Best Keyword Strategy for Lower-Authority-Ranked Domain

[ascott777]

Hi,

What should a lower-authority-ranked blog (DA - 21) who is trying to increase general traffic focus on above all when selecting keywords: difficulty, monthly volume, opportunity, or priority? I know that all are important factors to consider, but I fear that without an already consistent following our new content will just get hidden behind more established domains if we select too difficult of keywords. I'd love to hear from someone who's built up a blog audience as to what strategy they used here.

Thanks!

[EGOL]

I believe that the strategy is better determined by 1) the type of site you are working on (transactional vs informational); 2) the quality of content that you are best able to produce; 3) the investment that you are willing to put into the content; and, 4) the strength of your tribe.

For informational, you can pick and choose the keywords to where you have the ability and resources to defeat the best content on the web, or at least compete with it.  If you don't have the content-producing ability or the ability to pay for it, your chances of success are greatly diminished.  If you can compete with the best content of the difficult keywords then you should attack the biggest keywords where you have the ability to compete.  Don't fear competition because where there is a lot of competition, there is usually a lot of traffic and a lot of money changing hands.

If you don't have the ability to produce or pay for highest quality content and intend to attack with prattle, then your chances of success are greatly diminished.  Just sayin'.

In transactional, a good method is to publish content that is highly useful for the people who are about to make a transaction or have made a transaction and now need information.  How to select the product, how to use it, how to fix it, how to enjoy it are very good fields for transactional websites.  They earn respect of shoppers and earn respect of people with an interest in the products you are offering.  They pull links, traffic, social engagement and make your site a "go to place" on the web.

Your tribal resource might be current traffic who will share your content or current social strength that will enable you to share and that sharing be spread.   Here, again is where highest quality content succeeds and prattle is not worth much.

It's not about the authority that you have today... its the authority where your content can take you.

[ascott777]

Thanks for the response! At this point we're primarily going to be doing informational. Our tribe is about 15,000 spread across various social media platforms (not so much email yet, unfortunately).

It's encouraging to hear someone say that it is indeed possible to rank for difficult keywords with good content--which I'm confident we can create--when there are already juggernauts out there.  What exactly did you mean by 'ability to compete' though? And is there a difficulty score that would be considered too high right now for a beginner? I'm looking at publishing an article this week focusing on a keyword with a difficulty score of 39 and a priority of 46 (the highest score I've found for the topic). the competition for which would be some fairly established websites, including NBCNews. I've also looked at similar keywords with with lower difficulty scores, but they also have somewhat lower priority scores.

I look forward to your response.

[EGOL]

What exactly did you mean by 'ability to compete' though?

Ability to compete is the ability to create spectacular content, promote it with titles and headlines that people will respond to and spontaneously share, and have a tribe that will do that for you, or an ability to ask for and get valuable links.

Most people can't do this.

Most who can do this only achieve it with a fraction of their articles - even though they work hard at every one of them.

A lot of people think that they have "good content".  Perhaps an English professor would have given the writing and the presentation a "good grade" but that isn't enough.  You need writing and images that people see and say... Wow!... then they share it because they want their friends to know what they have found.  For that to happen you must have content that is at least one clear step above all other competition.

[EGOL]

Ross Hudgens has a good article that describes what it takes to be competitive.

https://www.siegemedia.com/creation/content-marketing-cost

[ascott777]

Thanks for the suggestion (and the initial response). This was a really helpful explanation of what quality content entails!

[ascott777]

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