Hi there. Welcome back to the simple SEO podcast. I'm so glad to have you here with me Today we are gonna talk about how to create an SEO keyword list for your business. So I get a lot of questions from you about keywords, and I understand that because keywords can be confusing. And if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that they're really, really important to your success With Google, SEO specifically. Now, we don't use keywords in the same way for ai, SEO or chat GPT, Google AI Overviews, et cetera, but we do still want to use them for Google. They are still very important. So how do you brainstorm keywords? How do you come up with a list? How many should you work on at a time? Those are all the things we're gonna talk about in today's episode. And I wanna make sure that we also touch on some of the most common mistakes that I see people make with their keywords. And they are generally the reason why if you are doing SEO, you're trying, you're following the rules, you're doing everything right and you're not getting results, usually it has something to do with the keywords that you have chosen for your Google, SEO keywords. So let's jump right in. What I'm gonna have you do is plan your keyword ideas, your content ideas for the quarter. So we're going to ultimately brainstorm a list of 12 keywords. Now we're gonna start. With more than that and we're gonna whittle it down to 12 because that way it will help you get through all of your content for the next quarter. So right now it's May. We are in the middle of Q2, so it's a fantastic time to start planning for Q3. Q3 is going to be July, August, and September. So the first thing I want you to think about is, is there any seasonality to your business? Is there anything going on that you should be promoting in July, August and September? Is there anything that you are running, a promotion, a sale, a new product? Is there something tied to a holiday, an event back to school, et cetera. So sit down and kind of jot down your notes as to what's going on in Q3. That's gonna be your first thing. You're also going to want to have your ideal customer information and your content pillars. So if you don't have those yet, you wanna go back and make sure you really work on creating that information, because that makes you, makes it easier for you to make sure that you are. Tying your content back to your business so that you're bringing the right people into your world. Because there's no point in creating content that's gonna bring the wrong person. We wanna make sure we have the right person. So think about what's going on in Q3. Think about your ideal customer. Who are they? What questions do they have? What information do they need or want from you? Think about your content pillars. What are the. Four different topic areas that you teach on or you touch on, on your blog or on your podcast. That's where we're gonna start Now. I want you to go, if you wanna use chat, GPT, you can use chat GPT for this. If you wanna do it on your own, you can do it on your own. I have been playing around with chat GPTA little more. As you know, I call it chatty, and I do find that it's very helpful for brainstorming ideas. I am teaching my students how to use it. I've actually created a simple SEO AI assistant that can help them with all of this to make it easier. Now, I'm going to tell you, do not trust it for keyword research. It's gonna tell you, you can do it. It's gonna give you competitive information, it's gonna give you. Keyword data, all of that, it doesn't know what it's talking about, okay? So don't trust it. If it tries to give you any keyword recommendations, just use it for brainstorming. So what you're gonna do. Is you're gonna think about your customer, make sure you've given them a name, you know who they are, who you're working with, how you're trying to connect with them. Go to chat, GPT, or just start brainstorming on your own and put in some information there. In chat GPT. You can ask it to like generate a list of potential keywords or topic ideas. I would go with topic ideas. It does a better job of that topic. Ideas for your ideal customer keyword list. Like I said, it can brainstorm keywords, but do not listen to it. If it gives you competitive information or, um, search volume, it's incorrect. It like hallucinates, it makes it up. I swear. I I've tried every way possible to use it for that. Unless you're using keywords everywhere and you have their chat GPT template, plugins in your paid keywords everywhere, account, you can do that. But otherwise, don't trust me. Don't trust it. Chatty doesn't know what it's doing when it comes to keywords, but it's good for brainstorming so. Tell it that you want to generate a list of long tail keywords that it can do that, that would help your ideal customer. You want to create 12 blog post ideas using keywords. You want it to help these customers or this customer, and you want to cover these four different. Content pillars and ask it to generate a list of ideas. So it'll give you a big list. I would ask it for 25, 36, like ask it for four or five or six per topic area, even up to 10 per topic area. And then I want you to take that list of ideas and I want you to look through it. And double check and see like, which of these have I already covered? Which of these are new? Which of these look like they might be really good for my audience? Which of these are ones that my audience would use and really decide, okay, of these, these are the ones that I like the most. Now the ones you like the most, I want you to take to a real keyword research tool. Do not use chat GPT for this part. Go to a real tool. That can be the Google keyword tool. It can be Uber, suggest keywords everywhere, Moz, whatever one you want. And there are a bunch of them out there. There are free ones, there are paid ones. Use whichever one you're comfortable with. It really doesn't matter. They should all have the same. Information coming from Google, but again, do not use chat GPT for this step. It will tell you that it's good at it and it is not. If you're one of my students, you know that our AI bot will tell you I'm not allowed to do that because it sucks at it, you guys. Okay? So take that. Go to a real keyword research tool. And what I want you to look for is what is the search volume, what is the competition? And then I want you to really think about the intent of that query or that keyword. Is that meeting the intent that your ideal customer has when they're searching with it? Does it. Tie to whatever it is that you do in your business. Now you can do this by going to Google, open a new tab, open an incognito browser window, and just start putting that keyword into Google to get a feel for what is already ranking. How similar are they? Do they make sense? Is what ranking what you would be expecting your content to be similar to all of that. That's gonna help you to make sure that. Not only are you choosing a keyword that looks like it has a good ranking potential, and you're doing that by looking at the competition and the search volume in your keyword research tool, but then you're verifying it by going to Google and looking within the search results to see is the content that I want to create similar to what's already ranking here? Is this something that I should be writing about? Do I have a chance of ranking? Because if you go to Google and you use the keyword that you've researched, you've, you know, refined your idea from your list, and you've researched it and you're looking and you're like, okay, everybody who's ranking on page one in that incognito browser window is like. Super big websites, then my friend, you're going to need to change your keyword because you're not gonna have a chance to rank for that. And that's just gonna be frustrating because it's gonna be another situation where you created content, you spent time and effort, and you created it, and you optimized it. But you're not gonna get traffic because Google's not gonna see your website as being as authoritative as some of those really big brands or those really big websites. So that's where it's gonna be important to make sure that you're seeing sites that are pretty similar to yours. Now, I struggle with this. I'm gonna be completely honest. I struggle with this because within the SEO world, it is. Probably the most hyper competitive niche, and it is so hard because everybody I'm up against is an SEO expert. Every single one of them. And most of the SEO tools are the ones that rank for all the content terms because they know in order to sell their tool, they need to get a lot of traffic to their website. So they create tons and tons and tons of content. So if you go in there. And you see that it's all these really big websites. Do yourself a favor and find a different keyword. Go back to your original list. Go back and look. Um, go to your keyword research tool. Put that keyword you were thinking about using in there. Then let it do its thing and see what other alternatives might come up for it. You can also go to Google and use suggested search, and in this situation, you would just start typing that keyword or something similar to that keyword into Google and see what Google suggests, because Google suggests your keywords where it kind of fills in the information for you. It does that based on what people are searching for. Four. So Google knows there are people looking for this, and so they think it might be what you're looking for, which is why they go ahead and suggest that. So once you've gone through, you've brainstormed your keywords, you've looked in your actual keyword research tool to verify the competition and to verify the search demand. You've gone to Google and you've. Taken a look just to make sure, do I have a chance of ranking for this? There you've eliminated the two biggest problems we see. So the two biggest problems with keywords first is that you either choose a keyword that is so competitive, you'll never have a chance of ranking for it, where eliminating that in step three. Number two is that you choose a keyword that no one is searching for. Therefore, even if you rank at the top of the page, there's no one searching, there's no traffic. Nobody's ever gonna find you because nobody cares about that keyword. We've eliminated that in step two. So yes, I'm telling you to do a few more steps in this process of creating your keyword list, but it's going to help you create a better keyword list. I recommend you do this before creating any content. This is exactly what I teach my students to do, because it allows you to avoid creating content that's just going to end up in that void on the internet that nobody's ever gonna see. So now. You've got keywords, you know what you're looking for. You know what you can potentially rank for. Now you're gonna take those topic ideas and those keywords, and you're gonna create your plan for the quarter. And you, my friend, have a keyword list that you can work off of creating your content for Q3 or. You know, creating your content for May. If you're still working on May, it's okay. Don't shame yourself. But now you have 12 new ideas that you know you have a chance of ranking for. And 12 blog posts that you could potentially rank for are going to make a big difference to your website traffic. So if you would love to have me like walk you through this, show you how to do it, screenshots, screen shares, all of that, be sure you join me in simple SEO content because this is a lot of what we do in that class. We really learn how to be very strategic with our content. Then we just work on doing this and we create that content. We use our AI tools to make it faster and easier for us. This is really the core of how we succeed. The other thing we wanna think about is today, it's no longer just about Google, SEO, we. Also wanna think about ai, SEO. We want to show up in chat, GPT and AI overviews in Google's new AI mode and all of that. So the keywords are specific to Google, SEO, it's the formatting and the phrases and how we say things that help us rank in ai, SEO or chat, GPT AI overviews. So you wanna make sure that when you're creating your keyword list and you're brainstorming your ideas and you're putting together your plan, you're also thinking about. What words, not only what words can I rank for in Google, but what words should I be using in my content piece that people would also be asking? And it's not really that hard, my friend. What we wanna look at is. Who am I trying to connect with? What words would they be using? Generally speaking, your keywords that you're choosing when you're doing your Google reviews or your Google Research are going to also be the keywords that you're going to use or that somebody might be searching for within your. Um, blog post within an AI search tool. Now, if you're one of my students, make sure you're just using your simple SEO AI bot because you can go in, give it your keywords, you can give it your blog post that you're working on, and you can ask it to help you to add in what you need to do for AI search. Hey, can you help me review this? Let me know what I need to do from here. And it'll help you with formatting and give you some tips and some ideas once you give it your blog post, or you can ask it even to help you with your outline and having it go ahead and give you those recommendations for AI search as well. I'm trying to make this as easy as possible for you if you're not in simple SEO content yet. Why not just come sign up, take the free class. You can take the SEO 1 0 1 class. You can find that right on my website, etched marketing.com. You can get to it straight from the freebies tab. Take that. It's actually gonna invite you into the funnel. It is. It is a funnel. I'm gonna be honest. You're gonna take the class, you're gonna get some emails from me, but it's also gonna give you information on how you get access to the AI chatbot that I've created for students. It's also gonna give you a. Discount on the course. If you come through that funnel, if you just order, you just join simple SEO content from the website, you can do that, but it's more expensive. So go through that funnel. It's there for you, for your benefit, because you're part of my world. You listen to the podcast, you read the blog post, you're here, you're part of my world. I want you to benefit from that. So when you're ready, join me in that class. Let me know if you have questions about. How to create a keyword list for your business. Make sure you remember. You can use chat GPT to brainstorm. Come up with the keyword ideas. Come up with the blog topic ideas. Then use your regular keyword research tool to verify. Go ahead and plan out your keywords or your blog topics and the keywords that you're gonna target for the next quarter. Create your content, make sure you optimize it using your keyword if you don't know for sure where you use your keyword, um, get a copy of the beginner's guide to SEO that is in my on the freebies tab, on the website, etched marketing.com/freebies. Grab that and then also make sure you're formatting for chat, GPT and for ai, SEO that's gonna be really important. I have a blog post on that. I'll log, I'll link to that in the show description here. Um, but make sure you're doing that as well. Alright, that's it for today. I will see you back here next week. Bye for now.