Be Honest With Yourself About Keywords

Today I’m talking about the quickest way to objectively determine whether or not you deserve to rank for any keyword.

Have you ever done a site search on Google?

A site search is where you put in a search operation like this:

site:yourdomain.com your-keyword

Make sure not to include a space between the colon and your domain and make sure to include a space between the keyword you want to check.

In the example above, the results are showing what Google thinks are the most relevant results, from top to bottom, for “content template” on our website.

I’ll then open up a new browser tab and search for just that keyword:

Now I am going to compare the results simply by looking at the title (blue links) first.

How does Avalanche’s top result for “content template” compare to the top 3-5 results on the entire internet?

Objectively, we don’t belong in the top results because our title is more specific. It’s about creating a content template in a Google doc. The results are less specific and don’t make as many assumptions about what the searcher needs.

If Avalanche had a strong business case for ranking for that keyword, we’d pay more attention to these results and ask:

• How can we offer searchers something different?
• How can we offer searchers something better?
• How can we connect the possible search intentions to revenue?

Then, we’d get to work to produce more, valuable content around the topic of content templates.