I need to ask you an important question here- and be honest. How much do you really focus on keywords these days?
Well, I’m going to let you in on a little secret, and you have to promise not to tell anyone about this. Not even those self-proclaimed SEO gurus that fill our LinkedIn feeds with daily content…especially not them. Because I’m about to ruin the scam of the century for an entire industry that’s filled with snake-oil salesmen, con artists and self-promoting idiots.
Are you ready for it? Keywords are officially dead in 2017.
And just so we’re clear here, I’m not saying that there’s no such thing as keywords anymore. Keywords are just some words placed together with other words…so obviously they still exist. But they’re just not important.
Take this website, for example…and this very blog. We all know that to properly optimize a page under SEO standards, we have to get the keyword in the title, in the very first sentence and again in the first subtitle. Yet I haven’t used any of my site’s primary keywords. And look down the page- there are no subtitles either.
But guess what? You’re still reading this…and visitor engagement has surpassed silly things like meta-descriptions and keywords a long time ago. Google has said so like a billion times.
Heck, “engagement” is probably Matt Cutt’s middle name by now…and he doesn’t even work for the search engine giant anymore.
Now, you may be pondering, “But what does it all mean? How can the Earth survive without things like keyword density and anchor text?” Before we get to that, I think it’s important for all of us to remain calm. Go pop a Valium if necessary, because this feeling of utter hopelessness will pass by the end of this article. I promise.
And just ask my kids- I may exaggerate all the time, but I never lie. A promise is something worth keeping.
The truth is that keywords have actually been dead for quite some time now and in most cases, they’re completely unnecessary. After all, the search engines have a very clear picture of what your website is actually about and one more blog post won’t tip the scales in your favor.
Now, you may come from the school of thought where you’d say something like, “Well, keywords definitely aren’t hurting my website, so why should I stop focusing on them?”
That’s a great question.
But unfortunately, you’ve been so obsessed with keyword stuffing for so darn long that you’ve completely forgotten what a keyword or a key-phrase is in the first place. It’s just a series of words people- every single word on this page is a keyword.
Well, okay…maybe not all the “the, and, our, but, it” and words like that…but the rest are certainly keywords. And if they are located next to other words on the page, then you have a bunch of key-phrases forming as well.
Before I make this too confusing, maybe I better give a practical example. I’ll use my website once again.
For those of you that follow me, you know that I’m a copywriter that knows a thing or two about online marketing and search optimization. And I live in Spartanburg, South Carolina, so naturally by most important key-phrase would be something like, “Spartanburg Copywriter” or “Copy writer in Spartanburg,” right?
Wrong. Those are horrible keywords. And I can prove it.
When I tell people around town what I do for a living, about 1/3rd of them assume a “copywriter” is a person who issues patents. Or someone who creates laws. They have absolutely no idea what I do for a living unless they actually have ties to the marketing field. And that means when they look for someone like me, they almost never type those phrases, even though Google AdWords says that they’re my best bet.
So let me ask you a question- what would my main keyword be then if it’s not “copywriter”?
Well, it could be anything that people type into the search engines these days to find someone like me…and that’s a pretty darn long list. I see everything from content creator to digital analyst to brand manager on job boards, while your average Joe searches for a blog writer or social media professional. Some even use “wordsmith”, even though that’s technically not a word.
Do you see the problem here? I can’t just pluck a few nifty keywords out of thin air and properly reach all of my potential clients. In fact, I probably couldn’t reach all of them with a thousand targeted key phrases.
That’s why keywords are officially dead in 2017… they died long before you ever took your first lesson in SEO.
Besides, what good does it really do anyway to target the same keywords over and over again? Google is dead-set on normalizing the search results so you can’t appear in multiple spots for the same phrase. Either your website doesn’t have quality content and it will never rank for your terms, or it is already ranking well and you’re being repetitive anyway.
Either way, it’s wasted money if you follow conventional SEO logic.
Again, that brings us right back to finding a true definition of a keyword. But the dictionary won’t help, because the only opinions that truly matter here are your actual customers. After all, they control everything when it comes to the success of your brand.
Are you with me so far on this? I promise- a big revelation is just seconds away.
If your main goal is to connect with more customers (and let’s face it; that’s the only reason you do any of this crap), then your main focus is not going to be on a single key-phrase. Or even your top fifty. Instead, you’re going to throw the SEO book straight out the window and casually use every possible combination of industry-related jargon you can think of.
And that, my friends, means that there are no such things as keywords anymore. It’s almost like the Matrix- everything is a keyword, and you don’t even have to take the blue pill.
The morale to this lesson here is to completely forget about keywords except when it comes to your back-end meta stuff, because that’s the only place where it still slightly matters. But to connect to actual people and to convince them to trust your brand, you’d better be talking in their language…and normal humans don’t say the same phrase six times in a two minute period.
That’s just weird.
So your content marketing goal in 2017 is to simply focus on what matters to your potential customers and to deliver your messaging in plain-Jane English that they can relate with…and then do the exact opposite of keyword targeting. Instead, try to use every possible variation of what your customers might type across your next 10-20 blog posts.
Guess what? There’s a term for that as well- it’s called great writing. And that’s been the #1 ranking factor of the search engines since the early 1990’s. The best overall content always wins.
So moving forward, forget about those silly keywords and just focus on putting a smile on a potential customer’s face. As long as you’re doing that, Google will see your value. That’s all that really matters anyway.