MOZ’s Tom Casano has published ‘Advanced Guide to Keyword Clustering’. The guide offers tips on performing keyword research and prepare the content. Casano says, “To grow your organic traffic, you need your content to mirror the reality of what users are actually searching for. Your content planning and creation, keyword mapping, and optimization should all align with the market. This is one of the best ways to grow your organic traffic. Why bother with keyword grouping? One web page can rank for multiple keywords. So why aren’t we hyper-focused on planning and optimizing... [...]

The second generation of the Traffic Xtractor software is now available. Use it to find keywords that you can rank for, possibly even on page 1. This software builds your rankings both on Google and on YouTube. And now, in version 2.0, in Bing. The added advantage of this new software is that with it, you can build your rankings without requiring any backlinks so you can start generating traffic right away. That’s worth repeating: It finds Zero Competition keywords that you can rank for in minutes, without creating a single backlink. So, for example, imagine being able to upload a simple... [...]

Search engines play a pivotal role in getting you web traffic. By optimizing the search engines in the right manner with the proper selection of keywords you can win at SEO. Entrepreneur contributor Jayson DeMers has shared five tips to help marketers select right SEO keywords. DeMers says, “Keywords are a critical component of the strategy; optimizing your site for specific ones gives you the power to control which searches you rank for (and therefore who your target audience is). Accordingly, adjusting your keyword distribution gives you power to change your campaign over time. To be... [...]

Jacob Baadsgaard says, “Ever feel like AdWords is one giant juggling act? You cut your cost per click, only to watch your conversion rate drop. You increase lead volume, but those leads don’t turn into sales. You finally boost sales, but now your cost per click is unprofitably high… When does the madness stop? With all of these apparently conflicting priorities, it can be easy to drop the ball a few times. Or, worse still, you might feel like AdWords isn’t worth the effort, throw your hands in the air and quit. However, there is a way to juggle all of your marketing goals —... [...]

Dmitry Dragilev says, “It’s tough out there for SEOs and content marketers. With the sheer amount of quality content being produced, it has become nearly impossible to stand out in most industries. Recently we were running content marketing for Pipedrive, a sales CRM. We created a content strategy that used educational sales content to educate and build trust with our target audience. This was a great idea, in theory — we’d educate readers, establish trust, and turn some of our readers into customers. The problem is that there are already countless others producing similar sales-focused... [...]

In the latest episode of Moz.com‘s podcast series, Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin addresses how to do competitive research that will provide data that will enable you to improve your own SO position by responding to what you find in the competitive data. Fishkin reports, “By comparing top pages data from multiple sources against one another, you can get some really cool, powerful advanced SEO opportunities in your content and keyword targeting.” Fishkin identifies five bits of data that that can be found by analyzing competitive sites and that will help you: 1. Top pages by number... [...]

Larry Kim says, “Look, I get it. For the longest time, PPC marketers and SEOs alike have been segmenting brand campaigns and content (those with trademarks and company names) from more generic search terms. After all, branded keywords tend to be “unicorns” — in PPC, these are keywords which generate ridiculously high CTRs (click-through rates) (40, 50 or 60 percent) and Quality Scores (9 or 10); in SEO, these are keywords that rank at the top of the SERP. Meanwhile, non-branded keywords perform like donkeys — in other words, average at best. While branded vs. non-branded is an interesting... [...]

Carson Ward says, “Knowing how to find and effectively use keywords is probably the most important skill for an effective search marketer. Smart keyword planning and tracking should also heavily inform content planning and strategy. Unfortunately, most keyword research is done on the fly as a new page is created. Rather than helping marketers find new opportunities and plan strategically, keywords are usually found and applied to existing posts and in-flight projects. If you’re an SEO or content creator and don’t have a living, regularly referenced keyword map, this post is for you.... [...]

Britney Muller says, “Keyword research, the blueprint to any successful SEO strategy If you’ve been doing keyword research for a while, you’ve probably fallen into a routine. And that routine has likely been recently disrupted… thanks, Google. If you’re new to keyword research, getting comfortable with new keyword research tools will come more easily to you. Lucky pups. But us change-averse old dogs can still learn new tricks when we need to. Are you ready to see which tool is right for you? –Woof. My hesitations about writing this article: I’m new to Moz and don’t... [...]

Stoney deGeyter says, “Ever since Google rolled out Hummingbird in 2013, there has been some question about the value of keyword research. Moving from a keyword-focused process to a topic-focused process has led some to devalue the long, arduous process of keyword research. Many wonder if it’s even worth the time. After all, if Google no longer looks at keywords (Hummingbird), and people no longer search with keywords (voice search), we don’t need to research keywords, right? Wrong! As with most predictions of the death of anything related to web marketing — how’s that fork in guest... [...]