Transcript
Hi guys and welcome to another edition of Zupo's SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation, why does Zupo target keyword groups not just keywords? This is actually a little bit of a topic that a little bit different from what we normally talk about on the channel. The reason being we normally talk about SEO topics, but I feel like this is something that Zupo does in our engagements with our clients and I feel like we get enough questions about it that I felt like you know what, let me film a video about it just so people will understand why we kind of approach it that way we do and maybe it'll change the way that you approach your SEO and keyword research strategy.
So again, before we begin I want to introduce the tea we have today. Today we have a green tea that was gifted to my family. I'm actually not sure very much about this green tea, I just know it's a green tea. That's all I really know, but it does taste very unique. It has like a tang to it. Green tea I feel like is usually a soft tea or it can be bitter at times, but this one has a little bit of a... not bitter, but it's kind of like a sour tang to it. I haven't had it I think in like four months, so I'm going to be live trying it right now too. So let's go ahead and get this started and get talking.
So when we do our engagements with the clients we do not tell clients, "Oh, this is the number of keywords you can rank for." How we do our engagements is the number of keyword groups. And so the difference between a keyword group and a keyword is a keyword group could have anywhere from 10 to 15 to 20 keywords in that keyword grouping as opposed to... So a keyword group can have 15-20, so usually keywords in other words are housed in the keyword group. Now the reason why we engage in keyword group is understand the rule has changed a lot in the algorithm and the way it operates. Back in the day in the 2000s and late 90s, I don't know if you can say the late 90s, let's say early 2000s, a lot of optimization was completely built around keywords. Everything was very keyword heavy and that's because Google's algorithm was not sophisticated, they really didn't understand concepts, they understood words.
But Google has very much so improved its algorithm where now they understand entities, they understand concepts, right? And so the reason why that's important is because there are many searches that arguably are the same thing but they look different. So a good example I like to use is, this sounds so boneheaded, but I promise it's very real, pizza in Orange County and an Orange County pizza, they are written differently because the Orange County pizza and pizza in Orange County they're flipped. Now the problem is, back when SEO first started you [inaudible 00:02:44] rank for these. You had to create a page for a pizza in Orange County and then Orange County pizza because Google technically saw them as two different queries. Now you and I know that that's the same search, you're just looking for pizza in Orange County or Orange County pizza restaurants, right? So the reason why we focus on keyword groups is many keywords can often have the same search results or very similar because Google understands them as the same concept. So pizza in Orange County, Orange County pizza, those would be considered the same.
So in that case what you want to do when you're doing keyword research is don't have every additional keyword be different, it's more about keyword grouping. So another good example that can use is, you know we have a client, they do video production. Video production company, video production studio, video production agency, those are three different words but they actually [inaudible 00:03:36], usually the same search results because Google understands, "Okay, if someones looking for a video production agency or company they generally want the same thing." Now those keywords might be different, but when we're working with the client it's considered the same optimization. It is one keyword group under video production company or agency and all these different variations of it will fit into the same.
The way we dictate if they're all the same is we do Google searches of every keyword and if the search results are comparatively similar than we're going to consider it the same keyword group and the way that we know it's comparatively similar is if the same search results are appearing. They don't always have to be the same order, but generally in the same order and the same competitors than we generally know it's the same keyword group. So there is some manual testing, but we find that this is better because trying to go for marginal keywords isn't really making sense anymore. There are so many different queries and searches in the world, what we want to go for is keyword groupings and those keyword groupings will then give us more a of a conceptual entity base kind of strategy rather than just focusing on exact key words.
Now when you're going for keyword groups I wouldn't say ignore the keywords themself, we still target the highest volume keyword searches first and then we trickle down to the others ones, and that's still the case there. But when you're planning out I would do keyword groups not keywords because the Google has changed and you want to go for entire concepts and keyword groupings, not just keywords themselves.
So hopefully that shines some light into why Zupo does keyword groups instead of keywords in themselves, and that will maybe shape the way that you understand SEO, the way that you're company is doing your keyword strategy. So if you guys found that video valuable please like and subscribe. I'm going to go ahead and pour my tea out now and hope to see you guys again soon.
Thanks everybody.