Search engine optimization (SEO) is made up of many components, and accordingly some elements of SEO are more important than others. It’s natural to ask yourself: which is the most important SEO component anyway? There are thousands of articles on the internet that answer this question. Most SEO experts are of the opinion that the most important thing in search engine optimization is the content of the web page. “Content is King” – if you search the internet, you will come across this phrase thousands and thousands of times, over and over again.
What does the phrase “Content is King” mean?
Obviously, this phrase defines the content of the page as the number one component among all SEO elements. Well-written content will be liked by both search engines and users. Here comes the next question: what does “good content” mean. For the content of a page to be qualified as “good/well written”, it must have many characteristics. First of all, it should be written by people possessing expert knowledge in the relevant field. You may not be a super-expert, but still, without a sufficient amount of knowledge and experience in a given field, there is simply no way to create good content. The second important content requirement is that it must be unique. Google doesn’t like repetitive content that is copied from other pages, so you should try to write unique texts and not copy and paste other people’s content. I.e. in order to rank well in search engine results and be liked by users, the content of the page must be unique, informative and useful. In addition, many experts are of the opinion that one cannot create good and interesting content if the author himself does not have a strong and passionate interest in the relevant topic. In other words, the content should be written “from the heart”. Only when all the above-mentioned features are combined does a truly good content result.
All of this is completely true. Yet… content is not the most important element of SEO. Not in terms of traffic to your page. After all, search engine optimization is done to get your page the maximum number of visitors, right? E-commerce stores are created to sell goods, company sites are created to offer services and products, and most blogs are created to earn money from advertising and affiliate programs. For this purpose, it is necessary that these sites have as many visitors as possible. In all these cases, the content is very important, but still not the most important thing.
What in SEO is even more important than content?
Imagine you’re a paleontologist like Ross Geller from the NBC sitcom Friends. Specifically, let’s imagine that you are a great expert on a particular dinosaur called “Khaan mckennai”. Like Ross, you are not only an expert in your field, but also very passionate about your subject. You research Khaan mckennai, you talk about Khaan mckennai, you dream about Khaan mckennai, you are obsessed with Khaan mckennai, you know everything about Khaan mckennai. You decide to make a blog to write about Khaan mckennai. You buy the domain khaanmckennai.com or khaan-mckennai.com, install WordPress, write a title “Blog about Khaan mckennai” and publish some wonderful articles about Khaan mckennai. Chances are, your blog will show up on the first page of Google search results for the keyword phrase “Khaan mckennai” in no time.
Do you think this blog will be able to traffic 5000 unique visitors daily? How about 1000? How about 500?
The truth is, your blog will get little to no traffic. Simply because no one or almost no one in the world will search the internet for the keyword phrase “Khaan mckennai”. (Well, after reading this article, maybe a few people will make such a search.)
So, it’s obvious what the most important thing is for the success of a page: you need to optimize your page for keywords and phrases that people search for on the Internet. Only after you have identified the right keywords will it be time to write the great content of your articles.
How to find out what are the most popular keywords on the Internet?
There are many tools on the Internet that show and compare the popularity of keywords and key phrases. Some of them are paid, others are free or offer a free trial. One of the free keyword research tools is Google Trends (https://trends.google.com). Google Trends can compare two or more keywords and phrases, showing which one is more popular, from which parts of the world the keyword/phrase has the most searches, and what other similar and related keywords users are searching for in Internet. Another popular tool is Google Keyword Planner (https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/). To find more tools, search the internet for key phrases “free keyword research tools”, “keywords popularity free tools”, “find how many times something is searched on google”, etc.
For the convenience of web developers, we will publish in future articles lists of the most popular keywords, phrases and questions on the Internet of all time, as well as lists of the most popular keywords and phrases by category.