What kind of content do I need? How much?

[BuilderDanSan]

Hi friends

i am absolutely loving this forum - too much in fact - I’m spending all my time reading threads instead of working on my site. Hahah.

I am launching a site that will have some cool tools that I think will be link worthy. I enjoy coding so I’d like continue working on the tools and hire a team to create content.

I understand the importance of keyword selection but I’m not entirely sure where to start.
Let’s assume my new site is about shopping for houses/mortgages.

Many of my main money keywords will have incredible competition (high domain rank etc/tons of back links etc). I know that I can have better more valuable content created but should I be going after lower competition stuff to start (maybe stuff around average lot sizes for example).

Are there any great guides that speak to how to pick keywords? I’ve read some of Ahrefs posts and what not but they seem to focus a lot on utilizing the tool, I’d be really interested to see some sort of case study so I can understand the type of keywords that are worth competing for and how far off my specific focus I might go in order to choose lower competition keywords.

My other question is around volume of content. I know there’s a heavy emphasis in putting a lot of content out there. As of right now I am thinking about trying to hire a couple writers and target about 30k words per month. Is this too little?
Thanks for the advice

 

[Ryuzaki]

You're right. Publishing for keywords you can't compete on is pissing money down the drain.

Other than that, we can't tell you what kind of keywords to target without knowing how you plan on monetizing. That will determine your main game plan.

I'm of the opinion that all types of content are worth it and you should learn how to monetize all of it, using the less valuable content to support the rankings of the more valuable content.

Beyond that, the best advice is to start at the conversion. Whatever action you need the user to take in order for you to make money, is the kind of content you should start with. Start at the bottom of the funnel and work your way outwards.

 

[DanielS]

Are there any great guides that speak to how to pick keywords?

I spent over a year making the keyword research process more complicated than it needs to be- it's much easier than it seems.

My advice would be to work your way up the AHREFs KD scale like each KD is a different tier. Gather all the keywords with a decent search volume that have a KD of 0, then of 1, and so on. Once you've got a list of keywords ranging in KD from 0 to 5 (if your website is brand new) with decent search volume, evaluate the SERP for each keyword. How well optimized for the keyword are the posts? How do the posts themselves look- any images, word count, grammar issues, etc. You'll find that many of these lower competition keywords have absolute garbage posts ranking in the top positions. The fonts you see people using and the speed of the websites will blow your mind- they're basically made in MS Paint.

Again, make sure the keywords have a decent search volume. Some keywords with 0 estimated searches can bring in hundreds of searches a month, but 90% of them will never bring in any visits (trust me, I was a complete moron and wrote 120 or so posts targeting keywords with an estimated search volume between 0-10 and only 10 of them have brought in a single visit after a year).

Once you run out of keywords in the 0 to 5 KD range, use the Content Explorer to find websites with a DR similar to yours. Take a look at their top pages and create similar posts- but better. Don't worry about the KD of the targeted keywords- if their pages can rank for the keywords, so can yours. With this said, if you see pages with a lot of backlinks, evaluate the backlinks themselves. Are they legitimate links or just coupon websites, web 2.0s, scraper websites, etc. If they have legitimately decent backlinks, you'll need to get some for your pages.

If you're in a broad niche, you'll have at least 100 targetable keywords to create posts about using this strategy.

(I know folks, AHREFs KD is a metric used to measure the competitiveness of keywords based on backlinks- not on-page signals. This is why I stated that the SERPs and posts must be manually examined).

 

[illmasterj]

Some seed keywords to try that aren't specifically for your tools:

• %location% property market
• %location% property prices
• %location% property tax
• %location% property update
• %location% construction cost %unitofmeasurement%
• %location% property insurance cost

I'd use these types of terms to get me started. They often aren't as difficult as you might think. I don't know what your goal is but most will allow you to offer a lead magnet and you can sell those leads to agents.