It was a spark. An idea for a headline. Soon it grew into a strong first paragraph, then an outline. A few weeks later, we had a detailed first draft of a long-form guide.
The topic is something that people search for. Not a ton of people, but people we want to connect with. It answers a big question with a lot of well-supported information. It hits a lot of subtopics. And we put that keyphrase in the title tag and header.
It goes live. We link to it from several past articles. It’s sent and shared. It generates a little buzz. A month later, results are measured. Looks pretty good.
A few months later, we measure results again. Looks even better! It’s getting a steady stream of traffic from search. More than expected.
When we checked the target keyphrase, it looked like it had very low search volume. Just five to ten people per month. But the article attracts 200 visitors per month.
Why is traffic 40x higher than search volume??
How is that possible? Here is the side-by-side keyword research (Moz and Semrush) and the traffic report (GA4) showing how organic traffic can be much higher than the search volume for the primary target keyphrase.
The answer is simple: The article ranks for much more than just the target keyphrase. It ranks for many phrases. How many? Let’s check the page in Google Search Console.
This is a very common story, with three important lessons for SEOs and content marketers:
- There are no pages that rank for only one phrase
Because any page that ranks for one phrase also ranks for dozens or hundreds of closely related phrases, which is why… - Search volume is an overrated metric
Because it underreports demand. It’s an estimate of queries for that specific (exact match) keyphrase, not the topic and all of its related semantic variants, which is why… - It’s smart to target ultra-low volume keyphrases
Because if you win for that phrase, you’ll attract more traffic than the volume for that phrase. And more importantly, if your target audience is searching for it, and if it is a commercial intent keyphrase, you don’t need a ton of visitors. You need a few of the right visitors.
High quality traffic is more important than a high quantity of traffic anyway.
Yes, search volume is useful to get a sense for the general amount of demand for a phrase. It’s useful if you’re comparing several phrases. But SEOs pay too much attention to it. We’re going to go far beyond that one specific keyphrase and write an article that ranks for 100+ keyphrases.
Target the topic, not just the keyphrase.
That’s our goal and it’s the key to modern search optimization. It’s called semantic SEO and here’s how to do it.
1. Align the topic with a primary target keyphrase
Start with the SEO basics. We could be making a key service page targeting a commercial-intent keyphrase or an article targeting an information-intent keyphrase. It makes no difference. We still need basic keyword alignment.
We’ll check our candidate keyphrases with that other number in that keyword report: keyword difficulty. We just need to use an SEO tool to confirm that we have sufficient authority and a realistic hope for ranking.
Enter a phrase, check the difficulty, compare it to our authority. If difficulty is far above our level of authority, we should pick a different phrase. See our guide on how to research keywords for more details.
As an example, we’ll use this article about AI and Thought Leadership. Here’s the keyword research.
We pick a target keyphrase, mostly disregarding search volume. We’re ready to write.
2. Forget about SEO and write a detailed and comprehensive page
We’ll start with good writing and audience-focused content. We’ll go back to worrying about SEO once we’re done with a draft.
Yes, we could structure the entire article based on more keyword research. We could do just what the SEO tools tell us to do and work from an outline based completely on what else ranks. But that’s boring. I highly recommend first just writing the article that you think should be written.
If you do everything based on what others are doing, you’re not going to make anything original or memorable. You’re swimming in the shallow middle of the mainstream.
Content marketers are thought leaders.
SEOs are thought laggards.
It’s obvious to content pros, but SEOs sometimes need the reminder: the goal isn’t to rank. It’s to build a top-of-mind brand by creating a steady stream of surprisingly helpful content. This isn’t keyword first SEO. Search is one of our promotion channels, but not the only one. Traffic is one of our goals, but not the only one.
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Cyrus Shepard, Zyppy SEO“It’s every good SEO’s secret trick that if you target a phrase well—whether it’s high-volume or low-volume—and you earnestly satisfy user intent, you can end up ranking for 100s of keywords you didn’t even know existed. This is one of the best ways to discover new, highly relevant keywords. Sometimes, they even have more volume than what you originally targeted. You can then update your content to further optimize for these keywords, or spin off new content to target them specifically.” |
So we’re writing a very detailed page. Anytime you ask yourself “Should I add this?” …the answer is yes.
Push deep into the related topics. A strong piece of content checks all the boxes:
- Make the header and title a bit provocative and include the keyphrase
- Hit a key point in the opening with an interesting point of view
- Add examples, supportive research and data
- Add strong opinions and quotes from subject matter experts
- Structure it carefully with subheads and lists
- Never misses the chance to add supportive visuals
- Make the article long and the paragraphs short
This step may take 4-8 hours. That’s the high end of the average time to write a blog post.
3. Find and answer the related questions
The draft looks good. Now it’s time to go back and think about SEO.
Next let’s look for related questions and see if we answered them. Because Google is looking for the best page on the internet. And the best page for our target keyphrase likely answers those related questions.
What questions does Google think are related? Just search for your target phrase and scan down. See those “People also ask” questions? Expand and collapse a few. Getting some ideas? Search for another phrase. Scan down.
If it fits, add sections that answer these questions.
You could just add them in an FAQ section, but that’s a bit lazy, isn’t it? Why not address them in the flow. You could use the verbatim question as the subhead for a new section, but that really isn’t the point either. Stay focused on the reader and on the quality of your writing. That’s it.
This step may take up to 30 minutes.
4. Find and address the related subtopics
Next let’s look for related subtopics and see if we addressed them. Again, Google is looking for the best page on the internet. And the best page for our target keyphrase likely touches on those subtopics.
What are the relevant subtopics? Just start search for your target phrase and before you hit “enter” scan down. See those suggested phrases? Getting some ideas? Search for another phrase. Scan down.
If it fits, add sections that address these subtopics. When you do, you’ll naturally include the related phrases. So don’t force the on-page SEO. Again, stay focused on the reader and on the quality of your writing. That’s what matters most!
This step may take 15 minutes.
5. Find and include the related phrases
Next let’s look for semantically related phrases. Here again, Google is looking for the best page on the internet. And the best page for our target keyphrase likely incorporates these closely related phrases. They may be synonyms, industry jargon, grammatical variants and adjacent phrases.
What are the semantic keywords? Here we’ll use another tool: generative AI. Of course, AI is the master of language so it’s an excellent tool for finding related phrases. Let’s keep it simple. Just enter this quick prompt into your favorite AI chatbot.
You are a semantic SEO expert, skilled in selecting semantically related phrases. Make a list of 10 phrases that are related to [TOPIC]
Scan through. Getting some ideas? Prompt for more related phrases. Scan through again.
It’s likely you’ve already included many of these phrases in your draft. Use control + F to check. If you haven’t, look for opportunities to include these. It might simple be a matter of replacing a more general phrase with a more specific, SEO-focused phrase. Or it might mean writing a new sentence or two.
Don’t force it. These are just suggestions. You’re not trying to “do it right.” You already made an awesome article and now you’re just “indicating relevance.” Your goal is to help Google help people discover your super helpful article..
This step may take 15 minutes.
To keep it organized, you can use a content marketing template and track your keyword research and semantic keyphrases right above your article. As you work in the related phrases, cross them off your list!
6. Confirm the SEO basics (optional)
There are helpful tools that will confirm the use of semantically related phrases. The work by comparing your draft to the other content that ranks for that phrase. By comparing your keyword frequency to their keyword frequency, you’ll get ideas for phrases you missed and topics you could cover.
There are many such tools. Here is the MarketMuse Optimize tool. It compares your use of closely related phrases to the top 20 rivals for any given phrase.
Ignore plural variations, competitor names and punctuation. Google isn’t paying attention to these. You shouldn’t either.
It also compares your word count to the average word count of the rivals. And it has an AI writing assistant to help you add content that includes those phrases if you like that kind of thing.
That’s it. You have a detailed, audience-focused article, focused on a target keyphrase and inclusive of the closely related questions, subtopics and phrases. That’s semantic SEO.
7. Check performance and update the page
We can measure content performance in the usual ways. Here are a few of the classic marketing metrics for a specific URL.
- How much traffic did it get from which traffic sources? (users by session source/medium)
- Did visitors from various sources engage with the page more or less than usual? (average engagement time for session source/medium)
Since we are doing semantic SEO on one specific URL, we’ll add this metric:
- How many keyphrases does it rank for?
For an entire website, the “number of non-branded top 10 ranking keyphrases” is an excellent SEO metric. Or even better, the “number of commercial intent top 10 ranking keyphrases.” The answers are in Google Search Console. You could also use an SEO tool, but GSC is free. It’s not very robust, but it has more keyword data, so it’s great for this use case.
In the Search Results section, click the “+ Add filter” button and select “Page” from the drop-down menu. Then paste in your URL.
Now we’re looking at a list of all the queries that URL ranks for in Google. In the bottom right corner, we can see the total number of phrases. In this example, the page ranks for nearly 50 phrases.
Some of the rankings are very low and many have no clicks, but it’s obvious that we’re seeing more than just the target keyphrase. The number is a measurement of content quality and discoverability. The deeper our content, the bigger that number.
Architectural efficiency
Our website optimization team uses a metric we call “Architectural Efficiency”, which combines the number of URLs on a website with the average number of ranking keyphrases per URL.
Along with indexed pages and paid search equivalent, it’s an excellent SEO quality check. If the number is high, the content is detailed and discoverable. If the number is small, the content is thin and keyword targeting is weak.
Bonus: Update the page with semantic SEO edits
The battle isn’t over yet. Once we see the keyword performance, we can see the opportunities for improvement. As the name suggests, search engine optimization is never really done. We can always optimize and improve performance. Digital ink is never dry.
As we did earlier, we can find closely related phrases and confirm that we’ve included them. But this time, we have a new source of data: the current rankings. So the optimization process is a bit different from the content creation process.
- Confirm that the page incorporates the phrases for which it ranks
If it doesn’t look for chance to upgrade the content and include those subtopics - Confirm that related articles are linking to the page
Ideally, there should be a few links that include keyphrases. The link text should be descriptive and keyword-focused. Not just “click here” or “read more.” - Give the page to AI and ask for suggestions
Tell the AI that it’s a semantic SEO expert. Ask it to suggest copy edits and possible new paragraphs.
Here’s the prompt:
Search optimized pages are focused on a specific topic/keyphrase, but they also incorporate the closely related subtopics/semantically related keyphrases.
You are an expert SEO copywriter, skilled at making copy edits that improve the search rankings of webpages by incorporating keyphrases and indicating relevance.
I’m giving you a list of keyphrases and the text from the webpage. Suggest 10 copy edits to 10 sentences on this page that would incorporate phrases from this list.
Highlight the suggestions.
[KEYPHRASE LIST]
Again, we want to connect with our readers, help and impress them. So an upgrade to this approach is to give the AI information about our target audience by uploading a persona. And only then ask it to write additional paragraphs.
Suggest new sections address the personas information needs and answer key questions, while creating opportunities to use more of the semantically related phrases. Write draft text for these sections using a professional, yet approachable tone.
[ATTACH PERSONA]
A few months ago I followed this process to get recommendations for an update to an article. The process took around 40 minutes. Today, I checked and the rankings for the target keyphrase have climbed up to the number two position.
Does the site rank for more phrases? Here is the before and after:
The page is more relevant for more phrases. And ranks higher for the primary keyphrase. That’s the idea behind ranking for multiple keyphrases.
Beyond the target keyphrase…
Don’t try to rank for a single phrase.
Don’t worry about search volume.
Pick a phrase and dive deep into the content.
Try to own the topic.
Focus on quality and the readers’ needs. But align with a primary phrase and double check your use of semantic SEO keyphrases. Post launch, see what worked and keep improving.
With a strong foundation of quality and relevance, you’ll see growth in both the quality and quantity of traffic. You’ll have many pages that rank for many hundreds of keyphrases.
