. It’s not a bad way to find some long-tail keywords and to get ideas of additional root keywords you can enter into Keyword Ideas, but not really necessary for the method above.
Hello Chris,
A very useful site you’ve got here. I came here Facebook and I must confess that I’m hugely impressed. I’ve read more than 10 of your articles now and I can’t seem to stop reading more. Lots of awesome stuffs here :).
Seriously, it’s no doubt that you’re a master at what you’re doing, please do keep it up.
Please, do you normally make your niche sites a static home page or just a normal blog page? And what theme do you usually use in your Adsense niche sites? I understand that the success of Adsense also depends on your theme.
Finally, will you give up on a niche site idea if you discover that it already has huge competition?
Thanks a bunch man. I’ll surely be back 🙂
Thanks Theodore. For my sites, the homepage is usually a blog page. The themes I’m using are custom themes I developed myself. They’re just simple 2 column or 1 column themes, nothing fancy.
If the serps are unbeatable (i.e. has government/organization/official brand pages) then I’ll give it up. However, every keyword has high competition now after the Google updates. Every result is full of authority sites. So don’t be too set back by competition. It’s just something you’ll have to deal with.
Ok Chris,
Thanks a lot for the feedback, I really appreciate :). I will follow along your footstep. I’m thinking of starting a new niche site on health related niche but I’m still trying to figure out the angle I will focus on.
I’ll reach out to you if I need any further assistance. Keep on doing the good work bro.
BTW: happy new week 🙂
Thanks, Theodore. Best of luck.
Wow, I am enjoying and learning so much things with your site will definitely apply this tips and tricks 🙂
Awesome!
Great article, thanks for the info.
It appears that you don’t use, besides adword keyword tool, any of the other “competition” ranking tools such as long tail pro, remrush, etc.
Is that correct and if so, why.
Thanks again
-Michael
Hey Michael, I’ve just done everything manually since I started.
My biggest reason is that tools don’t know how to think and ask out of the box questions like a human can. Keyword tools can be helpful, but it’s essential to know how to do all the steps manually.
Hello Chris,
Great info and very helpful article. I just want to know how would you be able to rank in these most searched keywords especially when the competition is high and or medium. As a newbie, how would you outrank the oldies in this niche? How do you make an article that would outperform their sites? Thank you.
Cheers,
Ron
Hey Ron. The next part after creating content is promoting it and building links.
Yes Chris promoting is very important but competition for big keywords now is big. I want to ask one thing how long takes you to be indexed by google on big keywords? 1-2 or 6 months?
For my older sites, new pages are indexed within a day or two. Even for newer sites, it shouldn’t take more than 5-7 days at the longest.
Great tutorial! When you’re looking for new keywords or groups of keywords, what sort of competition stats do you look for? For example, using Long Tail Pro, I’ve always tried to look for keywords with a KC of 35 or less.
I’ve never really used kw tools and relied on their metrics. While it’s okay for long-tail keywords, for high search volume kw’s I find it a lot better to just look through each competitor site’s link profile and do the research manually.
Great articles. thank your for your hard work, Chris.
You said you write a big article that contain lots of high search volume keywords. then make backlink for this article page.
if this article contain 12 big keywords. when you make backlink for this page, what anchor text do you use? do you use these 12 keywords each onetime or always use the biggest keyword?
Thank you very much.
I don’t use keywords in my anchor text often. Only in cases where the site linking to me is very strong and I have control over the anchor text I’ll fit in the keyword here and there.
But usually, I go with branded keywords and variations. Don’t pay too much attention to using the keywords you choose in your anchor text, and that will help you in the long-run.
Hi,
The idea is great but don’t you think in order rank in the first page of google for such a high traffic keywords is very tough.
In my experience many people they look for high traffic keywords and write a blog post but eventually fail in pushing the page to rank in 1st page.
True, but most people don’t build the links required to rank for them.
Ranking without links?
You need to build links.
Thanks for the tip chris. I have recently started a new site healthy24x.com and I a trying hard to rank it. Will try to write posts keping this tip in mind and let you know my experience on it. Also I heard that google sandboxes a new site? Is this true?
No problem, Raj. Yeah, that’s true.
thanks I have been going through these post several times now as I try to replicate what you have said here. Will tell you my experiences.
Cool, sounds good.
Hi Chris,
Wonderful explanation.
If I go according to your strategy for SEO, then how much time would it take for Google to start ranking my website? Any particular idea?
Thanks
Depends on the keyword but anywhere from 1-3 months.
Hi Chris,,
I read in your other article that you advice to avoid niche in finance, education, make money online, and careers area. Instead, go targetting big volume search even if it is unconventional for us internet marketer.
I have one career niche in mind, total they’ll add up to 50k volume search,, should I go for it or choose casual/unconventional niche with 100k volume like hobby/entertainment niche for example ??
One more thing,, is it necessary to build your site with .com .net or .org ?? Can I do well with other free TLD domain such as .work .career etc ??
Thanks a bunch,, 🙂
TLD’s don’t matter. I prefer .com though.
EMD’s don’t matter anymore so it’s not that hard to come up with a good .com domain even if the one you want is taken.
Not all career niches are competitive, so it’s depend on your research. Good luck!
Chris,
Awesome article. I subscribed about 3 days ago and already like what I see/read.
I’ve been compiling keywords in my content for a while now. It felt kinda obvious.
What I didn’t consider was aiming for keywords in the 90K range (of course I wanted to). It just seemed daunting as a solo webmaster. Still, what you’re saying makes sense.
How do you build links? Im assuming its more than SEO/keyword research that helps you rank for 90K searched keywords.
Im looking to increase revenue and, honestly, challenge myself.
Thanks, RJ. That’s great that you’re already using this kind of strategy. For link building, the most effective strategies have been working best for me are different forms of outreach.
amazing posting Cris, I will follow your step for my blog.
Thank you very much
Wow, That’s a great tips. I really enjoy reading your article. That’s great for me to apply for my next posting! Thank Chris!
Thanks for your feedback 🙂
Finding high volume is easy. Finding high volume and lower competition is harder. After we’ve found it. The next is even harder. Creating content that is not our specialty and we don’t have the knowledge of. How to conquer this problems?
Let’s say a dog training niche. I don’t know anything about dog training. Should I put lessons, that I don’t even know of? Rewrite from other sites or books? Took their images? How can I be responsible with the information I put it out there?
Writing content is a different topic, but you can order the articles if you’re not comfortable writing them yourself.
Or, you could do the research and write as if writing a college paper.
Hi chris ,
Really amazed by your work ! In this post you have mentioned that you have been working in a seo and design firm and there your main jib is backlinking ..you also mentioned that in that process you have learned some extremely powerful not known to many ON SITE SEO ..could you make a post on that so that we can learn from it !!
Thanks
simeon
Sure, thanks Simeon.
i need to discuss with you about your opinion says that 100k traffic a month, honestly i have 50-300k daily raffic, but it worth less on adsense
Not making money with 50,000-300,000 daily visitors??
You’re doing something wrong.
Hey Chris,
Great article. One problem I often face is finding a good writer to write the content for my money sites. Where do you get your writers? I’ve tried iWriter but the quality I got doesn’t really fit my standards for an homepage article of a niche site. What else do you recommend?
Thanks in advance!
Textbroker has higher quality writers and their system works similar to iwriter.
Really awesome articles for the beginers…
Thanks for your tips. What’s your take on images and could you suggest some sources on finding engaging ones for niche sites? Thanks!
Hey Tom. You can view it here: https://www.buzzlogic.com/blogging/stock-photos/.
What about where the article is placed to be exposed to such traffic. Are you able to tell us this key piece of information. Thanks.
Once the article gets indexed and starts ranking, the traffic will be coming from organic search, at least that’s how I read it.
Thanks Chris
Jason, that’s right. Thanks for your feedback.
No problem, Seng.
Hello Chris!
Is the Post title (typed in the edit post section) autmaticly a H1? If so, do I need to put another H1 in the follwoing article text or start adding H2?
Great site and posts!
Thanks
Danijel
Hey Danijel, for most WordPress themes out there, it will automatically be an h1.
But double check just in case because I’ve seen some themes with silly things like having it wrapped around h4 tags.
Write click on your title and inspect the element to check.
Glad to help 🙂
hey chris ,very eager to see your october november income reports !!
Hey Simeon, I don’t think I’ll be releasing monthly income reports anymore. Might do a big one at the end of the year instead.
Hey Chris,
Why not? They do motivate, for me anyway.
Toki
It’s not really the type of content that helps people. Rather take the time to produce helpful tutorials instead.
What part didn’t you understand?
Hi, I would just like to ask, if I used Yoast. Where will I put my keywords? will I put it on focus keyword? and what if, I have plenty? Can tags be used to put my keywords? are tags consider as keywords? also how many keywords would you recommend to put? Thank you.
Nope, tags aren’t considered as keywords. They should be used simply for site organization when you have a lot of pages.
I mainly use yoast to control title, meta description, and indexing.
So I’m wondering how you manage to get a brand new wordpress site to rank against other sites that have been ranking high in google for so long for such competitive keywords?
I checked out your broken link building page, seems hard to imagine a brand new site getting up the rankings by having one page on it and some backlinks to it. How long does this process usually take you to get high rankings and how many backlinks could that potentially require for such competitive keywords?
I could see maybe a super spammed parasite page but by the time it gets up the rankings I imagine it would just get taken down for breaching the terms of service. Curious how you get an article to rank.
Site age doesn’t overpower links, but there is a sandbox for brand new sites, and you should be building more than a single page. We’re not building micro-sites. BLB strengthens your domain authority overtime and makes it easier to rank pages across your entire domain.
There’s no set timeframe. Differs for every keyword and how competitive they are.
You’re right about spammy parasite pages not lasting very long. This method takes a little longer, but it’s long-term rankings as well.
Do you have an average of how long a site like this takes you to rank and with an average amount of backlinks?
Depends on the keyword and competition, but usually around 20-40 links is more than enough.
Excellent article Chris… Do you have a detailed post on “Backlinks”, “PBN”…
Would love to read that…
I wrote a few posts about it. Will be writing more soon.
Hi, Chris,
I’ve got a couple of questions – could you answer them, please:
1) Do you use WordPress for your sites or static html sites as well?
2) If using WP, what do you prefer for your pillar articles – posts or wp pages?
Hey Denis,
1. Yup all my sites are in WP.
2. Posts or pages, doesn’t really matter.
Hi Chris,
I’m a subscriber to your blog. Love to read your posts. I just have two queries:
1) How (why) important is it to hide IP while creating PBNs which will be pointing to our money site?
2) When will your next SEO class start. I’ve already entered my email to get notification about the start of the course.
Regards,
San
Thanks San 🙂
1. For PBNs… very important. There are a lot more footprints you need to cover than just having different IP’s though.
2. It’ll be open mid January.
Just reading this today for the first time, great article! Am I right in thinking you would write a really long article on the homepage combining ALL the keywords from the list, obviously using them in various places throughout the article? And this actually works to help it rank for those keywords? No issues with keyword density or over-stuffing?
Thanks, Amir! That’s correct.
How we can use like this niche with sites ? Should be every niche per site or can be used for a general site like buzzfeed and like these niches can be used in just one site ?
Can you explain this for me please. Thank you.
You can go either way, depending on the size of your niche and what kind of site you want to create.
Hi Chris,
Really awesome post 🙂
I just want to know what is the focus keyword? should we want to use the focus keyword in H1, Title, URL, Begining of the first pharagraph?
Thanks
Thanks Kiruba! Usually in the title, h1, and beginning of the first paragraph (depending on the keyword though).
Chris,
This article and your wikipedia post is gold! Question for you, how many keywords including variations are you looking at for your authority posts? Do you have a ratio of number of keywords to length of content i.e. 4,000 words and 8 keywords etc.?
Do you ever paginate the posts, like Jon Dykstra does?
I have to say, this site, fatstacksblog, and authority hackers are my 3 favorite authority creation blogs! Thanks again for creating this resource.
Thanks for reading, Justin 🙂
I normally note down all the bigger variations. Usually will be 10-20. More than that, and the keywords start to differ in meaning.
I’ve never tried using paginating articles, so can’t say about the effectiveness/results of it.
Thanks for reading, Karry 🙂
Thanks 🙂
The traffic estimates for the above keywords are local USA or global monthly searches?
That would be global.
Thanks Manny.
Hi Chris,
Your article help me a lot for my new website. Looking for more great articles from you.
Sincerely,
Conor
Cool! Thanks for reading, Conor 🙂
I can’t risk missing out any of your awesome posts. I read two of your articles and I’m already here to stay.
That’s by the way. Hey, I noticed your “focus keyword” is empty in the last screenshot example. Are we to keep this empty too?
Thanks Oluseye!
It’s up to you, really. It just helps to optimize the post for your keywords, but I prefer to do that myself rather than rely on the tool.
Thanks for this post. But honestly, I’m still finding so difficult to do proper keyword search. Its really frustrating. I can see from this post, that building an organic traffic have to do much with SEO and nothing more.
I hope you can recommend an article for me from this blog, post that discussed keyword search in details?
Thanks
Hey Uthman, here’s a post about the concept of niches in general: https://www.buzzlogic.com/seo/how-to-find-profitable-keywords/.
Hope it helps.
Hey Chris
All of your articles are great and easy to learn from. I have one question though. When writing titles why do we need to make every first letter a capital letter?
If I write Small Kitchen Design & Remodelling Ideas (On A Budget) does every word with a capital letter act as different keyword?
And if I write Small kitchen design & Remodelling ideas (On a budget), does “Small kitchen desing”, “Remodelling ideas” and “on a budget” act as different long tail keywords ?
Hey Bojan! That’s just a formatting choice. You don’t need to do that, but that’s generally the way titles are written. It won’t affect your search rankings.
Liked it! I never thought to play with all those options,
and the related search tip is great. thanks.
Cool! Thanks for reading Ilana.
is it possible to rank for 10 different keywords under one niche. to source out maximum traffic. for example: i rank for ten keywords which have a search of 1000 a month each. would i get 10000 searches for all key words combined
Yes! 🙂
the other thing is are links from fb, stumbleupon, twitter, ezine, considered in link building
Nope those are just social signals and ezine is an outdated method of link building that won’t affect your rankings much at all.
Hi Chris
As always, a fantastic post. I really like this method and it is very much useful to me to know, implement, practice and make it perfect.
Keep up the great work!
Imer
Thank you Imer!
Hi Chris !
I was so impressing after reading some of your blog posts and i do not want to miss a line to read in your post. 🙂 By seeing your awesome writing style and skill, could you please share how did you learn to write such this awesome writing style ?
Thank you for your great share and keep up writing great posts !
Cheers,
Alinda
Thanks Alinda 🙂
I don’t really know, actually 🙂 I would say read blogs like QuickSprout.com, Backlinko.com, and Videofruit.com.
They all have a writing style that I find pleasant and easy to follow.
Simple vocabulary, with short and concise paragraphs – with a lot of images.
Hello Chris,
That’s a great article ever read. But if this even work with any kind of niche?
Thank you.
Thanks Mani 🙂
I wouldn’t say any kind of niche. There has to be keywords sufficient search volume. Some niches just don’t have them.
Hi Chris,
Loving your Rank XL course!
I’m diligently working my way through and wondered how to structure my pillar post. Its 17k long and its about veganism).
So, do I do one huge scrolling page or sub divide it into smaller pages?
Thanks! For something that long, it’s better to separate them into pages – kind of like these ultimate guide formats: https://www.quicksprout.com/the-beginners-guide-to-online-marketing/
Nice Post .. I’ll try it to grow my site traffic
Cool, let me know how it works out Chandra 🙂
Real good work Chris. Also enjoying the step-by-step niche guide sent by e-mail. Thanks for the effort
Regards,
Thanks Metin! Glad to hear it 🙂
Chris,
I would like to thank you for this awesome contribution. I actually included it in my keyword research article for a niche industry. I think this ranks as one of the top 10 keyword articles imo.
Thanks again!
Thanks so much Glen! Really happy to hear that 🙂
Awesome. High five!
Chris,
By combining these keywords into a page, is it wise to reuse these keywords as separate blog posts that links back to this master article?
Yeah, but not so much to link back to this article, but more so because for some keywords, it will help to create a separate page targeting it.
Thanks for the info My name is Wayne. I’m new to this arena and found your info to be quite helpful. I haven’t published (launched) yet. Still trying to get a better feel for the direction that I want to travel in… I will certainly refer back..
Thanks Wayne. Best of luck.
For the first time in my blogging live i have not reads this kind of well worked post… true i do read alot but no this is one of a kind…. i really see alot of point from what Chris Lee saind…saying
CHRIS LEE
“You do have to know enough to know what information is important and what you should really be writing in further detail. But that stuff is easy to pick up by looking over a few sources.”
Thanks Andrew 🙂
i must say thank u sir,you have just thought me for free what other people would actually pay to give out,i never read any keyword article as great & clear as this and i am looking forward to Joining your Niche Site Course FREE mini class even if i have to pay.
Glad you like it 🙂
Hello Chris , This may look simpler but one has to be keen. I started using this method and my site started ranking.
Initially I used to go for keywords with low competion but now henceforth,I change the tactic.
Awesome!
Great article….. thanks
One question:
You said you make an H1 title different than the main title
You also said make sure to have only 1 H1
So, the main article title is already H1, how can you put another one that is different than the main?
The title is different from the H1. It’s what you see in the tab on your browser, and it’s what’s shown in search engines. The H1 is a header on the page.
Thanks so much for the informative articles. I’ve just started a new blog after a long hiatus in 2015, and I’ve got a lot to learn! 🙂
No problem, Jen! Good luck!
Hello Chris,
You’re great … I read your articles every day. When I discovered your blog, I pause on my site. Thank you very much for the informative and very comprehensive articles you share with us. Thanks to your site, I discovered how to choose a profitable niche and many of the things I just learned
But, I have a question after reading this article. In your example, at the Yoast WordPress level, you didn’t put a keyword on Focus Keyword box. Why?
how can google know the main keyword?
Thank you
Thank you for the kind words Oscar 🙂
I don’t put a keyword in there because it is just as a guide from Yoast to help you optimize your article. I like doing it on my own rather than check what the tool says.
If you’re not experienced with on-site SEO, I do recommend using it.
What about Keyword density? If I target a keyword/Phrase what should be its density?
Hey! Chris, I subscribed to your 10-day SEO course and I’m intrigued by the level of knowledge I’ve gathered on the 5th class alone. Thanks for these tutelage. Cheers!
Awesome 😀
Wow, this article is from 2015 but this method is still under utilized today. You were well ahead of the pack with SEO techniques. You just picked up a new follower. I’ll be looking for more tips to stay ahead of the pack myself moving forward.
Thanks man!
Sweet! Thanks, Ryan 😀
Nice work, in depth guide, am impress by the article. One thing i noticed, is the focus keyword not necessary? founds out noting is added.
Yeah, focus keyword is used as a guide to help people, but I prefer to just do it myself.
I am truly impressed with this. I am starting a new website and was planning to target small keywords on each post. But I guess I will have to go with piling related KWs together and form a massive article.
Thank you!
Glad it helped!
Holy shit, I like your blog! This is my first time here and I have already read 4 long articles. You absolutely gained my trust, as this is premium stuff right here. I am just starting out my blog, and by far this one stands out in a noisy world of “make money with affiliate marketing” BS where people make money from their low value courses instead of actual affiliate marketing. How ironic! Anyway, have a good day!
Thanks a lot, Al 🙂
Thanks Yurie!
Nice article….Don’t see what is your focus keyword for this in yoast seo…as you are targetting many keywords within a single post but would like to have clarity on which focus keyword you are entering in Yoast SEO ?. kindly confirm
I don’t use the focus keyword feature in yoast and prefer to do it all manually.
Hello Chris Sir,
I came across to your blog. One of the most helpful blog I found on keyword stuffing and research. One thing I want to ask you that, you have not mentioned the “Focus Keyword”.
May I know what is the Focus Keyword for this Example post you have described in this blog.
I mean does it necessary to add Focus Keyword? Bcz in Yoast SEO, there is a field for Focus Keyword. Thanks.
Focus keyword is only a guideline to help people who aren’t really experienced in SEO.
I don’t use the tool and prefer to control things like myself.
Man you are a genious. Thanks for this wonderful Share
Hi Chris
I found this information refreshing and certainly a great path to take, so wanted to ensure that this is still relevant from when you first wrote it?
Also regarding using your keywords in the title and meta description, does it not matter that you aren’t using the whole actual keyphrases you searched? Meaning that is it ok to just pick out the different words and combine them how you like, and then google will combine them from any order you use them?
I remember previous people’s teachings used to be that every key phrase had to be used ‘as it was shown’ within google keyword planner or related search results
Hope that makes sense Chris
Many thanks
Steve
Nice post Chris. Having gone through your Article I noticed that you didnt mention the average length of pillar posts.
Can you please talk on the length of your best performing pillar posts