5 builders who never spoke to each other

Shortlist terms nobody strong is defending

Paid tools are optional here. Put a topic into a free planner, shortlist five to ten phrases with low competition that still draw a few hundred searches a month, then search each one yourself and only proceed if at most a couple of results come from major sites and you can clearly write something better. Sorting by what is rising over the last quarter beats sorting by volume.

The method

1. 01

   Keyword research does not need paid tools: put a topic into Google Keyword Planner and shortlist five to ten keywords that have low competition and still get 100 to 1,000 searches a month.

2. 02

   Before writing, search the shortlisted keyword yourself. Proceed only if at most one or two results come from major sites and you can clearly write something longer and better.

3. 03

   Start every article with keyword research and turn the research into a brief before any writing happens.

4. 04

   Switch to a different keyword if the outline the tool produces is weak, rather than forcing an article out of it.

5. 05

   Sort candidate keywords by what is rising over the last quarter rather than by volume, and you get ahead of everyone sorting by relevance.

What it returned

• 90

  SparkToro V2 calculates trending on the last 90 days of a term's history and shows the volume history in a sparkline, which Rand Fishkin contrasts against competitors watching only the highest volume terms.

• 60,500

  The next target chosen was habit tracker, a parent keyword with 60,500 monthly searches.

• More than half of one enterprise software company's list of keywords to rank for had under ten monthly searches, low enough that Google reports a dash instead of a number, and nobody there was tracking marketing or sales results.

Sources

• Episode 143: SEO & AI Content Creation for Freelancers, with Tim Davidson - Double Your FreelancingTim Davidson · doubleyourfreelancing.com · AI-Generated Summary: · 2024-07-01
• SparkToro V2 is Finally Here. It Can Do Incredible Things for SEO, Content Marketing, PR, and Ad Targeting. - SparkToroRand Fishkin · sparktoro.com · C) V2 reveals the search keywords, related questions, and trending searches any audience uses · undated
• How to Make $2,000/Month with a Personal Development BlogLidiya K · failory.com · Which are your marketing strategies to grow your traffic? · undated
• Should You Hire a Freelancer or a Consultant?Greg Kogan · gkogan.co · 2015-11-18
• Pain-Point SEO: Create Content That Drives ConversionsPreetam Nath · preetamnath.com · Presenting my 1 month update · 2020-11-08