Aligning your Keyword Research with your Business

bybaughsten

734 followers

3 years ago

Recently, I was getting bummed out from what appeared to be a downward trend in traffic. I was writing good content that was getting indexed and ranked, but still I was not getting a lot of traction.

It hadn't occurred to me that my audience didn't care about my "great" content. I was writing about ideas that pertained to my niche (Options Trading) as clearly and concisely as possible, but that didn't seem to matter.

Obviously, I was missing something very important.

The one thing I was missing was my lack of clarity about my business. I hadn't clearly defined my niche. Oh, I thought I had defined it. But when I began to dig into the analytics, I began to see a pattern that surprised me.

I had been trying to write about Option Trading "concepts". All the nuts and bolts about Puts and calls, the "greeks, implied volatility, all the basic building blocks that I thought anyone new to options trading should "know" to be able to trade effectively

But, oh contraire, mon frere. My audience was telling me they couldn't care less about the nuts and bolts. They wanted "strategy" ideas. They want all the action stuff. They wanted to know how to "do" something. They wanted to Trade. And in their mind trading" is "strategy" pure and simple.

Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with just putting on trades. Options trading is about trading. Of course. And from my experience it really helps to know the basics. But that is me caring about the basic. It's not my audience caring about it at all at least not yet.

And when I began to revamp my content in the direction of strategy, I saw my traffic increase dramatically. Of course I add important disclaimers. Option trading is risky business, if you don't know what you are doing.

This brings me to the definition of "keyword research" as stated by Greg Gifford in his SEMRush intro to Keyword research course.

He defines Keyword Research as "The process of discovering the keyword phrases related to your business that users type into search engines. Keyword research is figuring out how people will potentially find you online".

It hadn't occurred to me to think about "keyword research" in terms of my business. And I know that sounds strange. But as I reflect on the idea it makes perfect sense.

If I want to write about Options theory, I'm going to be sitting by the side of the road with a cup until my hindquarters turn blue.

My business (my niche) is what I sell, promote or talk about. And only I can decide what that is. But that business idea needs to align with a target market who will find it valuable enough to want more.

How we present our business ideas to our target market is very important.

I thought my market wanted" to know" all things 'Options Trading' related. So, I looked for and found Keywords that filled all the parameters- decent monthly search volume, low competition.

But those keywords didn't budge the interest meter one iota. In fact they wanted "to do" things Options related and this primarily involved strategies and putting on trades.

I'm finally learning how to market to my target and give them what they want. At the same time I know what is needed in addition to only strategy.

You can't force feed the whole pie. It has to be served up in tasty pieces one slice at a time.

Giving your audience what they want and leading them to what they need is a delicate balance. But oh, so rewarding.

Until next time

Be well