SERP Monster by blimpp - March 15, 2024

We've got a problem on our hands, and it's a biggie. Low search rankings are the bane of every search marketer's existence, and it's time we tackled this beast head-on!

In this week's edition, we're diving deep into the murky waters of search visibility woes. If you're tired of seeing your beauty products buried 10 pages deep in the search results, you're in the right place!

We know how frustrating it can be to pour your heart and soul into your SEO strategy, only to watch your rankings flatline.

But fear not, search warriors! We've got a treasure trove of tips, tricks, and insider secrets to help you overcome low search rankings and skyrocket your beauty and wellness products to the top of the SERPs!

Steal This: Keyword Research Organization Tool

Steal this customizable spreadsheet template for conducting keyword research, including columns for keyword ideas, search volume, competition, and relevance your brand's products. You can download it here.

How To: Conduct Beauty Keyword Research With Perplexity AI

Let's talk about how Perplexity AI can help you uncover beauty keywords that you may not have considered with keyword tools alone.

Perplexity AI uses natural language processing (NLP) to analyze the latest data from all over the web - we're talking blogs, forums, reviews, and social media. This makes it a perfect companion to any keyword research task.

You can read the full blimpp how-to article here. Here’s the summary:

1. First things first, identify your broad beauty topics - think skincare, makeup, haircare, and wellness. Use Perplexity AI to dive deep into the minds of beauty consumers and find out what questions they're asking and what topics they can't get enough of.

2. Then, it's time to get specific and explore niche topics. Perplexity AI can help you uncover emerging trends, popular products, and specific concerns within each niche.

3. Next up, get into the minds of beauty consumers - Perplexity AI can provide you with the most common questions people are asking about very specific beauty topics. Use these insights to inform your keyword research later.

4. It’s time to get organized. Set up a keyword spreadsheet to keep track of all keywords you've discovered. Include columns for search volume, keyword difficulty, user intent, and content type. This will help you analyze your keywords from every angle and ensure you're creating content that packs a meaningful punch.

5. Take those keywords and run them through Ahrefs for even more insights. Look for keywords with high search volume and low competition, and don't forget to check out the "Keyword Ideas" section for even more opportunities.

6. Finally, it's time to categorize those keywords. Group them by topic and intent, and align each group with a specific content type. This will help you create a diverse and balanced content calendar that addresses audience interests and needs.

   And there you have it - by using Perplexity AI to discover trending beauty topics and using those to inform your keyword strategy, you'll be well on your way to dominating the long-tail SERPs!

Google Releases Major Core Update in March 2024

Brace yourselves for the March 2024 Core Update – this one's a doozy!

Google's not messing around this time. They're coming for all those spammy, low-quality, AI-generated content sites that have been clogging up the search results. Is it time to say goodbye to junk ‘programmatic’ SEO once and for all?

If you've been focusing on creating awesome, people-first content that actually helps your audience, you might be in for a pleasant surprise - your rankings could be about to improve! But if you've been cutting corners and churning out subpar content, well...you might want to buckle up.

The important thing is to not panic if your traffic takes a nosedive, it happens to the best of us. The key is to take a step back and really look at your site. Is your content up to scratch? Is it engaging, informative, and valuable to your readers? And more important, are readers getting something unique from your site vs. the rest of the SERP? If not, it's time for a quality control overhaul.

This update is going to be big, folks. Google is making it crystal clear that they value human-created content that puts the user first. No more keyword stuffing, no more scraped content, and definitely no more bland generic AI-generated nonsense.

So, what's a savvy search marketer to do? Focus on creating content that your audience will love. Put yourself in their shoes and ask, "What would I want to read? What would help me solve my problems or answer my questions?".

Look up ‘Information Gain’. If you can nail that, you're well on your way to thriving in the post-March 2024 Core Update world.

Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day. Take your time, put in the effort, and always, always, always prioritize quality over quantity.

Keep calm and optimize on, my friends!

Picture Of The Week

What’s the best tool for SEO? We put together this handy comparison:

What You Can Learn About Keyword Research From Curology

In this week’s case study, we’re taking a look under the hood of this 7 figure skincare brand that consistently gets 1st page rankings for ‘best’ terms - no mean feat when the competition includes the likes of Forbes, Healthline, and Cosmopolitan Magazine. 

1. Conducting best-in-class keyword research to identify rankable ‘best’ terms. Focus on terms between 1k-10k searches per month, with Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty between 10-20. 

2. Don’t get stranded trying to rank for ‘best moisturizer’. Go a level or two deeper, i.e. ‘best moisturizer for combination skin’.

3. Onto the blog content itself - they go hard on authority signals. Most articles are ‘Medically Reviewed’ by skincare professionals, a tactic that’s becoming increasingly apparent within the industry. They also cite references (around 10 per article) towards the bottom of the article.

4. Optimizing blog post titles, headings, meta descriptions and image alt text to include the primary keywords in a natural way. For example, a post titled "The Best Ingredients to Fight Dark Spots, According to Dermatologists" targets keywords like "best ingredients for dark spots".

5. Creating in-depth, high-quality blog content that comprehensively covers the topic - around 2,000 words with a structure that covers basic definitions, expert tips, and FAQs. 

6. Moving onto backlink strategy - building backlinks from other reputable skincare and health websites to their blog posts. They’ve accumulated some 9.4k to their blog pages alone.

Explain It to Me Like A 5 Year Old: Keyword Research Intent Types

Explain It To Me Like A 5 Year Old - where we bring sophisticated marketing concepts to the table and simplify them to the core.

This week, we’re looking at keyword intent - specifically, what it is, why it matters, and how to organize your keyword research by intent.

Focusing your SEO strategy just on ultra-competitive high intent keywords is destined to fail - you need a more diversified approach to ensure you’re hitting your audience at different parts of the buyer journey.

Let’s start by looking at the three core keyword intent types:

• Informational: Sitting in the awareness stage, this is where most of the volume is - think ingredients (i.e. sea kelp), how-to (i.e. apply moisturizer), and skincare concerns (i.e. get rid of rosacea).

• Transactional - Lower Intent: This is where the intent (and ranking difficulty) tends to hot up. These are people actively in-market for a solution, but considering various options (i.e. retinol serum, moisturizer).

• Transactional - Higher Intent: Ok, here’s where your money pages should be optimised for. These are people ready to buy, they just need that final step. Think ‘best moisturizer for dry skin’, or ‘ ‘best eye cream’. They may also be searching for category-level reviews.

Why it’s important: Structuring you keyword research in line with intent will ensure that you’re hitting all of the right areas. Don’t go in too heavy in one direction or another, instead find a healthy balance of keywords that are spread across the buyer journey.