Keywords, Its ALL Semantics!

I think I finally get it now.

Gaining a true and complete understanding of anything - especially if it’s on a complex subject like keywords where there are many controversial and conflicting opinions even among experts, information gaps, ever-changing algorithms, and loads of misguided and misinformation - takes a lot of work.

Sometimes true understanding isn’t even achievable.

A few months ago I asked the most prominent of several questions to the community “Why Does WA Training teach us to write only for 1 keyword (Per Article)?

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/keyword-niche-and-market-research/what-does-wa-training-teach-us-to-write-only-for-1-keyword

Well, the question was responded with a wide variety of different answers.

Here’s a perfect example of one.

In a related question, Jay (Magistudios) wrote to me in a comment, “Why not leave the original and add a new keyword within the content? That way, you get the benefit of BOTH keywords ranking”.

After I respond back, in his next comment Jay says to me, “I am merely making a suggestion and NOT recommending to focus on several keywords for one article. "ONE KEYWORD - ONE ARTICLE!”

Huh? You see what I mean.

“…you get the benefit of BOTH keywords ranking” and “….ONE KEYWORD - ONE ARTICLE!”

Jay may know what HE means by this contradictory mincing of words, but to me this means “Yes” and “No.”

“Sir, which way is North?”

“Go Left AND then go RIGHT!”

One Keyword Per Article – Or Is It?

Let me tell you. When writing my articles, I’ve always followed the WA training and the concept of “One Keyword, One Article”, even though other outside recognized experts like Neil Patel (and even programs) have strongly touted you can gain better rankings using more than 1 Keyword per article.

However, my nature has always been the relentless detective when I can’t understand something down to its very core. It’s better to “go under the hood” and try understand WHY something works in the training, rather than just to settle “that something works.”

I admit this can be both a blessing and a curse. Although I am a creative artist, I am also an engineer by trade. However, I say it’

However, I say it’s much more of a blessing than a curse.

Some have told me, “Kaju, I think you are overthinking it.”

Wrong.

I say I am not.

In fact, I hate that comment.

It’s such a copout.

Why? Because if you settle and simply accept without question “that something works” in the training (or anything in life), when there are widely accepted information “gaps” (as they exist) and then something falls short, how will you ever be able to later fix that “something” without understanding WHY it works?

Although I’ve been asking multiple detailed questions to “get to the bottom of this” keyword issue since late February, if the truth be told NONE of the answers I have received have really helped.

In fact, they often were divergent, contradictory, and left even more puzzles.

Let me tell you, even some long-time members here who I’ve respected and were supposedly “in the know” have given me answers that totally contradicted their OWN past blogs and opinions on the subject that were highly inexplicable, often at different times.

Then when I called them out on it, they attempted to back pedal with a “hem and haw”.

In the end, it has taken me a lot of work and “filling in the blanks”, and I’ve had to do this all on my own.

But I think I got it now.

With keywords, it’s all semantics.

Let’s Face It, Keywords Are Not Simple

As you all know, I’ve long completed ALL of the WA training, and in addition I have asked many questions about Keywords (and many other topics) along the way.

But until now, I could never get a satisfactory direct answer as to why WA teaches us to write only “One Keyword Per Article”.

Based on all the MANY different comments I received, I could clearly see that no one really understood this. There were some great plausible “theories” as to why, but in the end all of it was only conjecture.

Remember, Google also ranks our posts based on Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, which are many different related phrases to our main keyword semantically. This only adds to the confusion.

The confusion of why only target “One Keyword Per Article.”

Like a Flip of the Switch

It wasn’t until this weekend when I watched Jay’s training replay from 6/28 “Researching and Understanding Website Rankings" that I now figured out through extrapolation why Wealthy Affiliate teaches us to write One Keyword per Article.

After watching Jay’s 6/28 training, suddenly things began to make sense.

It was like a flip of the switch!

Here’s the A-Bomb……

When WA teaches us to use “One Keyword Per Article”, they want to ensure that our articles remain RELEVANT. Meaning that our article’s content is completely relevant to that ONE long-tail keyword we had chosen to use in our Meta Title, Meta Description, HI Title, and throughout our content.

Why? Because relevancy of our one main target keyword (remember what I say here One Main Target Keyword) to our article content is perhaps the MOST IMPORTANT determining factor in our rankings.

Sure, other related keywords get ranked for that same article. Through Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

But your one main target keyword is all about RELEVANCY.

What drove this point HOME to me is when Jay demonstrated that during his Video on the topic of “CBD Oil” article is ranking for 1000 different keywords.

His Main Target Keyword was “How to Make Money Selling CBD Oil“, which was also included in his Meta Title, and in the Meta Description of the article.

Standard good SEO practice. Nothing new.

But seeing Jay’s Google Search Console on-screen, with his One Main Target Keyword “How to Make Money Selling CBD Oil“ with a ranking of Number One on Page One for that keyword “in the mix” with 1000 other possible LSI Keywords that also ranked (only not Number One on Page One) lit off a light bulb inside my head!

Showing his Google Search Console on screen, Jay explained that “How to Make Money Selling CBD Oil“ was the main Target keyword he chose, but that Google selected ALL of the other 1000 keywords.

These other keywords on the screen that Google selected were LSI Keywords (but Jay never referred to these keywords as LSI keywords. I suppose to keep the lesson simple, he didn’t want to overwhelm newbies with abstract terms).

Jay went on to explain that from “Queries” in Google Search Console, he could randomly select a NEW keyword from any of the other 1000 (LSI) Keywords that the article was ranking for (but was not performing as well as the main target keyword), then run that new keyword through a Google Instant search to see who he was competing against.

He next found his LSI keyword “best CBD oil to sell from home”, and through doing a Google Instant search discovered that for this new keyword his was ranked #2, and his Number One ranking competitor wrote an article with this as the main target keyword using the product CBD Oil in the “Home”.

Thus for his higher rank competitor, even though they didn't include the the word “Home” in their Meta Title and Meta description, their article was talking about using the product "in the home" as a side hustle for Moms.

Google is very intelligent these days, and can decipher the "intent" of any article.

Jay’s existing article had the potential to rank higher for Stay at Home Moms, and he mentioned if he decided to “inject” this new keyword “best CBD oil to sell from home” into the existing article while incorporating more “relevant” sentences with “Home” in it, it could possibly overtake his competitor and drive his post to rank to #1.

However, rather than revising the existing article with the new keyword to make it better, he decided to use this keyword to write a brand new “breakaway article” and try to Rank #1 that way.

If you have not already done so, I would highly recommend you watch Jay’s training “Researching and Understanding Website Rankings".

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/researching-understanding-website-rankings

WA Wants Your Life to Be Easier

Sure, you can do keyword search and find more than one keyword for your article to rank well for should you choose. You can then choose to add a secondary keyword, and even a tertiary (third) keyword.

As long as ALL 3 keywords retain RELEVANCY to the content of your article, they will ALL rank well.

I know I can (and you can) find 3 different keywords that your next article can rank well for.

BUT why go through all this EXTRA TROUBLE in searching for extra keywords, if Google will already be finding those EXTRA keywords for your article to rank for (a.k.a. LSI keywords)…..and can do it BETTER than you can! (…provided that you write good natural and relevant content of course)

This made me realize…..

This is why WA preaches to us in training to target only “One Keyword Per Article”.

Use One Main Target Keyword, it’s the Easiest Way to retain relevancy.

WA wants your Life as an online marketer and keyword researcher to be easier.

When it comes to the concept of keywords, it’s all about semantics!

Presented in this context, I hope you have found this article and Jay’s training to be an “eye-opener” as I have.

Please feel free to leave any comments below.

Cheers,

Kaju

P.S. - Sorry this is the longest WA article I've wriiten in awhile.