Advanced SEO - What would you do after you run out of keywords?

[joony]

Hello!

Our company has been growing in terms of traffic and ranking well for a couple of years but we are now kind of stagnating because we just don't know what to do next.

We have a good blog - and with our blogs, we have been targeting all major keywords with their related keywords as a bucket. - "keyword theme / page" for a long time. But it seems we now don't have any major keyword theme to write about.

What is worse is that we don't see any traffic growth since 2014 September. (although we added many good blogs)

1. So what would do you when you run out of keywords? or keyword themes? Would you just keep pumping in more blogs and hope that you get more clicks? or at some point, you just don't care about keywords and write whatever relevant to your site?
2. Wouldn't it hurt our site if we create similar keyword themed pages? (like regurgitating our keywords?)  or even same keyword targeting pages?

You must have similar experience if you are an owner of a niche site. Can you please share your experience with this kind of headaches?

Thank you and look forward to your comments.

[joony]

Patrick,

Thank you very much for all the pointers. This is an exhaustive list.

We will take a deeper look at your response and get our hands on this this month.

We did some of the things you mentioned already but we will try one by one again and share which worked and not worked.

Thank you

[RobertFisher]

From a perspective of "How niche is your niche?" I would say that is really something you would need to discover yourself or to have someone perform a market analysis for you. Typically, you would be better positioned to answer that question than most.

From the how do you get more POV, I would say that it really depends on what you want to accomplish with the business, what you are selling, etc. But, you could utilize offline to drive additional online traffic. I would suggest using dynamic numbers that do not show on your site for calls, and have specific landing pages for any offline marketing you are doing.

Keep us posted, please.

[joony]

Robert,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to our question.

We got good points from your comment

• Email marketing - to retain customers.
• Update old content
• Create a "brand" that people trust in your niche market.

My followup question would be -

at some point, would you realize that your business actually captured most of the customers in the niche market? I mean, how do you know that there are more customers out there and and what is the next step to "obtain" more customers when you see no growth online? (very deep question)

Perhaps this is the end of our online marketing for us and move-on to offline marketing?

[joony]

Thanks Anthony for the reply.

Maybe at the end of the day, content is really king (as Ryan said above) and keywords only matter in early stages of business.

How do we go about finding the right content for our customers though? Write things that we believe they care and check the analytics?

We have a good customer base. Our business is somewhat stable but not growing, but would this be the end of the growth?

We would appreciate if you could share your experience

[joony]

I think we can check off what you pointed out.

• We have been creating content based on longtail keywords (a lot of Google related searches)
• We moved from 500 word blogs to 1500 word blogs a year ago. (trust me, we tried hard to create good content)

things that maybe we need to work on?

• creating linkable content. -> this is maybe our never ending quest.
• diversification in what sense?

I believe the problem is we have done all these but the traffic and conversion rate have plateaued. - still looking into this issue.

[Thos003]

Build your community.

If you have maxed out your keyword traffic and are no longer seeing an increase, then focus on keeping the visitors that you are capturing. Keep them engaged and coming back for more. Reach out to them. Get them to sign up for emails and newsletters. Work on repeat visits. Fine tune your content so that time on page grows. Make your content shareable so that visitors will attract more visitors.

[RobertFisher]

Joon,

What Patrick has here is very well done, indeed!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Joon

With the great recommendations from Ryan and Anthony, I would also suggest a couple more items:

• Focus on internal linking opportunities so high ranking pages can pass equity through the site

• Content Marketing Institute is fantastic at this

• Take a look at Sitelinks Searchbox

• Just a great search snippet opportunity

• What are frequently asked questions your company receives?

• Answer questions before they ask with content

• Provide guides, ebooks, tips, checklists, etc.

• Is there any content on your site you can repurpose?

• Videos, images, infographics, gamification, Q&As, etc

• Also, check out the Customer Journey from Google

• Any opportunities on different mediums?

• Take a look at this content audit for more opportunities

All of the above will help pass equity through your site and also give you opportunities to capitalize on long tail queries. Remember - content cannibalization is NOT a bad thing - it gives you so many more opportunities to rank for long tail and also associates your site with your industry's topics.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[RobertFisher]

Joon Lee,

This is an outstanding question and I really like how you broke down the two areas that were most concerning because it shows you have put some thought into it.

1. …Would you just keep pumping in more blogs and hope that you get more clicks?

What I would say to this is you never want to just be putting out posts unless they are something that is important to your readers/customers/clients. When people look at a magazine like “People” they know the magazine is about celebrities, etc. Yet, they buy it week after week because they do not know what is going to be written or about whom.
If online, the same tenets apply. If we are writing about SEO for example, sooner or later there will be another post about a given subject. But, if the writer is showing a different slant, a more relevant picture of the problem, etc. we still read it. Look on Moz for any number of topics and you see numerous posts on the same subjects, yet we still read them if they are relevant and present the data or information in a readable or unique way. Use point of view and layout, etc. to revitalize what you are writing and people will tell others of your posts.

2. As to similar “keyword themed pages,” etc. I would tell you to read what I wrote above first. If it is a page detailing a product or service, you can “update” the page as appropriate without creating a new page. (I would resubmit the sitemap or use Fetch as Google to ensure the new info is indexed quickly.)

But the real issue is how do I get traffic to my site after I have plateaued? That is where your creativity comes in. Do you have an email list that you regularly reach out to with pertinent info? If you are not doing that, it will help bring old visitors back. If you are selling something here is a phenomenal post by Codrut Turcanu on BuildFire.com. The post is more than about Local SEO so look through it. I found it on Linda Buquet’s blog. There are a ton of tips in there.

Yes, other ideas as posted here about long tail keywords, etc. do help, but in my opinion it is about keeping your reader engaged to the point that the reader recruits other visitors for you. I cannot tell you how many times I have suggested Moz.com to someone in the last 4 to 5 years. At least in the mid hundreds I would guess.

Good luck,

Robert

[anthonydnelson]

Focus more on your users and this: "or at some point, you just don't care about keywords and write whatever relevant to your site"

You will begin to get traffic for keywords that are important to your users and company that keyword tools had little to no volume listed for.

[RCunningham]

Joon

I would be looking to expand your keyword set to more longtail, you say your are targeting your keyword sets but how about expanding those to the longtail, you will see better traffic and buying or converting traffic if you hone your KW's to that theory.

As for getting or finding new keywords, I am sure you have heard the phrase "content is king" (lol) couldn't resist that apologies. But in all seriousness start publishing articles that are deep and rich in content, if your publishing 400 word blogs publish 1200 word blogs with great pictures and make your content link-able and very easily share-able.

I would look to increase volume of content and social signals if your running out of keywords. By doing this you will then strengthen your existing KW program.

Also maybe some diversification in your niche maybe??

Best wises

Ryan