Content is king, right?
I think we all pretty much agree with this saying.
But how is content organised on a site? Specifically, how do SEOs go-about organising content on a site so search engines find, index and rank it when search queries are made?
Let’s delve into this, today.
SEOs associate keywords to topics, topics to content, and content to pages.
Pages are identified by URLs.
As such, an SEO would determine a topic warrants its own page, depending on the keyword being targeted.
Let me break this down…
Keywords are what people use to search for something, right?
Let’s refer to that something as ‘information’, and let’s say they use Google to search for that information.
So, when people search for information, they expect Google to provide them with sites that contain the information that they seek.
Now, the information they seek is surmised with the keywords they use to search.
The websites listed are listed because they show they have the information sought after.
One of the ways they show this is by targeting the keywords the searcher uses to search for the information they seek.
In other words, a website containing the information a searcher seeks, uses the keywords the searcher would search with to show to Google that they have the information, so that Google lists the site’s page containing the information when the searcher searches for it.
How do websites know what keywords people use to search for something?
By carrying out keyword research. I’ll expand on this process another time.
For now, just know keyword research is carried out by the website to determine what is targeted on the site.
Now, targeting a keyword isn’t simply having the keyword on one’s site. It requires understanding what a searcher is seeking when the keyword is searched for.
This is why you hear SEOs talk a lot about search intent.
This understanding of a searcher’s search intent is crucial because it leads to the way keyword targeting is grouped.
And by grouped, I mean grouped into topics.
Why do keywords need to be grouped into topics?
Grouping keywords into topics is an approach SEOs use to determine the content a site should create to attract more traffic, and also to determine where the content should be placed on the site.
Typically, the one-word keywords require a lot of content about it to satisfy the searcher seeking information about it.
Let’s take the keyword ‘dresses’, for example.
If someone searches with this keyword, what could they possibly be seeking? Dresses, right?
Can a site like ASOS show the searcher they have a variety of dresses on their site?
Yes! Even if they had just one page full of dresses, the page would satisfy the user’s interest.
Now, let me ask you this – how can ASOS show Google that they have dresses on their site?
By targeting the keyword and treating it as a topic for content.
You see, because the word ‘dresses’ is so broad, there’s a lot that can be said about it.
As such, the keyword in itself is a topic that can be broken down into several pieces of content.
You could have ‘red dresses’, ‘black dresses’, ‘summer dresses’ and many more all within the topic of ‘dresses’
In fact some of these themselves can be further broken down to sub-topics.
So ‘summer dress’ could have the topics of ‘sundresses’, ‘beach dresses’, and on, and on.
The more the site can cover the topic of dresses, the better.
Why?
Because this addresses an important aspect of search.
The aspect of showing you are an expert and an authority of a topic that’s relevant to your site.
You see, for a site to be listed in the SERPs, they have to show they are the best site to be presented to searchers when they search for information that the site is relevant for.
To create content, you need topics.
To have topics to cover, you need keywords – targeted keywords.
How do you know what keywords to target? By carrying out keyword research.
With keyword research you get to identify the topics, based on the keywords themselves.
So, with a keyword like ‘dresses’, you have the topic with the keyword itself – because it is a broad area to cover.
You can also tell a keyword is a topic by the search volume, or search demand.
The higher the demand, the broader the area, which means the keyword itself can be used as a topic.
Keywords that have lower search volume, the more longer tail terms, for example, can be grouped into topics, rather than having them individually be topical areas.
This organisation, of keywords and topics, makes content creation easier.
And more importantly, it makes content organisation easier.
Why?
Because it provides insight to how content on one’s site should be structured.
The pages that are created are decided upon from such insights.
The keywords that are targeted on the pages are decided upon from such insights.
The way the URLs are structured are decided upon from such insights.
The entire strategic approach to the site architecture is informed by the chosen content topics, which derives from insights gathered from the keyword research.
This is why keyword research is such a valuable step in your content creation process for your website.
