Sociogram, Social Signals and Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Semantic Keyword Research Part 1 is on my Google+ Page

Whip­ping Up “Sup­port­ing Keywords”

Now that you’ve decided upon your ori­ginal keyword and your core keyword, the next step is to draw up sup­port­ing keywords. Ima­gine a set of con­cent­ric circles. Your core keyword is in the cen­ter and your sup­port­ing keywords form the second ring. For a core keyword like “spud can­non range”, you can draw up some cre­at­ive sup­port­ing keywords. The only rule of thumb while choos­ing sup­port­ing keywords is that you need to know the sub­ject really well and choose phrases that are closely related to your core keyword. Simply put, sup­port­ing keywords are phrases which have a high chance of appear­ing repeatedly while writ­ing about the keyword. Examples of sup­port­ing keywords for the core keyword “spud can­non range” can be,

- choos­ing a spud cannon

- how spud can­nons work

- buy­ing a spud cannon

- what are spud cannons

- aver­age range, etc.

Now, not only do you have a core keyword phrase that has a high chance of being ranked prom­in­ently in search engines, but you also have a set of sup­port­ing keywords that will give your con­tent the added advant­age to make it to the top. These sup­port­ing keywords can go into the ‘meta sets’ and ‘head­ers’ in your con­tent. They can also be subtly inser­ted into the art­icle body wherever the con­text allows you to do so.

Add An Icing With “Stem­ming Keywords”

When you’re cre­at­ing keyword phrases, core keywords and sup­port­ing keywords, you need to think like a search engine. The best part is, it’s not that hard. The tough part is, it takes quite some time to get this right with all your con­tent. The machine part of SEO is easy. It’s the human part that’s chal­len­ging. The farther way you go from the cen­ter in the set of SEO circles we’ve already spoken about, ‘semantic keyword research’ really becomes more of guess­work and pre­dic­tion and involves increas­ingly lesser depend­ence on the core keyword. ‘Stem­ming Keywords’ form the last circle after the ori­ginal key phrase, core keyword and sup­port­ing keywords. Stem­ming keywords are essen­tial if you want your art­icle to rank as a very author­it­at­ive piece on the sub­ject you are writ­ing about.

The suc­cess of your semantic keyword research would still depend on how well your art­icle is written.

You can have buck­et­loads of amaz­ing sup­port­ing keywords and stem­ming keywords, but the fact remains that even with an ideal set of both, an art­icle could still come up short on SEO. This is where you need to real­ise that an art­icle can be optim­ised all one wants, but it’s still ends up being read by a human being in the end. Writ­ing an art­icle that reads well instead of sound­ing awk­ward or keyword stuffed is as import­ant as get­ting your semantic keyword research right. The writ­ing style and the flow is just as import­ant as the research and this is some­thing every con­tent writer should know right from the beginning.

And finally… [TL:DR]

To sum­mar­ise, semantic keyword research con­sists of decid­ing on a keyword phrase, choos­ing the appro­pri­ate Core Keyword, com­ing up with a great set of sup­port­ing keywords and final­ising a list of stem­ming keywords. Once you have these ele­ments in place, you have the out­line of an art­icle in place.

Think of these keyword phrases as the dots around which you can draw your art­icle. Con­nect these dots with a well writ­ten art­icle and you’ll be well on your way. So now, go and write amaz­ing art­icles that will make it to the list of the most author­it­at­ive art­icles in your chosen subject.