If you ask an SEO expert to name one SEO tactic that has reverted the most over the years, they are likely to confidently wordplay “link building.” Some will point out to “technical tasks”, and very few will overly think of “keyword research.”

The truth is, most SEO tasks squint completely variegated these days but few SEO experts have reverted the fundamental way they do keyword research and optimize content for those keywords.

Yes, we seem to have finally left keyword density overdue (unless Google forces it back) but fundamentally nothing has changed: We run keyword tools, find relevant keyword strings and use them as much as we can throughout a defended page.

In the meantime, Google’s understanding and treatments of keywords has reverted completely.

1. Exact-match keywords are getting obsolete

Google has a long history of trying to understand search queries vastitude matching word strings in them to the documents in the search index.

And they succeeded.

It started years ago with Hummingbird stuff first quietly introduced then officially spoken in August of 2013.

Yet, few SEOs unquestionably understood the update or realized how much of a transpiration to everything they knew it was.

With Hummingbird Google made it well-spoken that they were striving for a deeper understanding of searching journeys and that would ultimately fix all their problems. As they manage to know exactly what a searcher wants and learn to requite them that, no fake signals or algorithm manipulations will impact their search quality.

Hummingbird was the first time Google spoken they wanted to understand “things” instead of matching “strings of words.” In other words, with Hummingbird exact-match keyword strings started rhadamanthine less and less useful.

Then, without Hummingbird came BERT that helped Google to enhance its understanding of how people search. 

Image source: Google

There’s a short but pretty enlightening video on the struggles and solutions of Google engineers trying to teach the machine to understand the obvious: What is it people midpoint when typing a search query?

That video explains the incubation of SEO perfectly:

• Context is what matters
• Google is struggling, yet slowly succeeding at understanding “context, tone and intention”
• Search queries are rhadamanthine less predictable as increasingly and increasingly people talk to a search engine they way they think
• Stop words do unquestionably add meaning, and are often crucial at waffly it.

The takeaway here: Keyword research tools are still useful. They help you understand the patterns: How people tend to phrase a query when looking for answers and solutions in your niche.

But those keywords with search volume are not unchangingly what people use to research your target topic. According to Google, people search in diverse, often unpredictable ways. According to Google, on a daily understructure 15% of searches are ones Google hasn’t seen before.

Every day Google encounters 15% of completely new search queries. That’s how diverse searching behaviors are.

Moving yonder from keyword matching, Google strives to requite complete and violating answers to the query. And that’s what your SEO strategy should be aiming at doing as well.

Whatever keyword research process you’ve been using is likely still valid: It helps you understand the demand for unrepealable queries, prioritize your content resources and structure your site.

It’s the optimization step that is completely variegated these days. It is no longer unbearable to use that word in the page title, description and headings.

So when creating an optimization strategy for every keyword you identify:

• Try to icon out what would satisfy the search intent overdue that query: What is it that searcher really looking for? A list? A video? A product to buy? A guide to follow? Even slight changes in a searchable keyword string (e.g. plural vs singular) can signal a searching intent you need to be enlightened of.
• Search Google for that query and squint through search snippets: Google is very good at identifying what a searcher needs, so they generate search snippets that can requite you lots of clues.

Notice how none of the high-ranking documents has that word-for-word search query included:

Image source: Screenshot made by the author

2. Branded keywords are your priority

More and increasingly people are using search to navigate to a website, and there are several reasons for that:

• A few strongest browsers indulge people search from the write bar (those include Safari on both desktop and mobile and, obviously, Google Chrome)
• People are getting used to voice searching, so they just speak trademark names to perform a  search.

Image source: Screenshot made by the author

In other words, your customers who likely know well-nigh your trademark and are possibly ready to make a purchase – those hard-earned customers are forced to search for your trademark name or for your branded query.

And what will they see?

It is phenomenal how many companies have no idea what comes up for their branded search, or how many customers they lose over poorly managed (or increasingly often non-existent) in-SERP reputation management.

There are three crucial things to know well-nigh brand-driven search:

• These are mostly high-intent queries: These searchers are typing your trademark name intending to buy from you
• These are often your existing, returning customers that tend to buy increasingly than first-time customers
• Both of the whilom factors make these your brands’ top priority.

And yet, you don’t have tenancy over what people see when searching for your brand. In fact, monitoring and optimizing for those brand-driven queries is not a one-time task. It is there for as long as your trademark exists.

• Treat your trademark name as a keyword: Expand it, optimize for it, monitor your site’s rankings
• Identify deeper level problems overdue your customers’ brand-driven searching patterns: What is it you can modernize to solve problems overdue those queries?

Image source: Screenshot made by the author

Your branded search queries should wilt part of your sales funnel – everything from About page to product pages and lead magnets should capture those brand-driven opportunities.

In many cases, when you see a large value of brand-driven keywords, you may need a higher level approach, like setting up a standalone knowledge base.

3. Entities are key

Entities are Google’s way to understand this world.

Entities are all proper names out there: Places, people, brands, etc.

Google has a map of entities – tabbed Knowledge Graph – that makes up Google’s understanding of the world.

Entities help Google understand the context and the search intent.

Image search: The beginner’s guide to semantic search

Being Google’s entity ways coming up in searches where you were unsaid but never mentioned:

Image source: Screenshot made by the author

Through entity associations, Google knows what any search is about.

Entities should be the cadre of your keyword research process: What are known entities is your niche and how do you socialize your trademark with those entities?

Conclusion

Search engine optimization is evolving fast, so it requires an wiry strategy for brands to alimony up. If you are doing keyword research the old, exact-match, way, your merchantry is well-nigh 10 years behind!

Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Bee, Trademark and Community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post Three hair-trigger keyword research trends you must embrace appeared first on Search Engine Watch.