SEO Crash Course

How SEO Works

SEO stands for search engine optimization and is the best way to get organic traffic from Google.

This means you optimize posts for specific keywords so that your article or page appears among the first few results when someone is googling it.

For instance, you might want to appear at the top if someone googles:

“how to invest as a beginner.”

Statistically, only the first 5 to 10 search results get any traffic. If you’re below that, you’ll get hardly any clicks.

So, the goal is basically to rank within the first 3 results.

There are a few things that determine where your page will appear for that specific search query. The most important ones are:

• Exact search query is included in the article

• Search query is answered properly

• Established site with a good reputation

If you’re just starting out, you won’t have the third criteria. This is why we’re looking at a strategy today that will help you rank for keywords even if you haven’t published any articles yet.

How to Find Keywords

When you want to write an article in an SEO-optimized way, you need to write with keywords in mind.

But you can’t just take the first search query that comes to mind and write about that. Because most short keywords like “investing” or “retirement planning” are way too competitive.

As a newer website or a website that hasn’t published a lot of content yet, it’s impossible to rank at the top for such keywords because there are hundreds and thousands of more established sites that have already covered that.

They have more authority because they have already published lots of valuable content.

So, you need tools to find keywords that are less competitive and, therefore, easier to rank for.

Here are a few free or very cheap tools to get you started:

• Google Trends: Explore trending topics within wealth management

• AnswerThePublic: Discover what questions people are asking related to your focus topics

• Keywords Everywhere: Get search volume data and find related keywords

Keyword Golden Ration (KGR) Method

The KGR method is a great strategy to find non-competitive keywords that still get some search volume.

For this strategy, we’re looking for long-tail keywords.

These are keywords of more than 2 words, essentially more like a phrase. The longer the keyword, the more specific it is.

And the more specific, the fewer people search for it, obviously.

This means it’s not worth covering for a big, established site.

Often you still get a couple of hundred clicks for these specific keywords per month, though. And if you publish new articles each week, you’ll soon have thousands of page views, allowing you to then go after slightly more competitive keywords.

So, here’s how the KGR method goes:

Allintitle results / search volume (<250) = KGR below 0.25.

For instance: 20 / 100 = 0.2.

It’s crucial that the search volume is below 250, otherwise the keywords are too competitive.

KGR Tutorial

So, here’s how to find the different parts for the KGR method:

Install Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a Chrome extension. So, just buy the bronze plan and install the extension. It will then automatically show you the search volume in Google.

Keyword

Finding a good keyword honestly just takes a bit of digging. Start with a topic that your ideal client is interested in, like retirement planning.

Then look at the autocomplete options that Google shows you. These are the bolded suggestions where Google tells you that other people are searching for it.

From there, you can either just go through the alphabet and look at what Google suggests. Or even better, look at what Keywords Everywhere suggests as related keywords.

Then you can just go through the list until you find a keyword with a search volume of less than 250.

Allintitle

Next, you need to get the allintitle search results. This shows you how many other articles have that exact search query in their title.

Just type in “allintitle:keyword”. No spacing. For example:

“allintitle:I am 50 and have no retirement savings”

Then simply take the number of results for your calculations. You don’t need to look at the articles showing up, that’s only relevant for the keyword without allintitle.

As you can see, this keyword would actually be a good fit. The search volume is a bit too high, but since the second result is a Quora-post, you might actually be able to rank for that.

We’ll cover why that’s relevant in a minute.

Keywords you can use

To help you get started, here are 6 KGR-compliant keywords you could use straight away:

• how to calculate money for retirement 1/50 = 0.02

• allowable expenses for employees 7/210 = 0.03

• non deductible expenses example 1/170 = 0.005

• deductible expenses examples 6/110 = 0.05

• self employed daily food allowance 2/90 = 0.02

• self employed moving expenses 1/90 = 0.01

Other Relevant Factors for SEO

Now that you found your keyword, there are a few other things you need to observe when writing the article.

Competition

One thing that the KGR method doesn’t really cover is what the competitors’ articles look like.

Because even if you get a KGR-compliant keyword, you might still not rank for it because the articles that are ranking at the top are either already extremely good or from well-established sources.

Here are a few things to look out for:

• Videos: If the first few results are videos, don’t bother creating an article about this term because Google tells you that people want to watch a video when typing in this search query

• First few results don’t answer search query: This is a good sign because it shows you that Google can’t find any more relevant results. This means that you could potentially rank high for this keyword if you do a better job at covering it

• Forum results: Now this is the jackpot. If you see forum results or results from Reddit or Quora at the top, it means Google can’t find any proper articles that cover this topic. A well-written blog post will therefore have a good chance at ranking high, even with a new website.

Reader first, keyword second

I know, we just talked so much about optimizing for keywords that you might think you’d have to stuff the keyword in as many places as possible.

That used to work, but not anymore.

You always need to write with a keyword in mind but put the reader first. No one should notice what keyword you’ve been optimizing for. Instead, you should weave it or variations of it naturally into the article.

Length

Google prioritizes articles that answer a search query completely. This means that related questions are also covered so that the reader basically only needs to read your article to get his question answered completely.

To do that, you need to write long articles. That doesn’t mean you need to produce a novel or artificially extend it.

But you should generally aim for about 1,500 to 2,000 words.

Include internal links

In order to get more authority for a website, you need to have links pointed to it. Because that shows Google that your website is a valuable, credited source that other websites refer to.

But since these links should happen naturally - buying links is a very bad idea - you can’t really do much about that.

What you can do, though, is link between your articles. So, whenever you mention a topic that you’ve covered in another article, link to that. And make sure to use the other article’s keyword in the hyperlinked text as much as possible.

But again, make it look natural.

For instance, this is what it could look like:

“If you want to learn more about retirement planning for 50 year old women we’ve got a whole article about that.”