 Hello everybody! Welcome to the auditorium, the one best room at Workamp Phoenix. We've been the best room all day. We're going to continue being the best room. Cannot hear it for the auditorium. Yes! So we have three lightning talks back to back to back and we are going to kick it off right now with Pam Unst. Thank you very much. Can everybody hear me okay? Awesome. Alright, so welcome to Killer Keyword, how to write content for both humans and search engines. This is normally a 35 to 40 minute talk so I'm gonna have to move really fast so it will indeed be a lightning talk but you can download the slides so that you can review this again later and absorb it in full later on. I gotta keep moving so I will show that again at the end. First and foremost this is what we are not going to do when trying to write for search engines. We're not going to overdo it and keyword stuff and make it sound unnatural. You don't have to. It's totally possible to appease both humans and search engines without doing that. So what we're going to learn instead is what I call the formula for success. I know you can't see that in full there but we're gonna go through it step by step and you'll be able to see and understand each step. Real quick first though let's talk about the fact that your website has really two audiences at a high level humans and search engines and let's talk about what each of those wants out of your content. First of all humans they want you to give high quality advice and they want you to use natural sounding language and they want short digestible snippets of information. So now let's talk about what search engines want. They want high quality advice. They want you to give high quality advice in your content. That's the same. They want to use natural sounding language also the same but here's where they differ. Search engines want you to have a lot of length in your content. The average page one ranking contains 1,890 words. So that's where the two audiences want completely different things but you can compromise between what they want and it's totally possible to do so. First you need to pick a specific number of key points you want to make about a topic then write thoroughly about each point so that you have a high word count but break down each key point with subheadings to make it more skimmable which is what humans want. Humans are okay with it being long if it's skimmable so subheadings and include visual assets to break it up so it doesn't look like a big long term paper that will also help with the skimmability for humans. So you can achieve a long length and still make it human friendly as well. So now let's get through the formula for success. First step, determine the topic that you're going to write about and the key word, the primary key word that you're going to use. For your humans you want to determine a few key points that you really want to drive home in the article or page and for search engines you want to choose a right sized primary key word as well as a few secondary or supporting key words and what do I mean by right sized key word? Selecting right sized key words basically refers to using a keyword research tool to select primary key words that have a search volume at or below your current level of organic monthly traffic. So the idea behind this is that if search engines were willing to rank you for key words with higher volume than that you'd have a higher traffic already. So you need to stay within the realm of what's attainable of the size of key words that search engines are willing to rank you for. So just make sure that the monthly average search volume of the primary key word is at or below not greatly exceeding your site's monthly organic traffic number whatever that currently is and to find out what that currently is go into Google Analytics, Acquisition, All Traffic, Channels, set your date range to the last 30 days and then take note of the organic search traffic number. In this case in the example it's 583. So once you know that number next step go to a keyword research tool this is my favorite of the moment it's called KW Finder. It is a paid tool but the prices are pretty reasonable. I'm always trying new ones but this is my favorite of the moment. So punch into a keyword research tool the topic that you're wanting to write about. So I'm using an HVAC client as an example so compressor failure is the topic they wanted to write about. So we found a primary keyword in the keyword research tool AC compressor failure and the average search volume for that was 90 searches a month. That was below the 583 organic traffic hits a month they were already getting so it was a right-sized keyword. So we picked that as the primary keyword. You also want to pick a few secondary or supporting or related keywords for context. This is really important to Google nowadays with semantic search and they're trying to understand topics and become a topical search engine more than the keyword match engine so you have to include secondary related keywords in the content as well and to find those you can use the keyword research tool just find some that you think you'll be able to naturally use throughout the copy and you can also use Google search search suggest I can never say that fast trying to talk fast not working search suggest where you start typing in the primary keyword that you've already picked and see what other related phrases come up. Now that you've got your primary and secondary keywords picked out you're gonna work on your title for humans you definitely need to make it catchy we'll talk more in a moment about how to do that and for search engines you simply want to use your primary keyword in the title. Now how do you make it catchy for humans including the number of points that you're going to make like top five marketing strategies for success that's very effective way of making title catchy adding a sense of exclusivity or urgency like there are only three ways to increase online sales identifying your audience like essential marketing tips for contractors that would catch the eye of contractors including the results of your advice like the what's in it for them for example increase online sales like that's the result of what will happen if you read at this copy and learn this stuff and use power words here's some examples of power words you can look up lists online there's tons of different lists of power words but just using any of the power words that are comfortable to you some of them are a little clickbaity but whatever whatever ones are you're comfortable with using for your brand definitely include a power word as well so here's an example of a title that's catchy for humans it's got a power word which is top it's got the quantity which is five and then it's got for search engines the primary keyword ac compressor failure next up opening paragraph summarize the intent of the article for your humans who are skimming so they know what they're going to get out of it and for search engines use your primary keyword it's pretty easy to do that naturally if you're just introducing what you're about to talk about next up gotta go real fast sorry quick overview of key points in the list format so you want to list out the key points at the top in like list or bullet format that you're going to make again for skim ability for humans but it's also another natural place to use your primary keyword in a subheading above that so that's what that looks like top five sentiments of ac compressor failure what's going on and the bullets of the five things that we're about to get more into next up you get more into each point so you're gonna give a full breakdown of each point good useful information about it really flesh it out and separate it with subheadings so it's skimmable for humans and then just use your primary and secondary keywords naturally throughout the copy as makes sense to do so so that's an example of that noisy condenser was one of the points of the least one paragraph really fleshed out below that but ideally more than one paragraph so that you have that length next up conclusions subheading repeat the intent of the article in summary form for those humans that are skimming and then for search engines use your primary keyword again very easy to do this naturally if a conclusion subheading looks like that the lesson don't ignore symptoms of ac compressor failure easy way to use the primary keyword naturally and then follow it with a conclusion paragraph where you summarize your key points reiterate reiterate your most important takeaways and then again use your primary keyword naturally which is easy to do when you're summing up the topic that you just talked about last but definitely not least always always always include a call to action it is amazing all sorts of studies show that how specific you have to be with human users and telling them exactly what you want them to do next you may think it's intuitive it's probably not to them so say exactly what you want them to do download something reach out to us whatever it may be and then for search engines always link to a related piece of content to be another article a lead magnet and a service or product page contact page whatever is topically relevant internal linking is very good for SEO so you always want to do that as well and this is what that could look like that last sentence there says a good way to start is with a preventative maintenance contract and that is clickable through to another page that talks about their preventative maintenance contracts and then they're called action at the end is to download an ebook like a lead magnet finally the last thing you want to do is review your word count to make sure you your uses of your primary phrase I should say to make sure that you didn't overdo it or underdo it and so count up the total words you can use word or Google Docs or whatever give you a word count and then count up the number of times you use that primary phrase and make sure that you use it at least one time per 100 words and that you do not use it more than two times per 100 words so for example thousand word article you want to use your primary key phrase a minimum of 10 times but no more than 20 times then you're crossing over into that keyword stuffing realm which can actually hurt your SEO more than help it so minimum minimum one time per 100 words maximum two times per 100 words and that should be pretty easy to do that to hit the minimum at least should be very easy to do if following this formula every time so real rapid fire through it again step one keyword and topic selection determine a few key points you're going to make for your humans for your search engines choose a right sized primary keyword and a few secondary or supporting keywords then your title make it catchy for your humans and for your search engines just include the primary keyword for your opening paragraph summarize the intent of the article use your primary keyword naturally of course quick overview of key points in list format or bullet format list out the key points you're about to expand on for your human skimmers and then include the primary keyword in the subheading above that then you break down each key point into full paragraphs ideally more than one paragraph per each per each point so you have good length but use subheadings to make it skimmable and then just naturally use your primary and secondary keywords throughout the copy and then you have your conclusion subheading we reiterate your your key intent of the article and a subheading above the conclusion paragraph and then include your primary keyword then you have your conclusion paragraph again summarize your most important takeaways use that primary keyword one more time in a natural way and then last but not least always always always include call to action and internal lengths thank you we will we will do questions all together at the end so gonna let Lindsay and Jamie talk first