This is what I call Guerrilla Keyword Research Strategy 🦍
Would you like to learn a strategy that will help you dominate your market/niche by leveraging multi-million dollar per year content/SEO team’s work?
This is a little gray hat. So if you don’t like such things, click another post 😎
Some here may already be doing this but thought this might be useful for those getting started with dominating their market/niche.
Background: I already had a large content/authority site in a fairly competitive space before doing this. 👍
So this is something I did years ago.
Key idea: make better content than competitors 🔥
1️⃣ Doing THOUSANDS OF HOURS OF KEYWORD RESEARCH In Minutes
I found a competitor that I saw was really doing well with their SEO. I noticed they had huge traffic and ranking well.
I also saw they had similar posts to me – like we’d done the same keyword research in the past. 🤨
I soon noticed they’d done similar keyword research but on a *much* larger scale to me.
They’re a multi-million $ per year company with a large content and SEO team.
So my mind started turning:
If they have some of the same articles as me from my ‘piddling’ keyword research in the past (even hitting some *really* random ones that I already have), they must know the right keywords…at scale.
Hmmm. Sounds simple, right? This is 🔑, though.
And they’ve most likely put thousands of hours of work into this with an in-house SEO & content team (basing this on their LinkedIn details).
So I simply exported their top posts (some 850 or something) easily via Ahrefs (or you could do it with Ubersuggest, SEMRush et al). 🖥️
So I took these post titles and the keywords they used and I made a spreadsheet with them.
Then sat on it for a while thinking “How the heck can I get these done at scale!?”
💡 moment.
2️⃣ Putting It Together
Freelancers and outsourcing now became really important. 🔥
I took some recommendations from people about using Thruu and set my freelancers to using that.
Like I said, this is a while back and Thruu is no longer free.
Once I discovered Thruu, I got them to grab the top 3 (I think it was) SERP results’ H2s and H3 subheadlines.
So it wasn’t just the competitor’s subheadlines, it was anything that ranked best for that keyword.
The competitor ranks well but obviously not spot 1-3 for everything 🙂
You can also do this part of the process with other tools like SEO Minion. Thruu is now cost-prohibitive.
But I like the way Thruu just quickly grabs the whole SERP.
It’s only a few clicks to click on the top few results and then C&P the H2s, H3s, etc ⚡
I just gave the freelancer a Google Doc with all the keywords/article titles and he went to work with Thruu.
So once the freelancer had finished finding the H2s and H3s for each article, I got the writers to re-write each one.
Every. Single. One.
No plagiarism here, even though the keyword research aspect is admittedly quite gray hat.
WARNING: At the risk that I might belabor this point a little, this isn’t about copying their content.
We’re finding their keywords, their titles, as well as H tags (and *GASP* their URL structure, too!!)
Yes. BUT…
Important point: We’re then writing MUCH better content 👊
3️⃣ STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS
Let’s break this down:
1. Find a competitor who has already written on lots of the subjects you would love to write about. ✍️
It helps if they’re already dominating search.
2. Use Ahrefs/Ubersuggest (or similar) to grab a CSV export of their pages.
You now have their titles and (more importantly) the keywords they’ve chosen.
As well as their URL structure, which you can use too.
And you just saved yourself thousands of hours of work!
3. Put together a Google Doc with the keywords as Titles and handoff to a freelancer.
Have them run the titles through Thruu (or SEO Minion or similar) and have them grab the top 8-15 H2s and H3s for each title.
Get them to grab these H2s and H3s from ALL top search results for that term, not just your competitor.
This is important 🔥
You now have your outline
4. Now you have your subheadings for each post, get your freelance writers to recreate/reimagine ALL the H2s and H3s
(and H4s etc if you have them!)
You have leveraged countless thousands of hours of pro level keyword research.
They knew what keywords to go after!
Now, many smart people in here have already covered similar, but maybe not such an ‘on steroids’ approach such as this.
And I’m sure there are work arounds that I missed. But it worked for me about 3 years ago.
Having hundreds (maybe thousands!) of articles outsourced isn’t cheap, of course.
And I know some people are going to read this and think I’m mad to grab thousands of article titles.
I urge you to THINK AT SCALE! ⚖️
Weird emoji use!
So, either think at scale and employ lots of freelancers…
OR, you now have 10 years of a content calendar ready made! 😘
You’ll never want for keyword/post ideas ever again!
4️⃣ NEXT STEPS
Now, you probably have a HUGE amount of posts and the next step is to edit and proof read these posts.
I’ve mentioned it already, but the important thing here is to MAKE BETTER CONTENT THAN THE COMPETITION.
You know, the people who ‘gave’ you their keywords.
The editing & SEO process usually takes me at least 3 hours per post.
That includes sourcing great images & infographics + adding in videos to the post, etc.
This has been my usual workflow when working with freelance writers.
👥
If you read this far, you know I’m pretty alright at the old content writing thing.
Again, this is all about writing exceptionally great content that blows your competitors out of the water!
(***This process on (even more) steroids***) involves also using tools like SEO Minion to grab the PAA (People Also Ask) as fodder for a FAQ section for each post (don’t forget to use schema!)
But, at this point, you’re just shooting ducks in a barrel…
(***This post on some kind of steroid/human growth hormone that hasn’t even been invented yet!***)
Another way of upping your game here would be to do the first step multiple times with ALL main competitors.
It isn’t enough sometimes to just have ONE competitor’s research 😎
5️⃣ Wrapping Up
Hopefully, this has stirred up some ideas and you now have a content strategy percolating in your mind like hot coffee firing off those synapses.
Sometimes you just need to read a little of someone’s strategy to hit off some new ideas…
So if you have those breakthroughs, I’d love to hear them below! 🔥
Like I say, my site was already pretty well-considered in the space and got a fair amount of traffic, but it wasn’t doing the sheer numbers of my aforementioned competitor before doing this years ago.
It’s long been my dream to create the best and most detailed resource for my niche.
By using competitors to do the SEO and keyword research for you, you are partway there! 🙂
The next step is to create much better content than your competitors.
I should also mention, if got this far & this is still sounding too gray hat for you: think of this as a ‘Robin Hood’ strategy.
You’re the little guy/gal, right?
We’re picking the pocket of HUGE content sites. They have teams that have done this work for us.
Ahrefs helps us 😎
And by leveraging the subheadings of ALL the top 5-10 search results for each term, you already know what Google wants you to write about.
How do you write better content?
Use something like SEO Surfer to dominate each post itself, but that’s another discussion for another day
If this were the acknowledgements section at the end of a book (this IS a long post , right?) I’d be thanking:
– Ahrefs
– Semrush
– Ubersuggest
– Thruu
– SEO Minion
Plus, the dozens of freelance writers that made this possible.
I hope you leverage this strategy 😀