- How can I find a new set of obscure keywords to get my page to rank against some of the bigger competitors on less common phrases?
- How can I start qet started writing pages for more complex web queries
Well it is a good set of questions, it is just a little old-fashioned in it's thinking.
The new generation of indexing and ranking AIs do not care about keywords anymore, LSI or not.(Not so much anyway)
They care about phrases, and not specific ones, but ones that mean something.
What I am trying to get you thinking is that the exact phrase itself no longer matters. It is what you are asking that matters.That is the new way in which the search engine AIs think. They want to get your problem solved quicker than the next search engine and become the new search engine emperor.
We need to start addressing questions people ask, such as 'how do i travel around London easily?'
it doesn't matter if they ask 'What's the easiest way to travel around London?' or 'How should I travel in London to avoid hassle?' it is all the same question now, but that is a very common question.
So what about 'How do I get around London without using the underground?' might be a little more unusual, but many people are claustrophobic and don't want to go underground. When you think of the number of people travelling to London every year, having the ranking page answering this question starts to become more important.
So what do we need to start making ourselves ready?
Well we are solving problems, so the best place to start is on your forum or customer services log. What are the most common problems your customers encounter? Have you got a page that deals exclusively with that problem? Get someone from customer services into the marketing room and get every possible solution to that problem out of them. Then get them to show you how to perform each solution, one at a time, and then make a page that explains every solution to someone who is completely non-technical.
Now you have a really valuable web resource that will not only bring in repeat business from your existing customer, but also draw in new customers from your competitors who have failed to answer the question.
Google is making the the web get helpful, and we need to be ahead of the game.
Now the processing of the Google index to accommodate all of this will not happen overnight. The most commonly searched terms will start to show the influence of this behaviour very quickly, but less commonly searched terms will take a little longer to process, and this is where the easiest gains will be made.
More obscure problems and questions will start to become more important and so you need to start digging them out of your customer services team. If you are not logging every question you receive already then now is the time to start. Start ploughing through the online forums in your vertical markets. Start finding out what people want to know and get writing the best solutions.
This is the new age of the keyword, only they aren't keywords anymore, they are solutions.
See, I just gave you a solution!