I heard someone say SEO is dead. Again. People have been saying this for years. They’ve also been saying email is dead. For years. Now I’m hearing, keywords don’t matter anymore. I call bullshit. Because I’ve seen clients get traffic on keywords that tools would say there is nobody searching for it. If people are searching using different tools or apps, for example, using perplexity, google search, Instagram, some even say Tiktok… do we need to worry about keywords anymore?
Resources
- SEO Power Up Plan™
- Keyword Tools
- Keywords Everywhere (My Favorite)
- Google Ads Planner
- Mangools
- Ubersuggest
- Tool of the Week – Google Alerts
- Recommended Podcast 👉 387 – 400+ Website in a Day Clients with Bailey Collins by Web Design Business with Josh Hall.
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Apple
I heard someone say SEO is dead. Again. People have been saying this for years. They’ve also been saying email is dead. For years.
Now I’m hearing, keywords don’t matter anymore. I call bullshit. Because I’ve seen clients get traffic on keywords that tools would say there is nobody searching for it.
That leads me into this week’s topic…
If people are searching using different tools or apps, for example, using perplexity, google search, instagram, some even say tiktok… do we need to worry about keywords anymore?
👇
I started down this keyword topic this week because I was using ChatGPT to analyze a client’s blog post for SEO and lead generation purposes.
And it came back with the 33k volume for the keyword I thought would work well for the post.
I saw that 33k and thought what the she-it. I don’t think so.
So I checked its source and found it was from some .AI domain website. (Which after poking around bit, has only been around for a couple of years.)
Not only that, it pulled the keyword from the website that was actually behind one of those fuzzy visuals, you know, where you have to pay or upgrade to see the full list?
Different tools use different methods to pull keyword search volume.
And for this particular keyword that I was doing work with, I checked multiple tools, and it was anywhere from 10 per month to 27,000 per month in the US. That’s the quite the range isn’t it.
As a business owner, I wouldn’t know to not trust those numbers.
As an SEO, and because it’s my business, I need to know what tool to trust.
Here’s what I suggest. If you want search volumes that seem realistic, here’s the tools I would recommend… Take your pick based on preference and budget.
Google Ads Planner, Mangools, Ubersuggest or my favorite, Keywords Everywhere. Because they all three reported the same number. The rest of the known tools were all over the board.
Why do we need to be concerned with search volume and does it matter now that search is evolving and people are searching with things other than Google search?
1️⃣ Google isn’t going away tomorrow. They are going to evolve to save their advertising arm and those are ruled by keywords. Someone types in a word or phrase and bam. There’s an advertisement.
2️⃣ Search volume provides us a compass. Knowing the search volumes helps to understand the demand for that topic.
I like to think of keywords as topics. I use them for structure and to keep my sanity about what topics I’m creating content around. For example, I have a blog post on example blog post ideas for photographers. It’s specific to specifically help photographers… without “targeting” that phrase, it might be difficult to get it to rank to show up in front of photographers… because not all photographers are going to type in “blog post topics for photographers”… they are going to type in “photography blog post topics” or “photography blog posts” or “blog post ideas”… and that last one mine could still appear because Google knows the searcher, the photographer is searching for photography specific things because of past searches.
The Takeaway
Keywords still matter for organic traffic. Period.
It’s good to write content around what people are searching for so you can get in front of those you can help.
And you can also write around keywords or topics that might not have a lot of volume if the content is part of your bigger content marketing strategy, like sharing for customer experience or on another marketing channel.
