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How I Ranked For 636,363 Keywords Using This Simple Hack

When I started doing SEO on NeilPatel.com I used this advanced formula to rank for 477,000 keywords.

Over time, my traffic started to flatline and I wasn’t ranking for many more keywords, even though I was continually creating more content.

But then I figured out a simple hack that took me from 477,000 keywords to 636,363 keywords as you can see in the image above.

So, what was this hack?

Well, it’s so effective that I just updated Ubersuggest so that includes the hack.

So how did I do it?

When someone does a Google search, what are they typically doing? They are trying to find a solution to their problem, right?

So how can you easily identify these problems people are searching for?

Typically, you want to look for 3 types of keyword phrases:

1. Questions – people type in questions because they are looking for answers. And if your product or service helps answer those questions, you’ll see a boost in conversions.
2. Comparisons – when someone is searching for comparison keywords such as “MailChimp VS Converkit” there is high buyer intent, even if your company isn’t mentioned in the search phase. (I’ll go into how to leverage this in a bit.)
3. Prepositions – when keywords contain a preposition, they tend to be more descriptive. If you aren’t sure what a preposition is, simple prepositions are words like at, for, in, off, on, over, and under. These common prepositions can be used to describe a location, time, or place.

But how do you find these keywords?

Well, I just updated Ubersuggest to now show you questions, comparisons, and prepositions.

Just head over to Ubersuggest and type in a keyword that you want to go after. For this example, I typed in the word “marketing”.

Then as you scroll down, in the keywords ideas table you’ll see tabs for questions, prepositions, and comparisons.

I want you to click on the “view all keyword ideas”.

You’ll now be taken to the keyword ideas report that looks like this:

Now, click on the tab labeled “questions”. It will adjust the keyword recommendations to show you all of the popular questions related to the main keyword you just researched.

You’ll then see some suggestions that you could consider going after. Such as:

• Why is marketing important?
• What marketing does?
• How marketing works?

But as you scroll down, you’ll find more specific questions such as:

• Why a marketing plan is important?
• How marketing and sales work together?
• How many marketing emails should you send?

Now that you are able to see these questions people are typing, in theory, you can easily rank for them as most of them have an SEO difficulty score of 20 or so out of a 100 (the higher the number the more competitive it is).

More importantly, though, you can create content around all of those phrases and sell people to your product or service.

For example, if you created an article on “why a marketing plan is important,” you can go into how you also can create a marketing plan. From there you can transition into describing your services on creating a marketing plan and how people can contact you if they want your help or expertise in creating one.

You can do something similar with the “how marketing and sales work together” article in which you can break down how to make each department work together. From there, you can either be an affiliate for software solutions that help merge the two departments like HubSpot or sell your own software if you offer one. You can even pitch your consulting services that help tie sales and marketing together.

And as for the “how many marketing emails should you send,” you can create content around that and have an affiliate link to popular email tools that have high deliverability and offer automation. Or you can promote your own email product.

Now imagine all of the extra keywords you can rank for by going after question-related keywords. What’s amazing about this is most of these keywords are competitive and they have extremely high search intent.

Can it get any better?

Speaking of search intent, I want you to click on the comparisons tab.

You’ll see a list of ideas just like you did with the questions tab. But what I love doing here is typing in a competitor’s brand name here.

Let’s say I am offering an email marketing tool. I could type in “Mailchimp” and see what comparison ideas Ubersuggest comes up with.

Now for this example, I want you to imagine that you have an email company called Drip and Drip isn’t really mentioned in any of these keyword comparison ideas.

What’ll you want to do is create articles on all of the popular comparison terms like “Mailchimp vs Constant Contact” or “Mailchimp vs Convertkit” and within those articles break down the differences and also compare them with your own tool Drip.

Be honest when writing the comparisons. Show off which is the best solution using facts and data and break down how you are different and in what ways your own solution is better than the two solutions the reader is comparing.

This will bring awareness to your solution and you’ll find that people will start purchasing it even though they were comparing two of your competitors.

If you want a good example of how to create a neutral comparison type of blog post, check out this article comparing web hosts.

And if you want to take it one step further, you can click on the “prepositions” tab to find even more ideas.

Sticking with the Mailchimp example, you can see that people are curious about Shopify and WordPress integrations.

You can write articles related to integrations and also push your own product and break down how it differs from the others.

If you want to take it one level deeper, it will give you ideas on how to modify your business. For example, if I created an email marketing tool, I would create a Shopify, WordPress, Woocomerce, and Squarespace integration based on the ideas I got from the prepositions tab.

So how did I rank for 636,363 keywords?

I didn’t use all of the examples above on NeilPatel.com because I am not really trying to sell a product and I don’t have the time to write thousands of new blog posts.

But I did type in my domain name into Ubersuggest and then headed over to the top pages report.

From there I looked at the pages that are already ranking well on Google and clicked on the “view all” button to see the exact keywords each page ranks for.

As you can see from that page I rank for questions like “what is affiliate marketing” as well as popular prepositions and comparisons.

How did I do this?

Well, that top pages report shows you keywords each of your pages already ranks for. So all you have to do is research each of those terms through Ubersuggest and find popular questions, prepositions, and comparisons.

Conclusion

The natural instinct for any SEO or marketer is to rank for popular terms that have a lot of search traffic.

But there is an issue with that strategy. It takes a lot of time, it’s extremely competitive, and many of those search phrases don’t cause a ton of conversions as they are super generic.

So, what should you do instead?

Focus on solving people’s problems. The way you do this is by creating content around the questions, prepositions, and comparisons people are searching for in Google.

What do you think about the new Ubersuggest feature?

The post How I Ranked For 636,363 Keywords Using This Simple Hack appeared first on Neil Patel.

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Social Spotlight: How Netflix uses social to create a brand experience

Welcome to the Social Spotlight, where each week we’ll dive deep into what we love about a brand’s approach to a specific social campaign. From strategy through execution and results, we’ll examine what makes the best brands on social tick — and leave you with some key takeaways to consider for your own brand’s social strategy.

One of the first things I learned about getting–and keeping–an audience’s attention is that you have to give them something they can’t get anywhere else. And if you’re Netflix, well–you’ve got a lot to offer.

Overview

Netflix has gotten a lot right in its 22 years in ebusiness, from knowing when to go all-in on a digital platform, to building the gold standard of recommendation algorithms. Not to mention scores of hit original series and a brand name drop in one of the more ubiquitous memes of the 2010s. 

And the same savvy that’s served Netflix well on the product side extends to marketing, especially social. There the brand has leaned hard into a “fan’s fan” persona by hiring movie and TV buffs to man its accounts and eschewing a multi-layered content approval process in favor of well-documented social guidelines that apply to the company as a whole. The resulting brand voice is approachable, clever without trying and authentic to the reason Netflix is beloved in the first place: people love to talk about what they’re watching.

But perhaps the biggest coup of all for Netflix on social is the ability to capitalize on the brand’s unique value propositions. You can’t get Stranger Things anywhere other than Netflix’s service, and you definitely can’t get Stranger Things behind-the-scenes content anywhere other than Netflix’s social handles. 

Analysis

Netflix drive a lot of social conversation–to the tune of 1.7 million brand mentions and 30 million engagements in the first two weeks of September alone, according to Sprout’s Listening data. Let’s take a look at what all of that volume is designed to do for the brand, both online and offline:

• Goals: Similar to last week’s Spotlight brand, Marshalls,  Netflix’s strategy seems to focus on the key objectives of brand loyalty and awareness, with brand loyalty doing the heavy lifting to drive awareness. Because they’re so epically good at leaning into their unique value prop – namely, awesome content you can’t get anywhere else – loyalty is built into their social approach. If you love Riverdale, you want to go beyond the content in the show itself–to BTS peeks, star profiles, fan predictions–and following Netflix on social is the easiest way to do it.But driving awareness of its offerings is not far behind as a goal, and Netflix is at the enviable stage in its development where its product is part of the fabric of our social culture. Take, for instance, turning fan favorite moments from its original content into shareable gifs to arm followers with the perfect, oh-so-relevant social sentiment for any situation.
• Offline connection: Most B2C brands face the challenge of bringing a physical product to life in the digital and social space. Netflix, on the other hand, has wisely gone all-in to extend its online product to the IRL experiences of its audience in order to keep the brand top of mind. One great example is bringing to reality a key element of its Black Mirror series: the cultural kryptonite “people rating” app RateMe from the show’s third season. But lest the brand leave your physical body craving more Netflix, it’s also gone so far as to produce accelerometer-powered socks that will pause your binge session if you fall asleep, so you don’t miss a single minute of Mindhunter.
• Key channels: Netflix’s channel strategy has evolved in the past few years, as the popularity of its service has made it the leader in content streaming. Instagram in particular has emerged as a key channel for “extra” content – behind-the scenes peeks, selfies from stars and a look at what life on set is like. The brand is also highly active on Twitter, where it takes advantage of being able to listen in on what its fans are talking to and create reasons for Netflix to join the conversation (You’s awkward silences, anyone?).
  
  But my favorite move in Netflix’s considerable repertoire is not being afraid to segment its audience by interest across multiple social profiles and personas. The relatively recent launches of dedicated Twitter handles for Strong Black Lead (African-American pop culture), Netflix is a Joke (comedy) and Netflix Family (G-rated fun) have broadened the idea of Netflix’s “brand voice” and created a more inclusive, authentic and relevant social experience for its diverse fan base. There are even Netflix-moderated Facebook groups that bring super fans of specific shows together to debate plot twists and share theories.
• Hot take: One thing I’d love for Netflix to consider more thoughtfully is hashtags usage on Twitter and Instagram. Netflix shares a TON of content of varying purposes, and hashtags would serve as a way-finding device for followers to find the information, entertainment or content they’re looking for from Netflix.

Takeaways

No hyperbole here, Netflix is simply killing it. From an authentic and diverse brand voice to leaning hard on unique, ownable value props in social, Netflix is making the most of their position as a content leader and extending the pleasure their product provides to the social experience for their fans.

TL;DR:

1. I said it last week and I’ll say it again: Find something that is specific and unique about your brand, product or service experience and lean into it. YOU own your products or services, YOU own your brand assets and voice, YOU own your customer experience. It’s the ultimate competitive advantage it will immediately elevate your social strategy.
2. Real authenticity in brand voice requires bravery, which includes knowing when you don’t have the depth of knowledge, interest or resources to keep up with your fans–and being willing to turn the keys to your social voice over to someone who does.
3. Take your relationship with data to the next level. Social is the Rosetta Stone for unlocking your audience’s true needs and desires, and you can answer those desires on a personal level if you’re listening and paying attention to your customer data.

This post Social Spotlight: How Netflix uses social to create a brand experience originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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