Content creation is the cornerstone of SEO, but doing it for every single keyword can be an expensive and time consuming endeavor. In this video you’ll learn how to use SpyFu to find & emulate top ranking content for keywords in your industry.
We'll go over the things that you should look for and be inspired by to help build your content, so you don't have to deal with the painful trial and error period on your own.
Here's the previous video covering the basics of finding SEO Keywords: https://youtu.be/zEEBRxCtOeU
Climb the ranks and keep people engaged, by using the techniques that have already proven successful. SpyFu helps you find those techniques quickly and effectively. Step 1: Enter in your competitor into the main search box in SpyFu - https://www.spyfu.com/
Step 2: Go to the SEO Keyword Research section - https://www.spyfu.com/seo/keywords
Step 3: Sort the results by the "Rank (Change)" column. Look for keywords that have high ranks, and also relatively low ranking difficulty. These are the pieces of content that you can emulate for your site.Note: You can even use the filtering in the keyword list if you already had some keywords in mind, and just wanted to find the content surrounding them.
Step 4: Take a look at both the copy and the structure of the page itself. Figure out what the pros are doing to keep the user engaged on the site.
Step 5:Possibly check out additional competitors, compare and contrast techniques and figure out what works best for your site!
Video Script:
Hi this is Patrick with SpyFu.com, today we’re going to learn how to find high ranking SEO content in your niche using SpyFu.
*intro*
You can search a keyword to find top-ranking content, but finding what's consistently successful in the industry takes more than just a search or two. That's why I'm showing you how to find high ranking content through big competitors
I’m going to pretend I’m a medium sized business in the painting industry. So in this search box I’m going to type a large competitor benjaminmoore.com.
In the previous video we found top ranking SEO keywords in your niche, if you’d like to check that video out there’s a link in the description below.
If you’ve already watched the SEO Keywords video you know that one of the best places to get competitive SEO insights, is on the SEO Keywords section of SpyFu. So I’m going to hover over the SEO research tab right here, move my mouse down to the SEO Keywords section, and click!
Here we’re looking at all of the keywords SpyFu has seen Benjamin Moore rank on organically. But we can also see the URLs that these keywords lead to.
We want to find high ranking pieces of content, that have a good amount of searches per month.
Because here’s the end goal: once we find keywords relevant to our site, we want to be able to emulate the best pieces of content out there for those keywords. Or at least be inspired by them. Coming up with fresh and unique content ideas on your own is fantastic, but you can’t spend all of your energy and money to apply that dedication to every piece of content for every single keyword you want to rank on.
Sometimes, you just need to learn from the best.
So what’s the best way to go about this?
First off, let’s make sure that this filter is set to “Most Valuable Keywords”
Then let’s sort these rows by rank / rank change. We’ll do this by clicking on the title of the Rank (Change) column. You might have to click a couple of times, just stop when you notice the highest ranks at the top, like ranks of 1, 2, or 3.
Now we’re looking at Benjamin Moore’s top ranking SEO keywords and the pages that they lead to. You’re going to notice that some of these are branded keywords, others have a really high ranking difficulty.
What you want to find is that sweet spot, high ranking content with an average to low ranking difficulty, and if you can find one with a fairly high searches per month, that’s even better.
“Seafoam Green”, it’s not ideal, but it does hit a lot of those qualifications. It actually looks like Benjamin Moore is grabbing the top spots for several unique color names, it’s an interesting part of the market that they cornered, so let’s learn from that.
I’m going to click on this little Go To icon to the left of the URL.
This page is incredibly simple. Showing you the color, a brief description, and some options on what a user could explore.
This won’t always be the case, and it varies drastically by industry. Sometimes it’s a page like this, sometimes it’s a 10 page blog article with infographics and tons of outbound links.
The important thing is to learn what works in your particular industry, and do your best to emulate it. Sometimes that means the content, the words themselves; and sometimes, like in Benjamin Moore’s case, it’s also the actual structure of the page. Where are they guiding the user? Does this audience want something simple and clean, or intricately detailed?
Not only that but keep in mind that Google also looks at how long people stay on the page. So content isn't going to be effective without engagement. So don’t only take a competitor’s page at face value, but consider what about it might keep a user there, or have that user dig deeper.
With paint, it looks like simple and clean with gateways for the user to be creative are the key. It gives them the direct information they need, and then encourages them to dive into related pages on this site in the name of education and artistry.
In hindsight, this makes sense, you want to see what the color is, what it goes with, and then you can imagine the rest.
But they could’ve easily included a photo of a paint bucket, or a house, or tutorials on the proper way to paint.
The great thing about SpyFu, is that the mystery of the best approach is eliminated. In this case, Benjamin Moore already did the work for you! Found out what was effective with your audience, and are now ranking highly on Seafoam Green, as well as many similar keywords.
You can avoid the expensive and arduous trial and error period, and immediately know what works.
You can even compare Benjamin Moore’s approach to other sites in this industry, and see which techniques would translate the best on your site.
Long story short, the Keyword Research tab is a great place not only to find strong keywords in your niche, but also gives you guidance on how to actually build content around them.
Again, this doesn’t only apply to paint. Try it with other big competitors in your industry, and you might be surprised on what you find!
As always, thank you for watching.