Ultimate Guide or Individual Posts for Chance to Rank for Separate Keywords?

[amru82]

Oh, I have just remembered a question that I've had for quite some time now and it's been haunting me.

Let's say that I am building a website dedicated to running.

Keywords:

how to start running
benefits of running
proper running form
how to run correctly


My question is: would you rather create "The Ultimate Guide to Running" in which you cover the above plus more, or would you rather create individual articles for each and every single keyword?

Creating some sort of "the ultimate guide to..." would most likely be a huge ass pillar article (which we consider that would be made packed-full with value) and perhaps attract more backlinks/shares. However, making individual articles will allow for more specificity (especially in terms of on-page SEO).

So what is your guys' take on that?

 

[Stewy]

@amru82
I'd say it depends.

Some sub-topics may need their own separate piece of content (for better user experience, conversion rate, etc).
You're speaking to your audience, then to the search engines. Not the other way around.

What I generally do is have a master post i.e "The Ultimate Guide to Running".
In it I'll add as many keywords (sub-topics) as possible, while still keeping it relevant, readable and interesting.

Then interlink the subtopic posts and the master post to:
- keep pagerank flowing,
- keep users on site, increasing their time on site & pages per session.

 

[bernard]

I've had success with both models.

For example, you might have an article that really goes into depth with "five finger running shoes", where you pull in a lot of studies, facts, illustrations etc, which would be too much if you had to do that for every subtopic in your ultimate guide. You'll still talk about it in your ultimate guide, but only a fraction, then link to the in depth article. What will happen here is that sometime your in depth guide will take off and sometimes it will underperform, while your ultimate guide will rank better. I take this is a sign to merge articles, where as if my in depth guide ranks well, I tend to expand and add more content to it.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Oh, I have just remembered a question that I've had for quite some time now and it's been haunting me.

@amru82 and @Stewy, what I say is to remember to always have a main keyword in every post that is your holy grail for that post, and optimize for that. Optimizing for the main keyword often means optimizing for longer tails and synonyms and what not, but those aren't your goal. They'll bring in additional traffic related to the main keyword, but you'll never dominate an entire basket of terms with one post because you'll never be able to perfectly optimize for all of them.

And we're assuming they have enough competition that others are optimizing for each individually. Which is what you need to be doing too. Your big giant post should go for the holy grail keyword that has the most competition, broadest intent, and highest volume if you want a chance to compete for it. But remember that that's going to be top-of-the-funnel too, not necessarily high quality traffic. But it makes great link and social bait.

My point is that every single post needs a main keyword that it's optimized for. The rest is "thanks for the extras" if you get traffic from them. You'll include them because it's part of optimizing for the main term. But you'll have a much better chance of ranking all of those other terms by optimizing other posts directly for them with their own sub-terms supporting them.

TL;DR - Don't try to take down every term on one post. It's not going to happen on anything with real value and competition.