In fact, we ourselves are responsible for a lot of that thinking since we published Pain Point SEO. Since then, we’ve been touting the massive conversion rate benefits of bottom-of-funnel, high-intent keywords.

It’s true that high-intent keywords convert obscenely higher than everything else. But what we haven’t discussed much is the writing needed to unlock those conversion benefits.

In short, the writing matters. Content written just for ranking misses key nuances, which can hurt your conversion rate. This case study highlights that.

We had a client come to us who had previously taken our course and produced content targeting various bottom-of-the-funnel keywords. Despite ranking in the topmost positions for several high-value keywords and driving traffic, their content wasn’t converting at the levels that we typically see for other clients.

We’ve seen this happen before when a product doesn’t compete well in the market or when the audience isn’t a good fit, so we considered that possibility.

However, after reviewing their ranking blog posts, we hypothesized the issue stemmed from content quality and how the product was positioned and sold in the articles.

The content lacked flow — it was written more for the SERP than for the target customer — and the product positioning wasn’t tailored to the intended reader. It felt like generic, templated content.

After updating the articles, we saw conversion rate increases ranging from 66% to 900%.

In this article, we’ll share:

• Our approach to writing bottom-of-the-funnel content and how we use SERP analysis to guide our writing

• Data showing the conversion rate increases from improving bottom-of-funnel content

• Before-and-after writing examples

Our Best Practices for Writing Bottom-of-Funnel, Conversion-Oriented Content

Write for the reader, not for search engines.

1. Consider the nuance of the keyword & know your reader

The specific query — what the person types into Google — is crucial. Small language variations offer insights into the Googler’s search intent.

What problem are they trying to solve? What’s the goal of their search?

A really basic example here is “accounting software” vs. “enterprise accounting software.”

The “enterprise” clarifier tells you the Googler works for a large company, likely interested in scalability, multi-entity/currency support, security, compliance, and a more flexible budget.

You can swap “enterprise” with other qualifiers like “small business,” “medical,” or “free,” each reflecting different search intent.

Most writers would approach these keywords in the same way — explaining basic accounting software and listing options. However, the product positioning should differ based on intent (small business vs. enterprise vs. medical accounting software).

Another example: “accounting software” vs. “accounting software with inventory management” — the latter shows the Googler prioritizes inventory management features. Offering the same generic accounting software content won’t cut it here.

Another language variance to pay attention to is “software” vs. “app” — if someone searches accounting apps, it’s likely they’re looking for mobile apps, and in our experience, Google will prioritize pages talking about or linking to iOS or Android apps.

While considering the reader’s search intent, also think about their knowledge level and where they are in the buying process. Tailor your content to meet them where they are, avoiding too much backstory or diving too deep into advanced topics.

Try to step into the reader’s shoes as you outline, draft, and edit.

2. Identify your product’s features & benefits that solve your reader’s pain points

Once you understand your reader, the next step is to align your product or solution with their specific needs. Ask yourself:

• What are the readers’ pain points?

• What solutions are they looking for, and which ones would work best for them?

Part of positioning your product is understanding that readers want practical, implementable (and, ideally, convenient) solutions. If they have to jump through too many hoops or exert too much effort, you risk losing them.

• Do you have a suitable solution for them?

We’re assuming at this stage that the keyword you’ve chosen is a good fit. If you reach this point and realize your product isn’t the best solution for the audience, it may be time to revisit the keyword and target something else.

You can read more about that in our guides here and here.

• Why is your solution the right choice? Which features or benefits directly address the reader’s pain points?

It’s useful to map out pain points alongside corresponding product features and benefits. This will clarify the main points to cover and help you structure your content outline.

• How has a similar person (user) benefited from your solution in the past?

This insight can help you explain product features and create relatable examples, adding personality to your content. It also helps make your content feel original and unique.

3. Align your pitch to the keyword

Now you can start bringing together all the pieces from your earlier brainstorming to create your pitch and positioning.

While this may seem straightforward, it can be challenging for many teams.

First, it might not always be clear what the best positioning for your product is relative to a specific keyword. We’ve also seen debates within client organizations about whether their product fits a specific audience or which features should be emphasized.

It’s your job to navigate these discussions, but here’s an important point we remind clients of: the positioning in each article doesn’t need to drastically change how you present your brand or content across all channels.

Clients often get caught up in remixing small details, worrying that if they sell a feature one way in one post, they need to update sales copy everywhere else. That’s not necessary.

Your core selling and messaging points can remain consistent across all channels, even when you tailor content for specific keywords and audiences. Highlighting small business accounting features in one blog post doesn’t mean your entire brand is now targeted toward small businesses.

Readers coming across your content via search engines are seeing it within the context of their specific query. Other readers will encounter your brand through different channels and searches.

Some of the most effective ways to implement your strategy and write for the reader include:

#1. Focus your introduction on the reader’s pain points and your proposed solution.

This can be the hardest part of writing and setting up the flow of your post, and you might go through multiple iterations until you land on what’s best.

The goal is to relate and resonate with the reader immediately, showing you understand their search intent and have the answers they need. Content should be at a higher knowledge level, offering valuable insights that teach the reader something.

You should also prepare the reader for what’s covered in the article. A clear table of contents helps guide them, making it easy to see your article addresses their interests and allows them to find the information they need quickly.

#2. Choose a content structure that aligns with the keyword and engages the reader.

For example, if you’re writing a how-to guide, break it down into a clear, step-by-step list to make it easy for readers to follow.

If you’re writing a product review guide, list the products and maintain a consistent format for each review (with extra emphasis on your product, of course).

#3. Introduce and sell your solution where it fits naturally in your content.

In a step-by-step guide, you could explain how your product supports each step.

In a review guide, list your product at the top and provide a detailed walkthrough of its features, showing how they solve readers’ specific pain points. This allows you to convey your core value propositions and help the customer decide if what you’re selling is right for them.

#4. Don’t be afraid to sell your product.

Many businesses hesitate to promote their product, fearing it feels too self-serving. We believe this stems from the dominance of top-of-funnel content, where the norm is to “give” rather than “ask.”

While avoiding a pitch in educational pieces makes sense (“What is a cash flow statement?”), bottom-of-funnel queries (“enterprise accounting software”) signal clear purchase intent. Here, selling isn’t awkward — it’s expected.

Providing feature details, real customer examples, and supporting media can be more valuable than a generic landing page or a software review site like G2.

This approach acts as a “mini-demo,” helping readers see how your product fits their needs — which drives engagement and conversions.

Our Results from Updates

We updated several of our client’s top-ranking posts and tracked conversions month-by-month after the updates.

To prioritize which posts to update, we analyzed historical conversion data. We started this experiment in mid-2024 (April/May), tracking conversions from January 2023 to mid-2024, gathering over 12 months of data.

As shown in the left-side columns of our sheet, these posts averaged less than one demo per month before the updates, with some seeing only one or two conversions every few months.

After our updates, we were seeing posts convert multiple times per month — with average monthly conversion increases between 36% to 900%!

We saw a significant win right away with Post #1 — converting less than once per month before updates, then bringing in five, three, and 11 conversions in the three months after. This resulted in a 622% increase in average monthly conversions for Post #1.

We did notice a couple of outliers: one post saw a 1600% increase due to extremely low conversions before updates, while another post experienced a -50% drop in average conversions. However, this drop is likely noise since the post had less than one conversion every other month before updates and followed a similar pattern afterward. If it converts next month, it should return to normal levels.

It’s also worth noting that we’ve only recorded six months of post-update data, so our dataset is limited. However, these early results and emerging patterns are promising and support our original hypothesis.

Specific Writing Examples from Our Updates

Now, let’s dive into some of the updates we made to our client’s product review guides to better target the specific reader.

Starting with the introduction, many of the posts followed a “Wirecutter-esque” approach, positioning the content as an independent third-party review of products.

For example, one post intro read:

“Today, there are 168 different purchase order software for construction companies. In this guide, we spent 40 hours comparing the top 5 purchase order software to find the five best you can use to improve your purchasing process and track purchase orders.”

While this may seem like it helps to build credibility, it often comes across as overwhelming and hard to believe. Additionally, readers finding this content on our client’s site likely already know whose product they’re reading about, so posing as a third party feels disingenuous. They probably expect some mention of the client’s product.

Here’s what our update looked like:

This speaks directly to where the reader is in the purchasing process, and provides information on how to comparison shop for this type of software in the construction industry, which teaches them something. It also shows readers that we know their industry and have experience with other construction companies, building that credibility the original intro was going for.

We provide background on the relevant features and benefits to look for when shopping — the ones we mapped during keyword research above — and gear our language and examples to the construction industry. This is a perfect example of how selling in a blog post can be married to giving value just fine — those two things don’t have to conflict.

At the end, we prep readers for a pitch on our product while telling them we’ll also cover key details about other top-rated competitors. The client’s site also includes an embedded table of contents so readers can preview sections and skip to the one(s) they’re most interested in.

Another update we made across client posts was expanding upon their product sections. In many of these review guide posts, they’d provide a quick bulleted list of features, not really emphasizing one over another or explaining how features work in the context of the workflow.

We included dedicated sections within our client’s product review to discuss and show an image or GIF of each feature, and we presented features in the order of the typical workflow. More so “showing” (vs. telling) readers how they’d use our client’s product to solve their specific pain points. Painting that picture, as discussed above.

We prioritize the features and considerations discussed in our intro — also going back to our map above — and explain how other features support those key points and the overall product functionality. Constantly dropping examples and bringing content back to our reader’s pain points.

It’s important to note: this format gives our clients ample real estate on the page, and we don’t shy away from the opportunity to wholly pitch our client’s product to these readers. Googlers searching product category keywords, like “purchase order software for construction,” are looking to learn about and be sold products. We have the natural opportunity to go all in here.

While on this note, we should also mention how we handle competitor sections. Instead of pushing readers to the client’s product alone, we provide ample detail about competitors so readers can truly comparison shop.

Googlers searching for products are in a buying mode — but still need to get a lay of the land. Shoving one product at them is too biased. It’s natural for buyers to consider multiple products before making a decision, so you can lend in that process.

We compile all of the most common names readers will encounter in their search — other names ranking on the first page, other names mentioned in software review lists, etc. Then we provide a brief explainer of each one, a bulleted list of features, pricing details, and links to competitors’ websites, so readers can get the gist of each product.

We follow a consistent format here so readers can easily move from one product to the next and compare the key details between solutions.

Here’s an example of a competitor section from the same post we mentioned above:

This less-than-biased, helpful approach can build reliability with readers. When they see you understand their search intent and are there to help, they’re more likely to spend more time on your content and trust you. Which can ultimately lead to conversions.

Another key change we made was updating our client’s positioning in which audience or user they best suit. Most posts included a “Best For” section with a very specific type of user listed.

For example, in this “purchase order for construction” post, they listed their product as best for: construction companies with a job costing model that wants to associate cost with granular job-level budgets.

While this specific detail might resonate with a small fraction of readers, it’s limiting, confusing, and most importantly untrue. One of the main USPs of this client’s product is its flexibility and customization options, and white-glove onboarding to set the software up to your specifications. This lets them work with various industries and business sizes.

So instead of trying to hone in on one specific reader vs. another, we discuss this benefit and drop a few examples of how the software can be customized for the specific industry at hand (in this case, construction).

This sells our solution to a broader set of readers, touts the benefits and convenience of choosing our client’s product (personalized to you, set up for you), and encourages a higher volume of conversions.

Our post also includes a variety of CTAs where we encourage customers to start a demo and convert. We make it easy for readers to take the next steps with our client directly from the post.

What to Avoid (What We Hypothesize Writers Are Doing to Rank)

Now that we’ve covered best practices for updating content to drive conversions, let’s explain what we believe is happening in top-ranking content that isn’t converting.

SERP research is essential for guiding keyword research and identifying viable opportunities. It’s important to search the keyword you plan to target, see what’s ranking, and assess whether it makes sense to enter that conversation. However, we believe many writers are over-relying on SERP results to shape their outlines.

For example, here’s a look below at the search results for “e-procurement software” and our client’s initial outline for this keyword:

You can see that most of the H2s in the article map exactly to questions people had in the SERP or the key topics around the parent topic. Then the article was written in a Q&A format, just answering these questions in a 2000+ word article.

Many people in SEO or content marketing who read this may think, “What’s the problem here? They’re just fulfilling search intent.”

Yes, to a large extent, that’s true. But the challenge with writing things this way is that the content doesn’t flow well and doesn’t help the reader get the answer they’re looking for around the topic. It’s also not really personalized or tailored to the reader — which is critical to encouraging conversions per our best practices.

So although it’s a good idea to look at SERP features, like People Also Ask and related searches, when doing SERP analysis, this analysis should only help inform key points to make in the article. It shouldn’t just become your outline.

Originality and differentiation of ideas, brands, and products are what convert SEO traffic into leads and customers. Without that, you have rankings and organic traffic that doesn’t convert.

Final Notes

Many clients hesitate to update content ranking on the first page, especially in the top spots, even if it’s not converting, for fear of “breaking what’s working.” However, rankings aren’t the ultimate performance metric.

Yes, tracking rankings is important, but if content isn’t converting or bringing in new business, it’s not fulfilling its purpose. It’s broken. When this happens, it’s crucial to investigate the cause and update content to better appeal to your readers.

But in our experience working with many dozens of companies over the years, most try to rank for them with product pages (eCommerce) or a few “Solutions” or “Use Case” pages (SaaS).  

What we’ve learned after publishing and tracking hundreds of pieces of content is that the most effective way to rank for (all) the long-tail keywords that relate to your brand’s products or services is by creating dedicated long-form content — ideally, one piece of content for every long-tail keyword you’re going after. 

Your Homepage Can’t Magically Rank for All of These Long-Tail Keywords

Ranking for use-case-specific keywords doesn’t happen by accident. You can’t just plug these keywords on your site pages and hope you will automatically rank for them. You have to create dedicated content to rank for super-specific, long-tail keywords. Why? Because:

• Homepages and product pages rarely have sufficient detail. They contain high-level copy about the brand and product that isn’t specific to any industry or reader. 

• Industry or Use Case pages aren’t usually competitive enough to hit page one because, even though they have more focused information, they rarely satisfy search intent for long-tail keywords. 

For example, look at the SERP for the keyword “accounting software for small business:” the first three results are all list posts comparing accounting software (in fact, 8/10 results on page one are all comparison posts). 

Google clearly favors list posts because that’s what best appeals to search intent — the searcher is shopping for accounting software and wants to find the best solution for their small business, it’s obvious that they will want to compare a few options before making a decision. So there’s just no way a homepage or landing page that talks about only one brand will rank for this specific search query.

To capitalize on these audience-specific keywords, you need to do the hard work of creating blog content that systematically ranks for each one. 

Not only is this the most effective way to hit page one for these search terms, but by creating this content, you create opportunities to speak directly to all the different target audiences that are searching different long-tail keywords — their pains, what they hope to accomplish from their search — and describe in clear detail and with specific examples how your product can be tailored to their requirements. This specificity in your content is important for conversion rate. 

We’ve done this work for dozens and dozens of clients and have seen time and time again that dedicated blog content outranks and outperforms landing pages sprinkled with industry-specific, long-tail keywords for the reasons above. 

Below, we explain our process to rank for long-tail keywords. We’ll also run through a few case studies so you can see how we find these keywords for clients and the results from our work.  

How to Rank for Long-Tail Keywords 

1. Find Keywords That Are Closely Related to Your Brand, Products, and Services 

The first thing to do is find the long-tail keywords that are most relevant to your offerings. These are typically variations of what we refer to as your main “category keywords” in our Pain Point SEO framework, that is, keywords that indicate the searcher is looking for your exact type of product. 

The first group of long-tail keywords you should look at just add one layer of specificity to your most relevant category keywords. 

In the example above, it was: accounting software (the primary product category) for small businesses (the layer of specificity). There are tons of examples that could fit this framework.

• Accounting software for nonprofits 
• Professional accounting software  
• Enterprise accounting software
• Accounting software for HVAC businesses
• Accounting software for eCommerce
• Accounting software for property management 
• Accounting software for personal use 
• Accounting software for beginners 

This list goes on.

Choosing which of these layers of specificity makes the most sense for you comes down to considering your ideal customers and unique selling points — which audiences do you want to attract, which strengths or differentiators position you above competitors?

You can also think about long-tail queries that indicate searchers have a question, pain, or job to be done that your products or services satisfy. We call these “Jobs-to-be-Done keywords.” Look for queries that closely align with your brand offerings —the problems or jobs that you offer the absolute best solutions for. These are typically action statements or “how to” type searches. 

Some keyword suggestions here are: how to organize purchase orders, track invoices and payments, or track mileage for taxes. 

Choosing keywords that most closely align with your product or service is important for obvious reasons — the whole point of this SEO strategy is to get your name in front of the right audiences — but it’s also important for rankings because these are the queries where you have the most topical authority and the best chance of hitting page one.

Bonus: Using SEO Tools to Find More Long-Tail Keywords

There are plenty of keyword research tools to find long-tail keyword ideas, popular options include Semrush, Ahrefs, and Answer the Public. 

Semrush is free to use (up to 10 searches per day) and a fairly popular keyword tool, so we’ll show you how this works with their features. 

Start in the Keyword Overview tool and type the keyword phrase you want to search — one trick to find industry or user-specific long-tail keywords is to type “[software category] for” and see all of the results. For example, “accounting software for”.

On the next page, you can see metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, and CPC, then Semrush displays a list of keyword ideas below. 

There are often an enormous number of these industry- or use-case-specific keywords with extremely high buying intent available — we see over 7K options related to accounting software — so you have to filter and use your best judgment. 

Semrush displays categories on the right side (in the screenshot we see: best, business, small, free, mac, etc.) so you can easily filter keywords by topic. There are a number of additional filtering options. We suggest searching by term to find keywords related to your layers of specificity. 

Ahrefs also has a free keyword research tool, where you can do similar searches. Note that they allow an unlimited number of searches, but only show the first 100 keyword ideas with limited metrics on the free plan (you can always upgrade to see the full list and all metrics). 

Start by opening Ahrefs Keyword Generator and typing the keyword phrase. We’ll stick to our “accounting software for” example from above.

From there, Ahrefs displays a list of ideas. You can see keyword difficulty and search volume, and when those metrics were last updated. 

(Keep in mind, both Semrush and Ahrefs offer paid subscriptions with full access to these tools.)

Note: As per our Mini Volume Keywords article,we strongly caution against dismissing keyword opportunities solely because they have low search volume. Many of the super specific long-tail keywords will have lower search volumes, and this is to be expected because they are so specific; but as per that article, the actual traffic you get is almost always much higher than the stated search volume, and as per Pain Point SEO, the conversion rates can be so much higher than top of funnel, higher volume keywords. 

2. Create a Dedicated Blog Post for Each Target Keyword

As we already warned, you can’t create a few landing pages or one massive “ultimate guide” that’s going to hit on every long-tail search that relates to your brand and offerings. 

Think about it: the search results for best accounting software for small business will (and should) be different from results for enterprise accounting software or accounting software for eCommerce. These are three different audiences; they have different problems and require different types of solutions. You can’t possibly hit every vertical with general website pages. 

The only way to effectively rank for each opportunity is to create a unique piece of content for each query. 

Comb through your list of keywords to prioritize topics and plan an individual blog post for each one. 

3. Perform SERP Analysis to See What Your Post Requires to Compete with Top Search Results

Before you start writing, it’s critical to analyze the search engine results page to figure out the search intent of your target keyword. 

Remember, Google’s entire goal is to deliver the most helpful results to satisfy search queries, so the page one results offer a strong indication of what its algorithm favors or wants to show its users for your target keyword. 

Consider again our example above — accounting software for small business: 

One look at the SERP (screenshot above) tells us we need to create a software comparison guide. We can take research a step further, actually scanning through each content piece, to see what competitors they mention and any other topics they cover. Then we know what our post requires and can determine ways to improve upon what’s already ranking. 

You can read more about SERP analysis in our SEO Content Writing guide.

4. Write Content to Appeal to Search Intent and Audiences

Tailor each content piece to the target audience — you need to touch on relevant topics and solutions to rank, but content also needs thoughtful examples, advice, opinions, recommendations, etc. to engage readers and satisfy search intent. 

All of the “fine details” should be catered to the person reading the content. 

In each piece, think about the target audience: their current processes and pain points, how your solution appeals to them, and the specific benefits your solution offers. This lets you speak to each audience more head on; you can drop in relatable quips about what audiences are doing now and how your solution solves their challenges. This gives you a much higher chance of converting the readers who land on your content.

We also wrote a guide on creating reader-centric and conversion-oriented content, which you can find here: Pain Point Copywriting: How to Write Compelling Sales Copy Inside Blog Posts

Here are a few examples of our work ranking clients for these industry-specific long-tail keywords: 

Case Study #1: Ranking Digital Asset Management Software for Industry, Business Size, and Location-Specific Keywords 

A client we recently worked with offers digital asset management (DAM) software. If you’ve never heard of DAM before, it’s essentially Google Drive on steroids, for companies that have tons of digital assets and several employees who need to find them, and thus for whom Google Drive or Dropbox aren’t enough.

Their primary audience is marketers and creative teams since these folks often store and share the most digital files. But, as you can guess, all kinds of businesses can benefit from DAM software, and our client offers features so they can work with small businesses, enterprises, and global teams. So our task was to find allthe long-tail keywords that would get our client in front of the right target audiences. 

During our extensive onboarding interviews with their sales and marketing teams, we talked about: 

• The DAM’s customizability — they can tailor their product to virtually any requirement, offering a “universal DAM.”

• All industries they could realistically cater to, and who to avoid. 

• The DAM’s scalability and support for enterprise companies — these are the big ticket sales. 

• Their onboarding services and custom pricing for small teams. Our client works primarily with enterprise brands, but one of their USPs was support for small, expanding businesses, so targeting small business keywords was a priority for them. 

• The DAM’s global capabilities and expanding their reach beyond the US, into the UK, Australia, and APAC countries. 

We found over a dozen highly specific, long-tail terms to create dedicated content. These were keywords around DAMs for different departments, different use cases, different company sizes, and more. After publishing, we saw 75% of blog posts for all “category + layer of specificity” keywords hit the first page of search results. 

Case Study #2: Finding & Ranking a Unique Help Desk Software for the Right Layer of Specificity Keywords  

Another client of ours who sold help desk software had a slightly different dilemma: they have a solution they can theoretically market across industries, however, their software is strictly an email management system with a few straightforward features, it does not have other help desk tools like live chat, voice, or social media messengers.

So we had two layers of specificity to determine during keyword research: the “help desk software” keyword variations specific to email management plus the additional layers of specificity determined by target audiences and unique selling points. 

Here are some of the important findings from our strategy calls: 

• The help desk is easy to use and offers affordable pricing, so they are a known choice for small businesses. 

• On the flip side, they also have multi-brand features and global scalability, so they can support enterprise and international brands. 

• They are one of the only help desk brands to offer a self-hosted solution, which can be essential for federal institutions or meeting GDPR compliance.  

While we assume that anyone searching general help desk keywords could be interested in software with all the bells and whistles, our client is a good option for anyone needing an email-based, multi-brand, or self-hosted help desk. So we found specific category keywords related to ticket and email management, ease of use, cost, industry, business size, location, device, and hosting options. 

Here’s a look at their ranking positions:

At first, rankings moved slowly; posts were indexing at positions 30+ and crawling to page one. So we: 

• Performed quick SERP research for each piece of content to ensure blog posts still satisfied search intent and were competitive with what was already ranking. 

• Built backlinks to promote content.  

• Performed a technical audit to see if anything on the site’s backend affected the poor rankings.

After identifying and addressing subdomain issues, we saw these posts achieve top rankings — and they’ve sat on page one for 6+ months. They consistently drive traffic from search engines and convert website visitors, without us needing to update or “maintain” content. 

Case Study #3: Covering Every Base for Time Tracking Software That Caters to All Industries & Business Sizes 

The last client to talk about here sells an employee time clock software — a software solution that can obviously be used across any business with hourly employees.

In addition to time tracking, they also offered scheduling and payroll, support for field service teams via mobile apps, and flexibility to customize the software via integrations. They could work with virtually any organization interested in time clock software. 

Since they sold a common software type and worked with businesses big and small, we had a lot of directions to go in during keyword research — some of the boxes we wanted to check were: 

• All feature specific category keywords and their combinations. For example, keywords that suggest the searcher is looking for time tracking and payroll or payroll and scheduling. As an example from another industry (ours, SEO) it would be something like “keyword research and rank tracking tool.”

• All layers of specificity that apply to the product’s unique benefits. For example, many field service teams want GPS-enabled time tracking software so they can see where workers are clocking in from and their routes; since our client’s product has GPS, we could target GPS related keywords. 
• Industry-specific keywords. This client wanted to capitalize on keywords related to contractors and construction teams since they had luck with these types of businesses in the past. However, they also wanted to hit on all industries they could (realistically) sell to — restaurants, hair salons, healthcare organizations, accounting firms, banks, insurance companies, and more are all good candidates for our client’s product. 

• Small-business-related keywords. Our client’s product gets good feedback from reviewers for its ease of use, and they have packages for all team sizes, so they wanted to attract more small business users who were moving away from manual processes. 

• Enterprise keywords. This client usually attracts mid-size and enterprise companies, so we wanted to double down on what was already working for them and pinpoint more of those same leads.

Over our years working together, we’ve written over 100 pieces of content targeting these highly specific, long-tail category keywords. And at the time of publishing, those articles rank for more than 100 BOTF keywords on the first page of Google search. (Many articles rank for more than one keyword.)

Note: In addition to ranking this client in top search positions for these keywords, our content brought in over 2,000+ conversions in 2022. 

When we look at conversions by page, we see most top performers are blog posts written to target specific variations of main category keywords. For example, a category keyword related to construction drove 130+ conversions alone. Another category keyword related to a specific feature benefit generated 100 conversions.  

And this is why we say you need dedicated content to capitalize on these keyword opportunities fully: there’s no way a homepage or landing page is going to rank for these specific keyword phrases, and even if they do, they won’t convert readers nearly as well as tailored content will. 

Want to Work with Us or Learn More About Our Approach to Content Marketing?

• Our Agency: If you want to hire us to develop, manage, and execute your content marketing strategy, you can learn more about our service and pricing here.

• Write For Us: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.

• Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better digital marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback.

1. Updates to ensure accuracy when talking about your brand, products, or services — we’ll call these “brand-accuracy” updates. If you update or add new products or services, or go through a significant rebrand, you’ll have to update your website content to reflect those changes. But obviously, there is no “how often to do this?” question here because it’s self-explanatory. If you update a product feature, you should immediately update that product page (and any other content about that particular functionality).

2. Updates to general marketing site copy (e.g., your home page, About Us page, resource pages, product or feature pages). Our rule of thumb here is: if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. These don’t require updates if they’re accurate and accomplish the goals you set for them. Which leads us to our next point… 

3. Key SEO-based pages (i.e., the vast majority of this is long-form blog content, though many brands optimize and track conversions from their home page, too) — and this is what most digital marketers are curious about during our conversations about updating website content. But there is no magic number here. 

The intention behind creating SEO content is to rank highly in search engines and drive organic traffic (and, in most cases, see conversions from content). So, considering the goals of SEO content — updates should not revolve around some arbitrary schedule — the trigger should be slipping/stalled rankings. 

The best way to stay on top of content updates is to monitor search engine rankings. If you notice rankings decline or stagnate, then an update is warranted. If not, you don’t have to update for the sake of updating. 

We do this for a living (publish new content to get SEO rankings and keep old content updated to maintain rankings). So, we put together this guide to share our process for updating SEO-driven content. In it, we explain: 

• The best ways to monitor content and schedule updates (including the tools we use)

• Best practices for updating website content

• Setting the right expectations for updates — the importance of updates and what to expect after making changes 

• Results from our experience

How to Monitor Content & Schedule Strategic Updates

To monitor rankings, we recommend a tool like Ahrefs or Google Search Console (this is not as ideal, but it’s free, and if you don’t have a high volume of keywords to track, it can work for a period). 

• Ahrefs has a tool called Rank Tracker, where you can plug in the keywords on your content plan and see the pages that rank for them, with the most current rank position. Ahrefs will even show you how rankings improve or decline and provide a dropdown where you can review the entire rank history. 

• Google Search Console shows a list of all your ranking pages, the keywords they rank for, and the average position. You can add all of the keywords to a spreadsheet, with the page URL, and update the sheet every week or so to catch when the average position changes. Again, this is a more time-consuming process, but it can work for smaller teams or teams that don’t want to shell out on SEO software just yet. 

Here are the best practices to keep in mind during content monitoring: 

• As we said above, you don’t need to update content until you notice rankings slip or stagnate.

• If you were seeing steady movement up page one, but rankings start to stall (e.g., isn’t pushing past position #5), then updating content could be one method to keep climbing the rankings, or you may need to employ other tactics like link building to achieve higher rankings. We’ll explain what to look for to determine if updating could build some momentum. 

• If you notice rankings or traffic start to decline (not just in one week, but over the course of many weeks or months), it’s a clear indicator that content does not match search intent and needs an update. Backlink strength may also be a factor here, but if there’s a steady decline in rankings, our experience would tell us an update is required to align with search intent.

So, we’ll stress again: there is no magical timing for updating website content. The most efficient approach is to monitor its performance and take action when you notice a problem. 

Mini Case Study: Auditing Website Rankings Helps You Identify Which Pages Are Due for Updates

During a rankings audit for a particular SaaS client, we noticed our post for an industry-specific keyword related to “estimating software” started to decline in rankings. It had been moving up to page one, plateaued around the bottom (positions #9 and #10), then began to dip. So we see here a combination of stalled and slipping rankings. 

We performed SERP analysis to see if the content still matched the search intent of the target keyword (explained below) and found the results on page one had actually changed since we first wrote the post. 

Google was now primarily ranking list posts comparing different software options. But our post didn’t have a list. It didn’t compare multiple options. It only talked about the client’s product. At the time we wrote it, that was fine — a single landing page for one product was part of the search intent. But that changed over time. So, the drop in rankings was understandable.

We reworked the piece to include a list of competing software so readers could review and compare top options (while also learning about our client’s solution). Then, we changed the title to reflect the updates and show readers we cover all the most popular solutions. 

After the updates, we saw the post not only recover, but steadily move up page one to position #1 (image above, blue line is the ranking position, higher on the page). Since hitting the top of page one, we’ve seen some fluctuation, but the post never dips past position #3 and remains, most of the time, at #1. So we do not need to update it again until rankings fall.

Bonus: Use Content Optimization Software to Monitor SEO Scores

Another note for our more advanced readers: content optimization software (like Clearscope) is a category of SEO software that can be really useful to create, monitor, and update content. 

These tools analyze and grade content based on how well it aligns with search intent and existing rankings for a keyword. Some of these tools have a “content tracker” that monitors SEO scores; you can see if grades fall and use that as a trigger to update your content. 

Tracking SEO scores can be extremely helpful because they may start to decline before rankings; by monitoring these scores, theoretically, you can “get ahead” of updates and make changes before you see a dip in performance.

Best Practices for Updating Website Content

Now that you’ve identified what content to update, the next question is how to actually update them. 

1. Use Content Optimization Software to Check SEO Scores

The first thing we do is check the content’s SEO score in Clearscope. We like to aim for an A score or better on Clearscope, but if you’re using other on-page optimization software, adjust accordingly. At this step, we’ll adjust the keywords in the piece to achieve an A score. 

2. Check That Content Matches the Target Audience’s Search Intent

The next thing we do is run a search for the target keyword to see if there are larger misalignments between our content vs. what Google is favoring and ranking. This is a critical step (arguably the most critical) and totally separate from checking the Clearscope score. 

We wrote more about our SERP and search intent analysis process here, but in short we check to see if our content matches what Google is already ranking in terms of:

• Format — Is Google favoring blog posts, landing pages, lists, narratives, etc. 

• Topics — What topics and subtopics do most of the highest ranking pieces tend to cover? That’s an indication that Google feels those topics are important to this keyword. 

In this step we look at the content with fresh eyes and see if it still matches search intent (presumably, it did when we first wrote it, but if you’re evaluating content that was written without this kind of search intent matching in mind, it may never have matched search intent — it could be way off). 

Also, some common sense and critical thinking is important here. Beyond finding patterns in what is already ranking you can also think back to your original strategy and consider how SERP results have changed since you initially wrote content. What’s relevant now that wasn’t before? 

For example, new products, competitors, or technologies can pop up within your realm, and if your content isn’t up-to-date with the most current solutions, it could be noticeably out of date or not fulfilling search intent. For example, if you have posts ranking for tech trends from pre-2023, there’s a good chance they don’t mention the rise of AI and ChatGPT, which probably makes them incomplete now. That’s a major example but minor examples like this exist in any space. 

Mini Case Study: Updating Content Relevancy Improves Rankings

In addition, societal changes can impact SERP results and search intent. For example, take the keyword “time tracking software” — this is an opportunity we looked at for a client a while back. 

• At the time (pre-COVID and remote work), the SERP was specific to time clock software for businesses to track employee hours. 

• If you look at the SERP for this keyword today, the results now talk about two types of software solutions: time clock software for businesses and time tracking software for individuals to monitor remote work. 

Since more people are working from home, there is an increased interest in solutions to track working hours.  

So the search intent isn’t entirely different — there are still Googlers doing that search with the intent of finding traditional time clock software — but there is another audience to consider now. Another fraction of these Googlers are looking for apps to track remote work. 

So we have to update content so it’s helpful for both audiences: instead of keeping the post specific to one type of solution, it’s more competitive to create a review guide explaining the two types of time tracking apps. 

Then, you can review software in both categories, sell your product to the right portion of Googlers, and help each reader find their best solution. 

Performing SERP analysis helps you determine the high-level ideas for content and where to start making changes. 

3. Double-Check That the Details in Content Are Up-to-Date and Accurate

As a final step, make sure these details are polished:

• Stats, examples, and quotes are up to date.
• There are no broken links. 
• Update SEO titles and meta descriptions for accuracy and relevance (e.g., update the year to the current year if it’s in your title).

Bonus: Display “Last Updated Date” on Article Pages

A final tip: you can also try adding the “Last Updated” date alongside the original publishing date in the article schema. Including both dates can help Google “catch” updates more easily, and it shows readers your content is current. You can make these changes within your content management system. 

In our experience, we’ve seen that displaying the “Last Updated” date can encourage an immediate boost in keyword rankings for older pages you’ve recently updated. 

What to Expect from Updates

It could take a few weeks or a month for updates to make a significant impact (i.e., you see rankings recover or even improve), and you’ll likely see volatility in rankings for a period; this just means your post may jump around a bit as Google finds a new home for it. The movement will eventually settle down, and you’ll see the content’s new rank. 

You should also know that not all updates make a difference. It’s not guaranteed that just because you update a page, rankings will move up at all. In those cases, content may require more comprehensive detail, better-quality links, or more relevant media to reclaim its position; or perhaps you’re just targeting a really hard keyword and not pushing hard enough on the promotional side. 

Our Results from Client Content

Before wrapping up, let’s talk about how updating content proved beneficial for another one of our clients. 

This particular client of ours was seeing 200+ trial sign-ups per month from our content, but around the end of 2022, we noticed conversions started dropping off. Since conversions are our primary metric of success, this is what we noticed first, then we dug into rankings and website traffic to identify the cause of the dip.

During our research, we realized some of our posts had lost rankings for primary (and secondary) keywords — so content wasn’t being found or viewed as often, and fewer visitors meant fewer conversions.  

We performed SERP analysis for the primary (and valuable secondary) keywords we’d lost rankings for and we saw that many SERPs had changed. So, we brainstormed ways to re-angle content to better align with search intent. 

Some content only needed light changes (e.g., adding new product features or competitor information) while other posts required heavier remixes (e.g., turning a product feature article into a list post mentioning several products, as described in examples above) 

After we completed updates to all posts on our queue, rankings recovered and trial sign-ups ended up at an all-time high.

Prior to updates, content was averaging 171 conversions per month. After updates, our content averages 258 conversions per month. 

You can read more about this project and using secondary keywords to your advantage here: How to Find and Use Secondary Keywords to Increase Conversions: A Case Study

The Sparknotes

There is no golden rule when it comes to updating website content — you can’t say “content requires regular updates every month or year” because it’s just not that simple. Despite what other blog posts on this topic may suggest. 

Timing website updates and choosing which posts to prioritize is highly dependent on your content marketing strategy, the piece of content, the keyword(s) you’re targeting, site performance and domain authority, promotional efforts, business goals — the whole gamut.

The best way to maintain content is to monitor rankings and troubleshoot when you notice numbers stall or slip. If content is performing well for you, there’s no obligation to update it because X amount of time has passed. If it’s not broken, don’t touch it. 

Once you identify what needs attention, you can begin slotting updates and determining your strategies to revamp content. 

​​Want to Work with Us or Learn More about How We Approach Content Marketing?

• Our Agency: If you want to hire us to execute content marketing in this way, you can learn more about our service and pricing here.

• Write For Us: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.

• Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback.

Since we’ve built our brand on prioritizing high buying-intent keywords, and we measure conversions from every piece of content we create, we thought it would be interesting and useful to the content marketing and SEO community to report on the conversion metrics of different types of bottom-of-funnel SEO keywords. 

As explained in Pain Point SEO, we think of high buying-intent keywords as being in one of three categories:

1. Category Keywords
2. Comparison and Alternative Keywords
3. Jobs To Be Done keywords

To do this study, we pulled six months of data from 95 articles we wrote for our clients, each ranking for a different primary keyword. In total, these 95 articles got over 123,000 organic pageviews in the period analyzed and 4687 product-related conversions (meaning free trial starts, demo requests, or sales form fills). 

Below, we compare the conversion rates of articles ranking for SEO keywords in the three categories above. Our post explains how and why the conversion rates are what they are (and how to use this information for your benefit). 

Note: If you want to know what we mean by ‘SEO conversion rate’, how to calculate it, and more, jump down to our FAQ section.

Overall Results: How Well Different Bottom-of-Funnel Keywords Convert

Here are the types (and sub-types) of keywords we analyzed and their conversion rates:

1. Category Keywords

• [Main] Category Keywords: Queries that describe exactly what you offer (4.85% average conversion rate)

• [Side] Category Keywords: Queries that show buying intent for a secondary feature or use case (1.94%)

• Category + Layer of Specificity: Queries that imply the searcher is looking for a product like yours but for a specific use case or vertical (2.96%)

2. Alternatives + Competitors

• Queries that mention competitor names, indicating Googlers are aware of other brands in your industry, searching for alternatives, and could be good candidates for your solution

• These had the highest average conversion rate (8.43%)

• “Vs.” Keywords: Queries comparing two solutions —
  [Brand #1] vs. [Brand #2] — (5.45%) 

3. JTBD Keywords

• Queries that describe jobs to be done — or problems to be solved — that you offer the absolute best solution for (2.44%)

We’ll discuss each type of keyword and its average conversion rate below. 

Main Category Keywords Are Your Brand’s Bread and Butter 

4.85% average conversion rate

These are the queries that describe exactly what you offer — i.e., the person searching is shopping for the type of products or services you offer. This includes keywords like “best accounting software” or “men’s running shoes.” If you sell accounting software or men’s running shoes, these are keywords you absolutely want to be ranking for. 

We expect the conversion rate of keywords with this much buying intent to be high, and it is. Most people don’t expect blog posts to convert at multiple percentage points, much less 4.85%, but this data shows that they can when they rank for the right keywords and are written to sell the product.

That’s why we have long advised that brands prioritize these keywords, and this data further supports that assertion. For example, Geekbot — a solution to run online standup meetings (full case study here), and a past client of ours — ranks #2 for “Slack standup bot” via a post we wrote for them, and that single long-form blog post has a lifetime conversion rate of 8.36%.

In addition, we ranked a video marketing client on page one for multiple terms around their video marketing sub-category; the app, software, and service variations of those keywords convert at 5.73%, 3.31%, and 3.00%, respectively. 

Importantly, the takeaway here is not that app keywords convert higher than software and service keywords!

In this case, it just so happens that the post ranking for an “app” keyword converted at the highest rate. Still, the takeaway is simply that when you target variations of product keywords and cover all of your bases, you should expect most variations to convert well (i.e., at 3% or higher to free trial starts) because Googlers are researching products similar to yours. 

Now, with that said, if you only offer an app or only offer a service, you may find certain category keywords simply don’t fit your offerings, so all category keywords may not convert as well for you. 

But in general, category keywords consistently convert for all of our clients; specifically, we see these conversion rates (3–5%, or even higher, like in the case of Geekbot) routinely for main category keywords. 

This reinforces the advice we’ve given many times: Every company investing in SEO should start by identifying their main category keywords and very intentionally crafting dedicated pages on their site to rank for them.   

Category Keywords Around Side Offerings Have a Lower Conversion Rate (But Are Still Valuable)

1.94% average conversion rate

Many companies release new features or services and want to build content to promote those offerings. While that’s fine, this study taught us that these keywords don’t usually convert as well as keywords related to your core offering (aka your main category keywords).

This could be for various reasons: perhaps that side offering just isn’t very strong, or it’s a part of your solution that can’t be used or purchased separately, or the side offering is too expensive compared to other brands. It could also be that the rest of the marketing site simply doesn’t sell the side offering as much as the main features, so it naturally converts less. 

For example, one of our clients sells digital asset management (DAM) software, a common software category for many businesses with creative assets. One of the creative assets you could store in a DAM is videos. One of the posts we wrote for them targeted a keyword around storing video assets and it converts at 1.45%.

That’s still a good conversion rate, and far higher than most brands’ typical TOF content, which converts at a tiny fraction of a percent. But we have several posts for this same client that target general digital asset management type keywords. Those are converting at 3%, 6%, and even 15%! 

We think the low conversion rate of the video-specific keyword is because users who only need a video asset solution could opt for something simpler than full digital asset management (DAM) software, whereas users who need to store all kinds of digital assets, not just videos, need a general-purpose DAM.    

This reinforces our core Pain Point SEO message: The #1 thing dictating your conversion rate is the search intent of the person searching and how well the query aligns with what your product does. 

Our next observations further support this.

Category Keywords with Added Layers of Specificity Are Hidden Gem Keywords That Most Brands Miss 

2.77% average conversion rate

An additional flavor of category keywords are those that add a word or two that make them more specific to a particular feature, use case, or customer type. For example, adding “for small business” to the end of the keyword “best accounting tools,” or adding “for trail running” to the end of “men’s running shoes.” 

We’d expect these “added layer of specificity” category keywords to convert really well because you’re targeting searchers who (1) already have some knowledge of the category, and (2) are searching for a very particular solution (what you offer). 

The data in this study does confirm this, but with some important nuances and caveats. 

Going back to our digital asset management example: this client markets their DAM to support professionals across all different industries (manufacturing, education, healthcare, real estate, eCommerce, etc.), but as you’d expect, their primary audience is marketers and creative professionals because that’s who stores the most digital assets (product images, etc.). And our client happened to have extra features designed for those users, specifically. So we targeted “marketing asset management software” and saw a whopping 15.2% conversion rate from that post!

So we do see several “layer of specificity” category keywords convert even higher than 4.85%, which is the average standard category keyword conversion rate discussed above. 

But why is it that most “layer of specificity” keywords don’t convert that high, and the average is only 2.77%?

We think these keywords are simply a game of taking bets where you have to guess which specific keyword variants will “hit” with your target audience and your product, and the reality is that most will not hit, you’ll have plenty of misses. But when you do get a hit (like “marketing digital asset management software,” above) it can convert incredibly well. 

Here are the conversion rates of 13 posts for different clients that target various “specific” category keywords:

We grouped these by type of specificity in the keyword:

• Business size keywords could include “enterprise accounting software” or “accounting software for small businesses.” 

• Cost specific keywords are typically around savings, like “budget-friendly accounting software” or “free accounting software.” 

• Industry specific keywords speak to specific audiences, like “accounting software for HVAC business.”

• Feature specific keywords emphasize unique selling points, for example, “accounting software with inventory management.” 

For example, that same digital asset software client is positioned mainly as an enterprise tool.  So we targeted enterprise-focused keywords and keywords that attract smaller teams, and the results were not surprising: certain “enterprise” keywords converted around ~6.5% while other industry-specific keywords converted around ~2%.  

Again, the more a keyword and article align with your product’s natural strengths, the higher the conversion rate.

Most Category Keywords Need Long-Form Content to Rank

As we briefly mentioned above, most brands think of category keywords as something only their homepage, or maybe a landing page should target. Most don’t even consider long-form blog content as the right content type for category keywords. This thinking leaves a massive amount of opportunity on the table. 

Here’s why: 

1. You can’t possibly rank in the top results (or even hit the first page) for every category keyword on your radar using just your homepage or a couple of feature or solution pages. You may be able to rank for one or two keywords, but there’s no way a single page will rank for the dozens of category keywords that likely exist in your space. It’s just very difficult to optimize a single page for that many different keywords (extreme long tail aside), so you’re leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. 
   

2. Your homepage isn’t tailored to specific audiences or queries; it contains high-level information about your brand and products/services. Unless readers are already familiar with or somewhat bought into your brand, this won’t capture their attention or drive desired actions from website visitors. 
   

3. People think their homepage or landing pages will always convert at a much higher rate than blog content. However, as per this data and previous comparisons, that’s not often true. Many homepages convert at low, single-digit percentages — usually less than a well-written blog post custom-tailored to sell your product or service. 

Creating unique content for each category keyword lets you solve the problems mentioned above. 

First, since most of these category keywords require long-form, tailored copy to compete in SERPs, you actually have a chance of ranking and moving to the top of page one.

Second, creating long-form content (unlike a generic homepage) lets you speak to very specific pain points and challenges. You can actually tailor content around different search queries for specific readers — which attracts qualified leads, keeps audiences engaged, and improves conversion rates. 

Let’s look at the keyword “free website analytics tools” as an example. 

Here are some of the page one results in the Google SERPs: 

The SERP shows one list post after another comparing software solutions, with only Similarweb — an incredibly popular and longstanding analytics tool — ranking with their homepage. So, it’s incredibly unlikely that any other analytics tool is going to rank for this keyword with their homepage. You need to create a blog post to capture this organic traffic. 

In fact, as of this writing, a post we wrote for our client Smartlook is ranking #1: 

It would have been almost impossible to rank #1 for this keyword by attempting to optimize their homepage or even a dedicated product page for this keyword. Google’s search engine clearly favors lists. 

There Are a Lot More Category Keywords Than Companies Realize

So many of the brands we talk to (whose analytics we see) haven’t systematically identified and targeted their category keywords — which is an absolute shame and waste of marketing potential. 

As per the above data, we think you should brainstorm: 

• The obvious category keywords and every variation of those terms that people may Google to find products or services exactly like yours.

• What layers of specificity could be added to those keywords that align with your product’s strengths.

Comparison and Alternative Keywords Are the Highest Converting SEO Keywords We’ve Seen 

8.43% average conversion rate

One of the most interesting takeaways from this analysis is that comparison and alternatives keywords convert at a higher rate than any other keyword type. 

This includes both alternative keywords like “salesforce alternative” and versus keywords like “Salesforce vs. Pipedrive.” Both of those keyword types, on average, convert better than even main category keywords. 

We suspect this is because these Googlers are even more qualified than ones doing general research on a product or service. Clearly, these searchers: 

• Already know about your industry.
• Are familiar with competitors who offer similar products/services as yours.
• Are actively comparing alternative solutions (with some vested interest in making a purchase).

So, you obviously want to show up for these users when they search these terms. Just be strategic in the competitor keywords you target and prioritize — as expected, this category will have a spread in conversion rates. From what we’ve noticed, keywords mentioning direct competitors will convert better than those featuring some loosely-related competitor. 

For example, here is a visual comparison of conversion rates for all 23 competitor and alternative keywords we looked at in this study:

You can see that although the average conversion rate is 8.43%, the majority of these posts convert at less than 4%. That shows what we’re saying above: the closer the competitor, the higher the conversion rate. 

That said, conversion rates between 1–4% are still far higher than top-of-funnel blog posts that barely convert; so in our experience and opinion, it’s worth taking bets on a variety of alternative and comparison keywords. 

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that many competitor and alternatives keywords have very low organic search volume. As per our mini-volume keywords article, however, the high conversion rates make them very worthwhile to target. 

Jobs To Be Done Keywords Show High Conversion Potential — Despite Being “Up the Funnel” 

2.44% average conversion rate

The final category in our Pain Point SEO framework is “Jobs To Be Done” keywords — these are queries that describe a job to be done (or pain, challenge) that is best solved with your product or service.  

These are slightly more up-funnel because they don’t explicitly say “software” or “tools” (like category keywords) or mention competitors (like alternatives keywords) — these are mostly “how to” queries: how to organize design files, how to do a poll in Slack, how to get video testimonials from customers. 

Although these users may not be aware of your brand or competitors, or precisely what they need for their problem, they still have the potential to buy because they have a job or problem that you solve. 

We insert our clients’ names in these conversations by creating content to specifically solve what the reader is searching for in the context of the client’s solution, and we see these convert at a ridiculously high rate. 

For example: 

• “Collect video testimonials” — a keyword we targeted for a video marketing client — has a 9.71% CR; this keyword presents a good opportunity for our client because the Googler requires some sort of software to do this task, and the task the Googler needs to complete is exactly what our client’s product solves for. 

• A JTBD keyword we targeted for online meeting software is “how to run standups in Slack” — this has a 12.5% CR, and once again, our client’s product is a great way to do that exact job.

• We targeted “record website visitors” for a website analytics tool, and that converts at 10.48% (this Googler requires a specific type of software to complete this task, and our client offers that very solution). 

JTBD Keywords with Little to No Buying Intent Are Considered “Top of Funnel” (And Least Likely to Convert Readers)

Similar to comparison and alternative keywords, there is a wide spread in conversion rates for JTBD keywords, and also similarly, intent drives that difference. We’ve noticed that JTBD keywords with low conversion rates simply don’t have that high of conversion rates. 

The contrast here is stark: 

For example, for our video marketing client, JTBD keywords around collecting or gathering video testimonials (exactly what their software does) converted to free trials at 5–9%. But other JTBD keywords were less transactional: opportunities around what to say in a testimonial video converted at only 0.6%. That’s because no one needs to purchase software to learn what to say in a testimonial; they just need advice. 

Overall Thoughts

There are a few takeaways from this analysis: 

• Not all SEO keywords are created equally. Some convert extremely well (10%+), and others not at all. So, if you’re interested in SEO for lead generation and want to reach potential customers, you need to target bottom-of-funnel or high buying-intent keywords. 

• Even within bottom-of-funnel keywords, there is a wide range of SEO conversion rates — depending on the type and level of intent of the keyword.

• It behooves every brand to target their main category keywords and comparison and alternative keywords related to their primary competitors.

• Jobs to be Done keywords are an often-overlooked category that also show a lot of potential for higher conversion rates. 

If you want to learn more about conversion-focused SEO and conversion rate optimization, you can check out our course and community, where we and hundreds of other digital marketers discuss these marketing strategies. If you want to work with us directly, you can reach out here to learn more. 

Note: We also offer PPC services. Rather than just focusing on click-through rate (CTR), we do careful keyword research and curate each campaign in order to maximize conversions per dollar spent.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is ‘SEO conversion rate’?

SEO conversion rate is the percent of organic traffic that completes a specific action on your website such as filling out a contact form or signing up for a free trial or subscription. 

How do you calculate your SEO conversion rate?

SEO conversion rate is calculated by dividing total organic conversions by total organic website traffic. 

SEO conversion rate = Organic conversions/organic traffic

What is a good SEO conversion rate?

In our experience, typical blog posts that target high volume keywords convert at a rate of 1% or less. And the average homepage converts at a rate of about 3%. However, ranking for keywords with high buying intent often returns a conversion rate of 5% or higher.

What is conversion rate optimization? 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of maximizing the conversions you receive from your website.

When talking about CRO, most marketers mean the process of making small tweaks to a website to increase the conversion rate of a desired action, for example, making technical adjustments to decrease page load time or bounce rate, or A/B testing different calls to action (CTAs).

(It can be used to talk about overall website conversion rate or on a more granular level by blog post, product page/web page, keyword, etc.) 

However, in our experience, these small tweaks aren’t all that impactful. Instead, we recommend focusing on choosing high buying-intent keywords.

You can learn more about conversion optimization in these posts:

• The #1 Factor for Improving Your SEO Conversion Rate
• How to Optimize Content for Conversions: 9 Core Steps

Specifically, in our experience, most companies follow a herd mentality where they all research each other’s keywords and copy each other. That results in everyone in a space targeting the highest search volume keywords they can find. 

On the surface, this seems fine. More search volume means more traffic. But as we’ve argued in many articles and shown in a ton of case studies, traffic and pageviews don’t equate to actual conversions (like leads, demo requests, or contact form fills). 

So if you blindly follow your competitor’s keywords, it’s extremely likely that you’ll end up where they very likely are: with a bunch of content that gets traffic but doesn’t convert. 

Instead, what you should do, and what we’ve stressed many times, is prioritize keywords that show buying intent. These are the keywords that indicate readers’ active interest in your product or services; they target audiences who are: 1) a good prospect for your business and, 2) ready to take action — and they convert at a much higher rate than other keywords. These keywords are the hidden gems in your competitors’ SEO profiles.

This helps turn SEO and content marketing into a revenue-generating, ROI-positive channel.

Below, we’ll explain this logic and show you how to find the most valuable opportunities from competitors’ content plans. 

Note: You can learn more about how our agency approaches content marketing and SEO here or inquire about working with us here. We also teach our content marketing strategy and process in our course and community.

Flaws with the Traditional Approach to Researching Competitor Keywords 

Usually, the approach to researching competitor keywords looks like this: 

• You plug competitors’ sites into Ahrefs or Semrush to see a list of keywords they’re ranking for. 

• You identify gaps between your content and their content. (What keywords have they targeted that you haven’t? Where are they outperforming you on the SERP?) 

• Then, you “bridge the gap” by targeting keywords they rank for that you don’t. 

But the key is that last step: Which of the “gap” keywords do you actually go after? As we argued above, we think the vast majority of keywords your competitors rank for are not useful to you. Specifically: 

1. Many are just obvious duds. Things like branded keywords for them and terms that just don’t apply to your product or service. It’s easy to weed these out.
   
   
2. Top-of-funnel keywords that won’t ever convert. These are the tempting ones. If your competitor ranks for some high-traffic keyword in your space, it’s really hard to not go after those same keywords. But if you can avoid this temptation and filter their keywords by buying intent for your products or services, you will have a much higher ROI on your SEO and content efforts. 

To convince you why #2 is important, let’s look at a case study of one of our clients. 

Case Study: Geekbot and the Power of Bottom of Funnel Keywords

For our client, Geekbot, we measured conversion rates by keyword type to assess how different opportunities and pieces of content were working for them. 

Overall, we looked at 64 articles: 22 targeting bottom-of-the-funnel keywords — this is another term we’ve used to describe high-buying-intent keywords — and 42 targeting top-of-the-funnel content (a.k.a., educational or awareness-style content to drive traffic and introduce readers to your brand). 

Over two years, these posts brought in 232,493 organic page views — as you might expect, TOF brought in the majority of that organic search traffic: 204,303 website visitors. BOTF keywords generated 28,190 page views. 

But despite TOF content bringing so many more visitors to the site (10x more!), BOTF content still drove more business: keywords with high buying intent converted at a 25x higher rate than top-of-the-funnel content. 

Geekbot’s top-of-the-funnel keywords brought in 397 conversions with a conversion rate of 0.19%. On the flip side, the bottom-of-funnel keywords brought in 1,348 leads and converted at 4.78%. 

That’s why we continually say that maximizing conversions over traffic is more valuable.

You’ll achieve ROI sooner by targeting competitor keywords with high buying intent. Then, after you exhaust those opportunities, you can move “up the funnel” to more brand-building keywords.

Pain Point SEO and the 3 Categories of High-Buying-Intent Keywords to Look For

Our foundational framework for targeting high-buying-intent keywords — something we coined as Pain Point SEO — classifies high-buying-intent keywords into three categories. 

The idea here is that any company can follow this framework to identify high-buying-intent opportunities (and avoid the pitfalls discussed above) when finding competitor keywords to target. And we’ve seen this strategy work time and time again. 

1. Category Keywords

Category keywords indicate that someone is literally searching for your product or services. They’re usually pretty obvious and easy to think of. For example, say you are developing a keyword strategy for a help desk software company (an example we walk through in detail below); you’d want to rank highly for keywords like “help desk software,” “email ticketing system,” and “customer service software.” 

When somebody is researching a product or service category, they’re in the process of learning about available solutions and comparison shopping — so if somebody is searching for the product or service you offer, you’d obviously want to introduce your solution to those readers.

The trick here is to think of the different ways somebody might look for your solution; an HR user exploring help desk software might search “email ticketing system,” while a customer service user might search “customer service software.” Either way, both users are looking for help desk software, so you’d want to target those variations of your product category.  

When performing competitor keyword research, you can look at the category keywords they target and find options that tie back to your product or services. We recommend looking at your closest competitors here — the competitors with offerings most similar to yours — because their category keywords will be more appropriate for your business. 

2. Comparison and Alternative Keywords

Comparison and Alternative keywords indicate Googlers are researching and comparing competitor brands, products, and services — they could be transitioning away from a competitor’s solution, or aware of your competitor’s brand and curious about alternatives… but again, we know this searcher is in the market for what you offer and trying to decide on the right solution. So it makes sense to be a part of this conversation. 

For example, in the help desk space, somebody might research “Zendesk alternatives” (or “Zendesk competitors”) because Zendesk is a well-known help desk software brand. Or they might research Zendesk vs. [other help desk competitor name] to see how one solution stacks up against another. We talk more about the value of these keywords in our case study here.

This is a valuable strategy when analyzing competitor keywords because you can discover new brands (you may compete with directly or in search engines) and stay on top of competitors’ competitors. Pursuing these keywords lets you introduce your brand to audiences who are interested in products or services that closely relate to what you offer.  

3. Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) Keywords

Jobs To Be Done keywords lean more into the idea of “pain point SEO” because they indicate that the Googler is experiencing a problem or pain that your solution can solve. Though users aren’t directly searching for your solution (or a competitor’s), like the categories above, these keywords still indicate buying intent because users require a solution to a current problem (or have a job that needs to be done). 

JTBD keywords present an opportunity to “drive awareness” because Googlers may not be aware of your solution — but you’re driving awareness to more qualified searchers, instead of starting at the top of the funnel. 

Circling back to our help desk example, some JTBD keyword ideas would include: “how to organize customer support emails,” “how to manage a team inbox,” or “how to create and send automated support emails.” All of these search terms indicate that the Googler has a problem help desk software solves, so introducing this solution to readers means there is a chance they’ll convert and make a purchase. 

This is useful when researching competitor keywords because you can learn more about your target audiences’ pains — pains you might not have thought of or realized from past customer conversations — and determine the best ways to position and present your solution. 

Look at our diagram below to visualize these keyword categories “in the funnel:” 

How to Apply This in Your Competitive Keyword Analysis 

Now we’ll show you how this works with an example — I’ve done this competitive keyword research for the company HiverHQ (not a client and totally unaffiliated to us) to see how they compare to bigger help desk software brands, like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and HelpScout. 

There are several digital marketing and keyword analysis tools to perform this research, including Moz, Semrush, and Ahrefs. We use Ahrefs in our processes, but you can also follow these steps in other SEO tools. 

The first step is to open Ahrefs and navigate to “Site Explorer”. 

Here, you can paste your site URL to get a bird’s-eye view of your site’s keyword data, backlink profile, and traffic sources. Then, open the “Content gap” tool to add competitor URLs and review their keywords.

When you run the content gap report, you’ll be hit with pages and pages of organic keyword options — this is the time to sift through keywords and find the opportunities worth prioritizing. Ahrefs will show you competitor rank positions and metrics like keyword volume and difficulty, which you can use to filter options (to a degree). As we’ve stressed above, you should prioritize search and buying intent above all else.

Competitor keyword analysis will require a time investment, but doing this research upfront lets you pinpoint the valuable keywords and avoid wasting resources on opportunities with no business potential. 

Let’s review the keyword gap report below: 

First, there are the obvious duds: “Uber customer service number” (and similar keywords) are not at all related and easy to weed out. 

However, we can spot category keywords that could be relevant — like AI Chatbot. Most help desk tools include or offer an AI Chatbot, so if your tool also has an AI chatbot (or related) feature, targeting this keyword could get you in front of the customers looking for that software solution. 

If it doesn’t, it’s not relevant to you, and you should move on. This illustrates a key point: what is a bottom-of-funnel term for your competitor isn’t necessarily a relevant keyword for you. 

Another keyword later on this list is “enterprise customer service software,” which is a super valuable opportunity for help desk software brands targeting enterprise users. 

Think about the types of buying intent keywords we described above while you perform gap analysis. You can filter the keyword research tool by term to find topics that fall into those buckets. For example, you could type “software” (or feature names, like AI Chatbot) to see every keyword that mentions a specific software category or solution. Or you could find “alternative” keywords by looking for competitor names.   

As you review each keyword, think about the searcher and:

• The questions they have
• The problems they want to solve, or tasks they want to accomplish
• The goal of their research 

When you consider the search intent — and really put yourself in the reader’s shoes — you can gauge business potential and identify “pain point” keywords. Is this searcher looking for a product or service? Do they have a problem and are seeking a solution? Do YOU have a good solution for this Googler?  

Then, you can review the content gap report and hone in on the specific keywords that make the most sense for your business. 

Also, keep in mind, there are usually a few overarching goals teams have when digging into competitor keywords:

• Target the same (high-buying-intent) keywords as competitors to compete for rankings in the same search engine results pages.

• Discover pain point, JTBD, and long tail keywords used by your target market that you hadn’t thought of yourself.

• Find and begin targeting keywords that competitors have not yet targeted.

Establish specific goals before building out your content plan. Is there an audience you want to target, like enterprise teams? (Alternatively, are there audiences you want to avoid?) Do you want to promote certain product features? Was your product designed to solve very specific problems? You can implement our strategies while still driving research around your goals.

[su_note]Tip: We should note that digging into paid keywords can also prove beneficial — competitors usually target high-buying-intent keywords in Google Ads and PPC campaigns because those opportunities get you in front of searchers looking for specific products or services.[/su_note]

On that note… let’s talk about finalizing keyword ideas and developing strategies to target competitor keywords.

Dotting Your I’s & Crossing Your T’s 

By now, you should have a pretty good list of keywords to slot in your content plan. But before you start tackling topics, there are two remaining steps: 

First, you want to perform brief SERP research to finalize keyword ideas and ensure each option is solid.  

This includes opening the search engine results page for target keywords and checking out your organic competitors (who already ranks in the top #1-10 positions). 

• What type of sites do you see? 
• Who are you competing with? 
• What type of content have they produced on the topic? 
• Does it make sense to introduce your business/solution to this conversation? 

Finally, if everything checks out and you determine the keyword presents a strong opportunity for your business, you can decide on the SEO strategy to target it. 

• Think about your existing content — are there any opportunities to update and re-optimize current content to rank for these new keywords? (Then, you can boost ROI from previous content marketing and reserve resources to build new content.) 

• Look at the overlapping keywords that you and your competitors have both targeted; determine where they out-rank you, and schedule updates to that content.

• Build new content to target remaining keywords. 

It’s important to remember that finding the right keywords is only a small part of strategic SEO. Even if you identify the most valuable keyword opportunities, you will only see success from content marketing by delivering helpful, well-written content that caters to search intent. 

We won’t dive into all of that in this post, but you can read about the next steps of our process here: SEO Content Writing: A 5-Step Process You Can Follow

​​Want to Work with Us or Learn More About How We Approach Content Marketing?

• Our Agency: If you want to hire us to execute content marketing in this way, you can learn more about our service and pricing here.

• Write For Us: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.

• Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback.