By Jayne Schultheis — Keyword research is a fundamental part of search engine optimization, but there's a crucial piece of the process that's often overlooked: user intent. In this article, we'll look at how keyword research and consideration of user intent can intersect to help you build the perfect content strategy. Let's dive in!

What is keyword research?

If you've spent any time writing SEO-optimized blogs, you've probably done some keyword research. Keyword research is the process of identifying and analyzing the terms and phrases that users enter into search engines when they are looking for information, products, or services. The goal is to understand what keywords are most relevant to your audience and to optimize your content so that it ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for those keywords and gets more organic traffic.

Tools for keyword research

Fortunately, it's not too difficult to find keywords — lots of tools are built specifically to help content marketers find words and phrases that boost your chances of ranking on SERPs for certain topics, including:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Semrush
• Ahrefs
• Moz Keyword Explorer
• Rellify

But Rellify isn't your run-of-the-mill keyword research tool. Our magic starts with content strategy itself. With a Relliverse™, a custom-AI subject-matter expert trained on your relevant focus topics, you can make data-driven strategic decisions about which topics and keywords are exactly right for your brand's content. Then, after writing and publishing, you can have Google Analytics and insights pulled directly into the platform, where you watch your optimized content climb the search engine rankings.

What is user intent?

In the context of SEO, "user intent" refers to the underlying purpose or motivation behind a user's search query. Understanding user intent helps in creating content and optimizing websites in a way that aligns with what users are actually looking for when they perform a search.

There are a few different user search intent categories:

• Informational intent. The user is looking for information or answers to a question. This can include how-to guides, definitions, or explanations. For example, a search query like “how to bake a pie” indicates the user is seeking a recipe or baking instructions.
• Navigational intent. The user intends to find a specific website or web page. For example, “Instagram login” suggests the user wants to navigate directly to Instagram’s login page. Why didn't they just type it into the URL? We don't know, that's none of our business.
• Transactional intent. The user is ready to make a purchase or complete a transaction. This could be indicated by queries like “where to buy the newest iphone.”
• Commercial investigation. The user is in the research phase before making a purchase decision. Queries like “best keyboards for gaming” or “top-rated Korean skincare products” show that the user is comparing options and seeking reviews or comparisons.

Categorizing query type is easy enough, but understanding and mastering the match between your keywords and user intent can be more challenging. You're competing with other high-quality content that also aligns with the same (or at least, similar) user intent, and uses the same keywords. Differentiating your own content with long-tail keywords, unique insights, added value can be a tough, but necessary task.

How should keyword research and user intent work together?

Keyword research and user intent are interrelated components of an effective SEO strategy. When combined thoughtfully, they help your content rank well in search engine results while also meeting the needs of your audience. They work together to create a fuller, clearer picture of the different "buyer personas" you should be targeting with your content.

Here’s how keyword research and user intent should work together to optimize your SEO efforts:

Use keyword tools to analyze the data

Use keyword research tools to gather data on keyword difficulty, search volume, competition, and variations. This type of SERP analysis helps you understand the types of queries users are entering and what information or actions they are seeking.

Categorize keywords by intent, then create content accordingly

Group keywords based on their user intent — informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial investigation. This helps you target content more effectively. For example:

• Informational keywords might include “how to clean a white sneakers.”
• Transactional keywords might include “buy shoe cleaner.”

Develop content that directly addresses the intent behind the keywords. For example, informational queries lend themselves to detailed guides, how-to articles, and tutorials. Transactional queries are a better fit for product pages, reviews, or buying guides that facilitate purchase decisions.

Optimize the content

Pay attention to keyword placement throughout your optimization process. Make sure that the content structure — headings, subheadings, and formatting — aligns with the intent behind the keywords, too. Use clear, concise headings for informational content and persuasive language for transactional content. You can even use specific questions that users are typing into search engines as headers.

The keywords that are most relevant to the user intent should also be incorporated in title tags and meta descriptions. For example:

• An informational title could be “How to Clean White Sneakers: A Step-by-Step Guide.”
• A transactional title might be “Top 10 Sneaker Cleaners for 2024: Reviews and Buying Guide.”

‍Backlinking and internal linking are also factors that signal to search engines you understand the user intent behind the queries you're hoping to rank for. When you're linking, whether externally or internally, choose to link with anchor text that reflects that intent.

Let's use our "sneaker" example from above, assuming we are a luxury shoe company. If we wrote the article, "Top 10 Sneaker Cleaners for 2024: Reviews and Buying Guide," then we would select the keyword phrase "sneaker care" to anchor a link to our other blog article about how to correctly care for shoes.

Assuming that your target audience is stylish, image-conscious, young professionals who take a lot of pride in their appearance, this would be a way to signal to search engines that you're in-step with your buyer persona and user intent, a true expert in the industry who deserves the subsequent domain authority status.

Adapt to trends and changes

Search trends and user behavior can change over time, in addition to ranking factors and algorithms set by search engines. Keep an eye on your click-through rate and bounce rate. Regularly update your keyword research and content strategy to stay aligned with what's current. With the continued advancements in voice search and AI, how users express intent and search for information is ever-changing, too. Adjust your content optimization strategy to accommodate these changes. It can seem tedious, but it's the only way to make sure you can stay on top of your audience's shifting semantic searches and google algorithm updates.

Address multi-intent queries

For queries with multiple intents, develop content that addresses different aspects of the user’s needs. For example, a query like “best budget smartphones” could be addressed with a guide that includes buying tips, product reviews, and comparisons.

You can also address this issue by guiding users to relevant content within your site that meets different aspects of their intent, like the "shoe cleaner" example we mentioned above. This helps provide a more complete answer to their queries and improving overall user experience.

Rellify: Search engine optimization experts

Rellify doesn't just guess about user intent — our state-of-the-art Relliverse™ is customized content intelligence — AI that deeply analysis and understands your company, topics, and keywords. With our competitive analysis, we provide insights beyond your typical keyword research tools. Our platform can guide your content creation every step of the way with SEO tips and suggestions. Ready to maximize your conversion rates with top-notch content? Hop on a call with one of our experts to find out exactly how Rellify can super-charge your content marketing returns with just a fraction of the effort.

Do you remember when you could ask a cartoon butler named "Jeeves" a question and he would search the internet for your answer?

How times have changed. RIP, Jeeves. Tell "Clippy" we say hello.

The evolution of search engines has been revolutionary, constantly changing the way we research, do business, and function in the digital world. In this article, we'll take you through the timeline of how search engines have changed over the years, and take a look at how you can best implement search engine optimization (SEO).

The internet without search: A new frontier

Before the advent of search engines, the World Wide Web (hence the "www") was a more fragmented and less navigable space — a "Wild West Web," so to speak.

In the early 1990s, users primarily accessed content through static web pages sometimes reached through hyperlinks. The web was essentially a collection of individual sites, organized by directories like Yahoo!, which required manual categorization and browsing. Finding specific information often meant knowing the exact URL or relying on word of mouth to discover new sites.

Without search engines, users had a lot more trouble locating the information they needed. Resources were often scattered across various platforms, and the lack of centralized indexing made it tedious to navigate. Many people relied on bookmarking favorite sites or engaging in discussions on forums to share and find useful links.  

The emergence of search engines fundamentally transformed this landscape, allowing efficient information retrieval and significantly improving the web’s usability.

The evolution of search engines: A timeline

Search engines didn't have one particular "inventor," they evolved through contributions from various individuals and teams. The first search engine, Archie, was developed in 1990 to index File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites, allowing users to search for and locate downloadable files across the internet.

The name "Archie" is a play on the word "archive," reflecting its primary function of indexing and retrieving files. Unlike modern search engines that index web pages, Archie focused on file names and directory structures, generating a list of available files that users could browse. Users could query the Archie database using simple search terms, making it easier to discover resources that would otherwise require knowing specific URLs. This innovation laid the groundwork for the development of more advanced search technologies.

1. Early beginnings (1990s)

• Basic indexing. The first search engines were developed. These included tools like Archie, which indexed FTP sites, and Veronica, which searched Gopher servers.
• Web crawlers. In 1994, WebCrawler became the first search engine to index entire pages, allowing users to search for any word on a page, not just titles or URLs.
• Directory-based search. Yahoo! started as a directory of websites, where human editors categorized links. This model was popular until the volume of web content exploded.

2. The rise of algorithmic search (Late 1990s)

Search engines became increasingly complex, employing algorithms to improve the relevance and speed of search results.

• AltaVista and Ask Jeeves. AltaVista (1995) introduced more advanced search capabilities, including natural language queries. Ask Jeeves (1996) focused on user questions, attempting to provide direct answers.  
• PageRank. In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed PageRank as part of their PhD project, which later became the foundation for Google. It evaluated web pages based on their link structure, promoting high-quality, relevant pages.
• Launch of Google. In 1998, Google was officially launched, quickly becoming the preferred search engine due to its clean interface and superior search results driven by PageRank.

By the end of the 1990s, search engines had transformed from rudimentary tools into essential components of the internet, facilitating easier access to information and significantly shaping online behavior.

3. Google’s dominance (2000s)

After the world survived Y2K and kept spinning on Jan. 1, 2000, search engines underwent significant transformations driven by technological advancements and evolving user needs. The evolution of search engines was, for the most part, represented by the evolution of Google.

• Personalization and localization. Google introduced features like personalized search results and localized content, leading to a better user experience based on individual preferences and geographical location. Local SEO became a helpful new tool for marketers who wanted local shoppers to find and patronize their businesses.
• AdWords. In 2000, Google launched AdWords, revolutionizing how businesses could advertise online through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which contributed significantly to Google’s revenue.
• Real-time search. In 2009, Google began incorporating content from social media and news sites into search results.

One of the most notable developments was the refinement of algorithms to improve search result relevance and page rankings on SERPs. Google's PageRank algorithm, which assessed the importance of web pages based on backlinks, became a benchmark for search quality. This era also saw the introduction of personalized search results, which tailored the user experience based on individual preferences and behavior.

The rise of social media and user-generated content further influenced search engine functionality. Search engines began to integrate social signals and real-time data, leading to features like news search and video search capabilities. Mobile search also emerged as a critical focus, prompting engines to optimize for mobile-friendly sites.

Overall, the 2000s marked a shift towards more sophisticated, user-centric search technologies that not only provided better results but also adapted to the changing dynamics of online information consumption.

4. Semantic search and user intent (2010s)

This is when things really start to pick up! Overall, the 2010s marked a move toward more intuitive, personalized, and multimedia-rich search experiences, fundamentally transforming how users interacted with search engines.

• Caffeine. In 2010, Google introduced a new infrastructure for faster indexing and more frequent updates, including Google+, which placed a stronger emphasis on social signals in search results.
• Knowledge graph. Launched in 2012, this feature presented information in a structured format, giving users direct answers without clicking through to other websites.
• Hummingbird algorithm. In 2013, Google introduced Hummingbird, which focused on understanding the context and intent behind qu. eries, improving its ability to provide relevant results.
• Featured snippets. Introduced by Google in 2014, this feature aimed to provide users with quick answers to their queries directly at the top of the search results page, highlighting concise information from relevant web pages.
• Mobile search. Google adapted to mobile search by emphasizing mobile-friendly websites in 2015 with an algorithm update known as "Mobilegeddon." A voice search feature followed in 2016 when users could speak directly into their phones and ask search engines questions.
• RankBrain. In 2015, Google incorporated RankBrain, a machine learning component that helps process search queries and improve results based on user interactions.

5. AI and machine learning (Late 2010s to present)

Search engines became so integrated into our everyday lives, it's hard now to even imagine a world without them. During this time, it because commonplace to hear people say things like: "Hey, Google! Find me a local Italian restaurant with outdoor seating!"

• BERT. Launched in 2019, BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) significantly advanced the understanding of natural language, allowing Google to better grasp the nuances of user queries.
• Mobile-first indexing. Google further advanced its mobile search capabilities with the introduction of mobile-first indexing in 2019. This meant that the mobile version of a site would be considered the primary version for ranking purposes. This shift underscored the importance of mobile optimization search as a central focus for search engines and web developers alike.
• Voice search. Though voice search already existed, the proliferation of voice-activated devices (like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa) led to increased emphasis on optimizing search for conversational queries.

6. Current trends and future directions (2020s)

Artificial intelligence and natural language processing have launched search engines into a new trajectory, and content marketing experts have their jobs cut out for them as they adapt and modify their approaches SEO.

• AI and chatbots. AI continues to evolve, with search engines integrating conversational AI to enhance user interaction and provide instant answers. Machine learning is playing a crucial role in transforming the search engine landscape, as this for of AI can self-train and adapt when it's presented with new information.
• Visual search. Platforms like Google Lens allow users to search using images, making search more intuitive and practical.
• Privacy concerns. As awareness of data privacy grows, search engines are adapting by offering more transparent data usage policies and options for users to control their data.
• Sustainability. There's a growing focus on the environmental impact of digital services, prompting search engines to consider eco-friendly practices in data centers and operations.

How to use search engines for content marketing.

Since AI integration and summarization has become such a prominent feature in how users engage with search engines, you might be wondering how it will affect your content marketing strategy. How will AI integration impact SEO if you rely on content to draw in organic traffic from search engines?

The short answer is: You have to create better content.

You don't just need to add more keywords, but better keywords. Your content should reflect the search intent of your target audience, meaning that it directly answers their specific questions or provides niche information that they're seeking. Are they looking for a specific product? Do they need detailed background information about a certain subject? What stage of the customer journey are they in and how do you craft your content to meet them there?

Search engine optimization has always been at the core of long-form content marketing, at least as long as search engines algorithms have crawling been around. We'll look at some of the core aspects of this process, so you can make sure you're staying on top of SERPs.

Search engine optimization in the age of AI

Think "E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)." Google's algorithm places a lot of weight on these as it ranks your content on its pages. Here are some other ways you can boost your domain authority and stay on top of algorithm updates:

Choose your topics and keywords wisely

Research relevant topics. Tools like Google Trends, Semrush, or Ahrefs can help you identify trending topics in your niche that resonate with your audience and align with their search intent. But if you need an expert tool that seamlessly integrates AI, Rellify is your solution. With a custom Relliverse™, you can use machine learning to provide detailed insights into what topics and keywords are going to resonate best with your target audience.

‍Long-tail keywords. When you're doing keyword research, target long-tail keywords that reflect specific queries. These tend to have lower competition and higher conversion rates, allowing you to capture a more defined audience. For example, an article with the focus key phrase, "ladders" would be much harder to rank for than "retractable steel ladders"

‍Content relevance. Make sure your content is comprehensive and directly answers user questions. This not only boosts your relevance in search results but also helps boost user satisfaction.

Develop a fool-proof linking strategy

Quality backlinks. Focus on acquiring backlinks from reputable and authoritative websites in your niche. High-quality inbound links signal to search engines that your content is valuable.

‍Internal linking. Create a strong internal linking structure to guide users through your content and help search engines understand the relationships between different pages on your site. Choose anchor text that reflects the topics and keywords of your other valuable content.

‍Outreach and collaboration. Engage in outreach efforts to connect with other creators and websites. Guest blogging, partnerships, and collaborations can help you earn valuable backlinks and increase your site's visibility.

Mind your technical SEO

Technical SEO is just as important as the topics and keywords, just a bit more tedious.

• Site speed optimization. Make sure your website loads quickly on both desktop and mobile devices. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify and address issues that may slow down your site.
• ‍Mobile-friendliness. Implement responsive design to make your website accessible and functional on all devices. Google prioritizes mobile-friendly sites.
• ‍Schema markup. Use structured data (schema markup) to help crawlers navigate your site and search engines better understand your content.
• ‍Secure your site. Implement HTTPS to secure your site. It adds a layer of security to the data exchanged between a user's browser and a web server. Google considers security a ranking factor and it helps build trust with your users.
• ‍Monitoring. Most importantly, you should regularly monitor your core web vitals and organic site traffic. Look at click-through rates and bounce rates. Note how you need to adjust to your content as you evaluate what is and isn't working. Rellify pulls in this kind of information directly into the platform, so you can keep all your relevant content data all in one place.

Rellify can help your audience find your content

Rellify embraces search engine innovations and works to make content creation an increasingly effective and efficient marketing tool for clients. With a custom Relliverse™, you can leverage AI tailored to your niche to find the right topics, use the right keywords, and answer the right questions. That way, you're set to start climbing the search engine rankings. Ready to get started? Contact a Rellify expert today.

By Jayne Schultheis — Have you ever stopped to wonder how search engines work? How do they know what's on the pages they rank and feature? Their intricate processes are made possible by a collection of behind-the-scenes bots that do a lot of hard work: crawlers.

Search engine crawlers, also known as spiders or bots, are software programs used by search engines for site discovery and content indexing on the web.

When we visualize a search engine crawler, we like to picture a little inchworm wearing a neon Google vest. He scours through web text line by line, gobbling up the information he deems the most important, then presents it to his Google overlord in an organized fashion. It's fun to think of it that way, but it's actually a lot more complicated.

How do search engine crawlers work?

Here's a high-level overview:

• Crawling and discovery. Crawlers start with a list of web addresses (URLs), which they use as the initial seeds for their crawling. This list is often compiled from previous crawls or from sitemaps submitted by website owners. They visit these URLs and fetch the content from the web pages. This involves downloading the HTML code and any other resources linked from the page, such as images, CSS files, or JavaScript.
• Parsing. After fetching the content, the crawler parses the HTML to extract useful information. This includes identifying and following links to other pages, which enables discovery of new content and sites. The links found within the page are added to the list of URLs to be crawled. This process helps the crawler navigate through the web and build a map of interconnected pages.
• ‍Indexing. The information from the crawled pages is stored in a large database called an index. This index is optimized for quick retrieval and is structured to allow efficient searching. The content is also analyzed to understand the relevance and context. This involves extracting keywords, understanding page structure, and evaluating other factors like page load speed or mobile-friendliness.
• ‍Ranking. When a user enters a search, the search engine uses complex algorithms to rank the indexed pages based on their relevance to the search query. Factors influencing ranking include keyword relevance, page quality, and user experience (UX). The search engine then displays the most relevant results on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
• ‍Re-crawling.The web is an ever-changing space, so crawlers revisit pages periodically to update the index with new content or changes to existing content. The frequency of crawling can vary depending on the page authority and how often you update it.

How can I make sure crawlers discover my site?

Content optimization for crawler bots is one of the key facets of an SEO strategy. If the web crawlers can't find your site, leads and prospective customers won't either. These bots have a "crawl budget," which refers to the number of pages a search engine crawler is willing to crawl on your website within a given time period. Crawl budgets are different, based on factors like site size, health, and how often you update it.

We'll look at the key components of your website's SEO that help crawlers find, navigate, and understand your content, and get the most out of crawlers' budgets for your site.

• Submit your site to search engines. Use tools like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and others to submit your site’s URL. This helps search engines discover your site faster.
• Create and submit a sitemap. Generate an XML sitemap and submit it through search engine webmaster tools. Sitemaps help crawlers understand the website structure and navigate seamlessly through all your important pages.
• ‍Optimize your robots.txt file. Make sure your robots.txt file is properly configured to allow search engines to crawl your site. This file should not inadvertently block important pages or directories from being indexed.
• ‍Use internal links. Link between pages on your site to help crawlers discover and navigate your content. A well-structured internal linking strategy, using strategic anchor text, allows search engines to find and index all your important pages.
• ‍Make sure your site is crawlable. Check for technical issues that might prevent crawling, like broken links, server errors, or blocked resources.
• ‍Improve your website speed and performance. Make sure your site loads quickly and performs well. Fast-loading pages are more likely to be crawled and indexed effectively.
• ‍Create quality content. Regularly update your site with high-quality, relevant content. Search algorithms favor sites that offer valuable content to users. More on this later. ‍
• Monitor crawl activity. Use tools like Google Search Console to monitor crawl activity and identify any issues or errors that might affect how your site is indexed.‍
• Use structured data. Implement structured data (schema markup) to help search engines understand the content of your pages better and potentially improve visibility in search results.‍
• Implement a good backlink strategy. Pages with more backlinks, particularly those from high-authority sites, are often prioritized for indexing. Backlinks can also indicate the relevance of your content. If multiple sites link to a page using relevant keywords, it signals to search engines that the page is relevant for those topics, which can help it get better rankings.‍
• Correctly use redirects. URL redirects send both users and search engines to a different URL than the one they originally sought. They're especially helpful if you're conducting a website or page migration, dealing with broken links, or doing website maintenance. 301 redirects are permanent while 302 redirects are temporary. They should be used sparingly and only as necessary, as too many can cause crawlers to get lost and experience redirect loops and other indexing issues. If you have duplicate content, use canonical tags to signal to crawlers which version of a URL you want them to index.‍
• Promote your site with social signals. Improve your site’s visibility by promoting it through social media, email campaigns, and other content marketing channels. More external links and traffic can help search engines find and index your site.

Write great content

We've talked about how to get Googlebots and other crawlers to start indexing your site. But there's one crucial aspect of the process that needs to happen before all that: You need to create relevant, SEO-optimized content that will resonate well with your target audience. Ultimately, that's what crawlers are looking for. All the technical SEO factors just make it easier for bots, and readers, to find it.

For this task, thorough and expert keyword research is going to be your best bet. You want to signal to search engine crawlers that you're a thought leader in your industry with a high domain authority and trustworthy expertise. This shows that your site deserves higher page rankings.

How do I know if crawlers are having issues with my site?

The short answer: Use Google Search Console.

Google Search Console provides a "coverage report" that relays information on how Googlebot is crawling and indexing your site. Look for errors like "404 Not Found," "Server Errors," or "Redirect Errors." These issues can prevent crawlers from accessing your pages.

Additionally, the "crawl stats report" shows how often a Googlebot visits your site, how many pages it crawls, and the total crawl time. If you see a significant drop in crawl activity, it might indicate a problem.

Finally, check out the "URL inspection tool," which allows you to check the status of individual URLs. It can show you how crawlers see the page, including any crawl or indexing issues.

Rellify imports insights from Google Search Console directly into the Rellify platform, so you don't have to add another step to your processes.

Common crawl errors to watch out for

• Server errors (5xx). Errors like "500 Internal Server Error" indicate server problems that prevent crawlers from accessing your pages. Check server logs for more details on these errors.
• 404 errors. If pages return a "404 Not Found" error, it means that the URL is not available. Check that important pages aren’t returning 404 errors unless intentionally removed.
• Redirect errors. Issues with redirects (such as redirect loops or chains) can prevent crawlers from reaching your content. Make sure redirects are set up correctly and avoid long redirect chains.

How search engines work with Rellify

Let Rellify help boost your search visibility. With a custom Relliverse™, you can leverage AI tailored to your niche to find the right topics, use the right keywords, and answer the right questions. Ready to get started? Contact a Rellify expert today to find out how you can revolutionize your content processes and create content that gets better results.

How to Use Competitor Keyword Analysis to Boost Your SEO

What are your competitors publishing on their website these days?

While focusing exclusively on your own web content might seem like the best way to stay relevant, there's a lot to be said for keeping tabs on the competition. A huge part of a robust marketing strategy is making sure you're covering all your bases. Sure, you can visit their site and take a peek at the UX design and get a general feel for their on-page SEO, but the most useful information comes from the keywords themselves. Let's take a look at all the ways you can use a competitor keyword analysis to gain a competitive edge for your content needs.

What is a competitor keyword analysis?

A competitor keyword analysis is a process of examining the keywords that your competitors are targeting in their online content and SEO strategies. The goal is to understand which search terms and long-tail keywords your competitors are using to attract visitors, rank in search engine results, and drive traffic to their websites. Also known as a "keyword gap analysis," this helps you identify opportunities and threats in your own SEO strategy. A competitor keyword analysis can lead to a boost in your SEO when you successfully identify high-value keywords that your competitors are ranking for, then target similar terms with your own optimized content.

How do I perform a competitor keyword analysis?

It's pretty straightforward — most of what you'll do in a competitor keyword analysis is the same as what you'd do in your own content analysis, with just a few more steps.

Identify competitors

Determine who your main competitors are in your industry or niche. These can be direct competitors (offering similar products or services) or indirect competitors (which offer different products or services but still compete for the attention and resources of the same target audience).

Use keyword research tools

Rellify, as well as tools from Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz and others, can help you gather data on the keywords your competitors are ranking for. Check for metrics like:

• Search volume. The number of searches for a particular keyword.
• Keyword difficulty. How competitive it is to rank for that keyword.
• Ranking position. What position their keywords are ranking for on SERPs.

Content analysis

Review the type of content your competitors are creating around these keywords. Are they blog posts, landing pages, or product descriptions? Evaluate how well their content aligns with the targeted keywords. Is there a more appropriate or effective way you could incorporate the keywords in your own content, providing a better user experience?

Opportunity identification

When you look at all facets of their content and keywords, search for opportunities to outperform them. Are there words with lower competition or a higher relevance to your audience? Take note of any gaps that you can fill.

Strategy adjustment

The overarching goal here is to boost your SEO and user experience with specific keyword opportunities you glean from insights. Based on your findings, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Do you need to pivot your entire content strategy, or can you just make some tweaks? Adjust to capitalize on opportunities, address weaknesses, and set your brand apart.

After the competitor analysis, create your content

We've mentioned "filling in the gaps" in your competitions' content and using your insights for content optimization. But what exactly needs to happen with the insights you glean from your research?

Select target keywords

Choose keywords that are relevant to your audience and have a good balance of search volume and competition. Focus on those keywords where you can provide superior content compared to your competitors. Long-tail keywords (more specific phrases) are a good choice, because they typically have lower competition but high relevance. Here are the key factors to consider when selecting target keywords:

• Relevance. The keywords should be closely related to your products, services, or platform.
• User search intent. Target phrases with transactional intent first. These are the ones that will attract users who are further along in the buying cycle, increasing the likelihood of converting visits into sales or leads.
• Search volume. Higher search volume often means more potential traffic.
• Keyword difficulty. How competitive is it to rank for the keyword? Be realistic about the likelihood of your content outranking the competition with certain keywords, and how much effort you'll need to put forth to make that happen.

Create a content outline

Develop an outline for your content that will incorporate the chosen keywords naturally. Your content needs a clear structure, with headings that align with (and sometimes incorporate) your target keywords. Break down the main topic into subtopics that cover various aspects of the keyword. Use insights from competitor content to identify additional subtopics or related questions.

Rellify makes the creation of blog outlines seamless, with a drag and drop feature that allows you to integrate keywords wherever you think they'd best fit.

Develop high-quality content

Your content should be comprehensive and provide more value than competitor content. This is where you're going to use the information you gathered from the analytics on your competitor. Aim to cover the topic thoroughly, addressing common questions and providing actionable insights. High-quality content greatly benefits from a robust backlink profile, with lots of high-value, relevant sites linking back to your pages. This helps establish authority in your brand, one of the key metrics Google uses when ranking pages.

Also, don't forget to incorporate elements that boost user engagement, such as visuals (images, infographics), multimedia (videos, podcasts), and interactive elements (quizzes, tools).

Rellify is the platform many companies trust to develop content strategies, create content, and deliver measurable results. With a Relliverse™, you can have a customized AI subject-matter expert that shows your team exactly where you need to focus to get your content on page one of SERPs.

Optimize the on-page SEO elements

It's not enough to have all the right keywords in the body of your text. Optimization means strategically incorporating the keywords into every facet of the publication.

• Title tag and meta description. Craft a compelling title that includes the primary keyword. Make sure it is descriptive and within the recommended length (50-60 characters). The meta description should also include the target keyword and encourage clicks from curious readers. Aim for 150-160 characters.
• Headers and subheaders. Use your primary and secondary keywords in headers (H1, H2, H3) to structure the content and make it easier to scan.
• URL structure. Keep URLs short, use hyphens to separate words, and include target keywords. The URLs should be user-friendly and easy to understand.
• Alt text. Use descriptive and relevant keywords, avoid keyword stuffing, and make sure the text accurately represents the image content.
• Links. There are two different kinds, internal and external. With internal, you're linking to other relevant pages on your website to improve navigation and provide additional context. With external, you're citing authoritative sources and linking to high-quality external content to add credibility and provide further information.
• Page speed. This is how quickly the content on your webpage loads and becomes visible to users. It directly impacts both user experience and search engine rankings.  

Evaluate and adjust

Once you've published your optimized, relevant content made from expert research, keep an eye on how well it performs. Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor the performance based on metrics like organic traffic, bounce rate, click-through rate (CTR) and keyword rankings. If you have a social media presence, promote your content with intriguing excerpts and insights, linking back to the content so users can click through.

Based on performance data, make adjustments to your content to improve its relevance and effectiveness toward conversion rates. Don't forget to update it regularly to keep it fresh and aligned with current trends.

Let Rellify help your brand knock out the competition

When it comes to leveraging content marketing insights from your top competitors, Rellify is the tool you need to make it happen. With Rellify, you can make data-driven strategic decisions based on a custom-AI subject-matter expert trained on your relevant focus topics. You can find out what topics and keywords are already ranking within your specific niche, so you can build a content strategy that'll drive organic traffic, get more clicks, and turn interested readers into valuable customers.

Want to really see what Rellify can do? Hop on a call with one of our experts to find out how Rellify can revolutionize your content process and results.

By Dan Duke — When you're building a content plan for digital marketing, you want to search high and low for the perfect topics and keywords that will resonate with your target audience. Fortunately, keyword extraction is a process that can help. In this article, we'll take a look at the operations behind this type of analysis, and how it's used in the context of content creation and, in particular, how it can be used with social media.

What is keyword extraction?

Keyword extraction is a form of data mining that involves identifying the most relevant words or phrases from user-generated content. In the context of social media, keyword extraction is performed on the content of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and others. Once these words are identified, content analysis is performed to simplify, summarize, and classify the content.

Keyword extraction can involve supervised learning,  which requires labeled data to train models that can predict or classify keywords based on features extracted from the text. Conversely, it can involve unsupervised learning, in which no labeled data is required. Unsupervised learning methods rely on statistical and linguistic features to identify keywords based on their frequency and importance within the text.

Techniques and tools for keyword extraction

First comes a bit of data preprocessing. This is the preparation and cleaning of raw data to improve the quality and accuracy of the extraction process. We'll look at the processes first, and then the tools you can use to employ them.

Data preprocessing in keyword extraction from social media

Your first task is eliminating irrelevant characters, symbols, and formatting issues (e.g., HTML tags, special characters) from the text. All of the words should be in the correct case, too.

Now, you're ready for tokenization, where the text is broken into individual words or tokens. This helps when it comes to analyzing the frequency and importance of each term.  

Filter common words (e.g., "and," "the," "is") that don't carry significant meaning in the context of keyword extraction. These are known as "stop words" and can clutter the analysis.

Reduce words to their base or root form (e.g., "running" to "run") through stemming or lemmatization. This helps in treating different forms of a word as the same term, improving the accuracy of keyword extraction. Synonyms or variations of terms should be merged to ensure that different representations of the same concept are considered as a single keyword.

Exclude non-textual elements like images, videos, or other media types that do not contribute to the textual analysis. The data should be in a uniform format, which can be especially important for numerical data if it's involved in the text analysis.

Finally, segment long texts into meaningful units or chunks, which can help in more accurate keyword extraction by focusing on specific sections or themes.

NLP tools for running text analytics on social media text

Now you're ready to do some analysis. Natural language processing tools are crucial for analyzing and extracting insights from the vast and diverse texts generated on social media platforms. These are the tools you can use to efficiently process unstructured data. They employ tasks such as semantic analysis, noise reduction, trend detection, and keyword extraction, which are crucial for understanding user behavior and adjusting engagement strategies.

Statistical methods

• Term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF). Measures the importance of a term in a document relative to its frequency in the entire corpus.
• Frequency analysis. Counts occurrences of terms or phrases to determine their relevance.

Linguistic approaches

• Part-of-speech tagging. Identifies nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., to extract meaningful words.
• Named entity recognition (NER). Detects names of people, places, organizations, and other specific entities.

Machine learning models

• Topic modeling. Uses algorithms to identify themes within the text, then clusters the data by main topics and subtopics.
• Deep learning. Employs neural networks to capture complex patterns and contextual information.

Some organizations combine statistical, linguistic, and machine learning approaches to improve accuracy. It all depends on your goals and bandwidth.

What are some challenges that come with keyword extraction from social media?

Keyword extraction from social media presents several distinct challenges that stem from the unique nature of social media content.

One major issue is the informal and varied language used, including slang, abbreviations, and unconventional grammar. This linguistic diversity can make it difficult to accurately identify and extract meaningful keywords. Just think of how quickly nonsensical catch-phrases and ear-worms enter and exit our online lexicon.

Social media texts are also pretty noisy, with a high volume of irrelevant, redundant, or off-topic content that can obscure valuable information. You'll often find bots or swarms of trolls that throw off the statistical significance of certain texts or phrases by spamming with (often inappropriate or nonsensical) posts.

Another challenge is the context sensitivity of keywords. Words and phrases can have different meanings depending on their context, complicating the task of extraction and requiring sophisticated algorithms to sort out through sentiment analysis. Furthermore, the rapid and dynamic nature of social media means that trends and topics can shift quickly, requiring keyword extraction systems to be both timely and adaptable.

The sheer volume of data generated on social media platforms also presents scalability issues, making it hard to process and analyze large datasets efficiently. Addressing these challenges requires a combination of advanced natural language processing techniques, machine learning models, and real-time processing capabilities.

Applications

Keyword extraction is an important step in lots of different processes, including:

Social media monitoring

Brands and organizations use keyword extraction to monitor mentions and conversations on social networks. By identifying trending topics and popular keywords, marketers can tailor their campaigns to align with current interests and preferences. This helps in creating more relevant and engaging advertisements.

Competitor analysis

By extracting keywords related to competitors, businesses can gain insights into their rivals’ strategies and performance, helping them to position themselves more effectively in the market. Rellify can provide expert competitive analyses. With a custom Relliverse™, we use deep machine learning to find topics and keywords that are already resonating with audiences in your specific industry or niche. That way, you can create the right content for the right people, bringing better results.  

Content curation

By relying on keyword extraction, and subsequent analysis of keywords related to user interests and interactions, you can build a content plan that's perfectly tailored to maximize your user engagement. Rellify can help with this, too. By providing data visualization, cluster analysis, and lots of other helpful AI-powered data analytics, you can find the right topics that will maximize your ROI.

Which NLP tools are best for social media text analysis?

Fortunately, there's no shortage of tools that can help with information extraction from social media. Check out the different features and interface with each solution, and find one that best matches your goals and preferences. Here are a few examples of popular tools.

• NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit). NLTK provides a comprehensive suite of text processing libraries and resources, including tokenization, stemming, lemmatization, and text classification. Its highly customizable and includes lots of different linguistic resources and tools for different text analysis tasks, making it suitable for in-depth analysis.
• BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers). BERT is a transformer-based model developed by Google that excels in understanding context and relationships in text. Its ability to capture nuanced meanings and context makes it highly effective for sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and understanding complex social media interactions.
• RapidMiner. RapidMiner is a data science platform that includes tools for text mining and sentiment analysis with a user-friendly interface. Its visual interface and integration capabilities make it accessible for non-programmers and useful for quickly building and deploying text analysis workflows.

How Rellify uses keyword extraction

Social media is just one way to find out what your target audience is talking about in their online communities. Search engines are another important focus, especially for B2B and B2C marketers.

At Rellify, we focus on SEO, using deep machine learning models to process large sets of data that are relevant to your industry or niche. Keyword extraction is just one piece of the puzzle, and the rest is a breeze with a custom Relliverse. If you're ready to experience 10x the returns on your SEO efforts with 10x less effort, contact an expert at Rellify today for a free demo.

Aug. 28 – Rellify Inc., the Virginia-based SaaS content marketing company, ranks third in the Best of Technology Award - an international competition - in the category AI Product Innovation. Rellify is considered the world's leading developer of enterprise AI-as-a-service software platforms that cover the entire end-to-end content development process.

Enterprise-specific vertical AI models

Rellify's flagship product, the Relliverse, uses company-specific vertical AI models to provide its users with unique insights into market-specific content trends and performance metrics. The platform enables companies to significantly accelerate the entire content development process, from ideation to publication - while ensuring that every piece of content is both relevant and engaging.

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Peter Kraus, CEO of Rellify, was delighted about the repeated award: “After taking first place in the Marketing & Sales category last year, third place in the AI Product Innovation category is a further confirmation of our work,” said Kraus. “Our team has worked hard to create a solution that enables marketers to use AI where it brings the greatest benefit - in content strategy and curation. This enables our customers to optimally serve the natural language needs of their target groups. The Relliverse helps companies to master the challenges of content creation precisely and efficiently and stands out from the competition through the insights gained and the high level of efficiency.”

Combination of advanced topic analysis and visual performance comparisons

The Relliverse combines in-depth topic analysis with user-friendly visual performance comparisons and allows users to filter and save views to optimize data analysis. This comprehensive approach improves content strategy and enables marketers to identify relevant topics in a targeted and efficient manner. In addition, the platform's robust article management offers seamless organization and filtering of content, further simplifying the creation and publishing process.
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Jürgen Kranz, CTO of Rellify, highlights the practical benefits of the platform: “The Relliverse was developed to solve three key problems that content marketing experts face today: First, it provides deep, customer-specific insights that cannot be covered by generic AI models such as ChatGPT. Second, these insights are immediately actionable, so that our clients can focus on the most relevant topics and keywords. And third, our AI-powered Relliverse ensures that content creation is both cost-effective and brand-true.”

Redefining the boundaries of digital content creation

Third place at the Best of Technology Award in the AI Product Innovation category underlines Rellify's commitment to redefining the boundaries of digital content creation. By focusing on delivering high-quality and relevant content, Relliverse helps content teams avoid information overload and misinformation, while fostering a more credible and trustworthy online ecosystem.

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Rellify's successes and ongoing innovations continue to have a significant impact on numerous industries. Rellify's solutions not only help companies create better content, but also ensure that it resonates with target audiences, ultimately increasing engagement and success in the digital world.

Best of Technology in Marketing and Sales

Rellify already won the Best of Technology Award from WirtschaftsWoche in the Marketing & Sales category in 2023. This year's award shows that Rellify continues to be a leader in innovation in content intelligence, offering its customers both high added value and maximum flexibility.

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For more information about Rellify and its cutting-edge solutions, visit rellify.com.

Contact: Rellify Inc.
Email: info@rellify.com
Phone: 628-228-6230
Website: www.rellify.com

By Jayne Schultheis — What's in a name? Well, for search engines, it's complicated. While we, as humans, have a naturally nuanced understanding of language, search engines need a little extra help sorting things out. Let's take a look at one example: the mechanics of named entity recognition. It's the mechanism used by search engines to determine what on earth we, as humans, are trying to say.

What is named entity recognition?

Named entity recognition (NER), sometimes called entity chunking or entity extraction, is a component of information retrieval in natural language processing (NLP). It involves identifying and classifying key parts of a text into predefined categories such as people, organizations, locations, dates, and other specific groups.

For example, in the sentence "NASA launched the Mars Rover on July 30, 2021, from Cape Canaveral," NER would identify:

• "NASA" as an organization
• "Mars Rover" as a specific project or mission name
• "July 30, 2021" as a date
• "Cape Canaveral" as a location

This type of recognition helps in categorizing and extracting relevant information from text for better analysis and understanding.

What is the role of NER in search engine algorithms?

Named entity recognition (NER) is crucial to search algorithms because it helps to improve the textual understanding of bots and the relevance of search results. When you consider the capabilities of AI in contrast to human understanding, it's easy to see how the ambiguity and nuances of language can make categorization difficult — and necessary. Look at this sentence:

China (group of athletes) won 48 gold medals at the 2008 Olympics in China (location).

NER enables computers to understand that the same word used twice in one sentence can have different meanings: a group of athletes who share a nationality and a geographic location.

If you went to Google and asked, "how many gold medals did China win at the 2008 Olympics?" Google wouldn't be scratching its head wondering how a location could win a medal in diving. Instead, NER allows the Google algorithms to know that you're asking about how many gold medals the athletes representing China won at the 2008 Olympics in China.

Now that you have an example, here’s how NER further contributes to search engine algorithms:

• Better natural language understanding. NER helps search engines identify and categorize key people, places, and organizations in web content. By recognizing these entities, search engines can better understand the context and subject matter of a page through deep learning, leading to more accurate indexing and retrieval.
• Improved query matching. When users enter search queries, NER helps search engines match those queries with relevant content by identifying and interpreting the named entities in both the query and the indexed pages. NER also helps search engines understand the context and user intent in which named entities are mentioned. This improves the ability to differentiate between entities with similar names. Another term for this is "semantic search."
• Rich snippets and structured data. Search engines use NER to improve the display of search results with rich snippets and structured data. By recognizing entities like products, events, and organizations, search engines can present additional details such as reviews, ratings, or event dates directly in the search results, adding value to the results.
• Content categorization. Search engines use NER to categorize content more effectively. By identifying and tagging entities, search engines can organize content into relevant categories and topics, which helps improve content recommendations and personalization.
• Text summarization. NER enables text summarization to focus on the most important entities and interactions so it can capture the core factual content of the text, rather than just the keywords. NLP tools like GPT and Google's Gemini use this method of text processing.

How does NER work?

We're so glad you asked. Here's a step-by-step explanation.

1. The process begins with preprocessing, where the text is cleaned and prepared for analysis. This involves removing unnecessary characters, correcting typos, and sometimes normalizing text.
2. Next, the text is tokenized, meaning it is broken down into smaller units like words or phrases. Tokenization helps analyze the structure and meaning of the text more effectively. In the sentence,  "John Lennon co-founded the Beatles," it would be split into tokens, "John," "Lennon," "co-founded" and "Beatles."
3. Next, the NER system applies feature extraction. This step involves identifying and creating features or characteristics of the text that might be relevant for recognizing named entities. Features can include part-of-speech tags, word shapes, or even surrounding context. In this case, it would be the capital 'L' in Lennon and 'B' in Beatles, which indicates that these are proper nouns.
4. Now, we're at the core of NER: entity classification. At this stage, the system uses pre-trained models, which may be based on machine learning algorithms or deep learning networks, to classify each token or sequence of tokens into predefined categories like "Person," "Organization," or "Location." In this case, "John Lennon" would be classified as "person" and the Beatles, an "organization."
5. Once the entities are classified, the system proceeds to post-processing. This step involves refining and validating the results to ensure accuracy. It may include resolving ambiguities, such as distinguishing between a person's name and a common noun. This kind of quality control prevents "Beatles" from being classified as group of insects instead of talented rock stars.
6. Finally, the system outputs the recognized entities along with their categories, making it easier for users to extract meaningful information from the text. Thanks to NER, you'll receive a wealth of information from a search engine about a group of talented young men from Liverpool who formed one of the most popular bands of all time.

How can I use NER to improve my SEO?

Understanding NER gives you a better grasp of how search engines assess your content and generate SERPs. Your best option is leveraging the insights gained from NER to improve content relevance and quality, creating a better user experience on your website. Here are some more specific strategies to help you incorporate NER into your content strategy and SEO efforts:

• Optimize for specific entities.  Do some content marketing research. Are there specific companies, products, or locations that are big players in your industry? Make sure that your content includes these entities naturally in the text.
• Create targeted content. Create content around topics that are already doing well in your industry. This should help you align your content with what users and search engines find valuable. Rellify is the expert in content optimization, using deep machine learning to cluster topics and develop keywords that will naturally rank well on SERPs.
• Improve your technical SEO. Include relevant entities in your metadata (title tags, meta descriptions, and headers). This can improve the relevance of your pages for specific queries related to those entities. You should also implement structured data (schema markup) for entities identified through NER.
• Internal linking. Identify important entities in your content and use them to create internal links to related pages on your site. This helps search engines understand the context and relationships between your pages, improving your site's SEO.
• Voice search optimization. Voice search often involves questions about specific entities. Use NER to identify common entities and incorporate them into content designed to answer voice search queries. This improves your chances of being featured in voice search results.

Let Rellify use NER to boost your returns

Rellify is no stranger to the value of NER and natural language processing. We strategically use it in the context of deep learning to better understand your brand and your audience. If you're ready for a content revamp, or looking for ways to boost your digital marketing returns, a custom Relliverse™ from Rellify is the way to go. With a Relliverse™, you can use artificial intelligence with deep machine learning to cluster topics, find keywords, and build content that's relevant and naturally ranks well on search engine results pages. Ready to find out more? Schedule a brief demo with one of our experts today!

Level up your marketing with an AI-supported content strategy platform. Creating content that resonates with your audience is both an art and a science—but even the best marketers need the right tools. That’s where the Rellify Relliverse™ comes in, helping you focus your content efforts with precision.

More than just a tool, the Relliverse™ is your strategic companion, uncovering hidden opportunities and helping you avoid common pitfalls. If you’ve ever wondered which topics truly matter to your audience or where your content is hitting or missing the mark, you’re in the right place. This platform provides the insights you need to refine your strategy and drive real results.

Overview: What’s in it?

When you log into the Relliverse™, you’ll land on a dashboard designed to streamline your content strategy. The home screen provides a high-level view of your project, key tools, and helpful tips to get started.

This guide will focus on four critical areas that will help you create data-driven, audience-focused content:

• Project Brief – Outlines your content plan, including project timeline, competitor domains, focus topics, audience specifications, and visual preferences. It ensures alignment by defining tone, expertise level, and automatic settings for future briefs.
• Competitors – See how your content stacks up against competitors. This area displays your domain alongside selected competitor domains, with four key graphs offering a quick view of critical KPIs.
• Topics – Explore the focus topics that shape your Relliverse™, including their relevance, search volume, difficulty, and related subtopics. This section helps you identify content opportunities and audience interests.
• Content Insights – Review all the topics you’ve saved during your analysis and explore AI-driven article suggestions tailored to your strategy.

Each of these areas plays a vital role in refining your content approach, ensuring it resonates with your audience and outperforms competitors.

Let’s dive deeper.

Competitors: Track Your Market Position at a Glance

The Competitors section gives you a clear view of how your company compares to key players in your industry. This interactive dashboard helps you analyze competitor performance and refine your strategy.

How to Use This Section

• Table Overview: See competitor rankings, article counts, search term performance, and estimated traffic.
• Interactive Graphs: Hover over a competitor in the table to highlight their data in the charts, and vice versa.
• Click for Details: Underlined numbers open pop-ups with in-depth insights, including article titles, rankings, and traffic estimates.
• Sorting & Filtering: Organize data by priority (1-5 stars) and focus on competitors that matter most.

Key Metrics Analyzed

• Published Articles: Total number of indexed articles.
• Articles in Top 20: How many rank in the top 20 search results.
• Average Ranking: The typical position across all ranked articles.
• Estimated Traffic: Projected visits based on search rankings.
• Traffic Distribution: Share of traffic compared to competitors.
• Search Terms in Top 20: Keywords contributing to high rankings.

Why It Matters

Identify which competitors are leading and why. See if volume correlates with rankings and traffic. Learn from competitors with fewer search terms but higher traffic. Adjust your strategy to improve content impact.

Take control of your competitive landscape—analyze, prioritize, and outperform!

Topics: Build a Data-Driven Content Strategy

The Topics section helps you identify and prioritize content topics based on relevance, search demand, and competitive difficulty. Use this interactive tool to refine your strategy and focus on high-impact topics.

How to Use This Section

• Explore Your Topics: Topics are clustered into main topics and subtopics, up to four levels deep. Click the small arrow next to a topic to expand the cluster and explore related subtopics.
• Sort & Filter Data: Customize your view using filters like relevance, search volume, competition level, and traffic insights.

Key Metrics Explained

• Search Volume: Displays the average monthly search traffic for a topic, including subtopic breakdowns.
• Traffic & Market Share: See estimated traffic for each topic and how much of that traffic your site captures compared to competitors.
• Competitor Insights: View competing articles, search terms, rankings, and gaps in your content strategy.

Filter & Save Custom Views

Customize your topic list by applying filters like:

• Relevance Score
• Search Volume
• Competition Level
• Articles Published
• Rankings & Traffic Share

Save your filtered views for quick access later.

Explore Key Sections

• My Coverage – See topics where you’ve already published content.
• Strengths – See topics where you rank best.
• Opportunities – Topics that are the quickest way for you to land on page one of search results.
• Gaps – Find opportunities where competitors rank but you don’t.
• All – View all identified topics, structured by relevance.
• Planned – Bookmark important topics for future reference.

Content Insights: your saved topics and article recommendations

The Content Insights section helps you manage and explore your saved topics and their associated article recommendations. This area provides a structured way to analyze content opportunities, optimize existing content, and track published articles.

Navigating Content Insights

• Topics Panel (Left Side):
  • Displays all saved topics from your analysis.
  • You can filter to view all topics or select an individual topic to see specific article suggestions.
• Article Suggestions Panel (Right Side):
  • Shows relevant article recommendations based on your saved topics.
  • Articles can be sorted by different criteria for easier review.

Content Tabs

The article suggestions are categorized into different tabs:

• New Content Suggestions – New article suggestions for your saved topics.
• Content to Optimize – Topics identified via the Relliverse™ with already created articles.
• All Domain Content – Published articles originating from the Relliverse™, along with their Pre-Score for SEO and readability

Features and Actions

• Filtering & Prioritization: Use filters, prioritization settings, and search functions to refine suggestions.
• Article Creation:
  • Click + Create next to an article suggestion to start a new article.
  • Select multiple articles using checkboxes to batch-create or generate content.
• Pre-Score Analysis: For online articles, the Pre-Score provides an initial SEO and readability assessment, helping you identify areas for improvement.

Content Hub

You’re ready to create your first articles? Let’s go!

What are you waiting for? Check your Relliverse™, discover topics relevant to your business and your target groups and cover them in articles that people enjoy reading.

By Jayne Schultheis — The ethics of white hat/black hat SEO are worth exploring as search engines continuously assess the efforts of content creators who try to "cut through the red tape" of optimization. The ethics of SEO are complicated, but important to keep in mind as you build your content marketing strategy. Let's look at both ethical and unethical SEO techniques, and the types of returns you can expect from each.

What are white hat SEO techniques?

White hat techniques refer to legitimate and ethical SEO strategies used to improve a website’s search engine ranking.

Examples of white hat techniques

These techniques are in line with the guidelines set by search engines like Google, aiming for sustainable and long-term success.

• Quality content creation. Develop high-quality, relevant, and valuable content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience. This includes well-researched articles, engaging blog posts, and informative videos.
• Keyword research and optimization. Identify relevant keywords and incorporate them naturally into your content, titles, headings, and meta descriptions to improve visibility in search results. This is one of Rellify's secret weapons. With AI-driven tools, Rellify is able to find unique topics and keywords within your particular niche that will naturally rank well in search engines.
• On-page SEO. Optimize individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic. This includes proper use of HTML tags (like title tags and meta descriptions), optimizing images with alt text, improving page load speed, and implementing a mobile-friendly design.
• Technical SEO. Does the website meet technical requirements for search engines? This involves improving site architecture, optimizing XML sitemaps, fixing broken links, and maintaining proper use of redirects.
• Earn quality backlinks. Earn links from reputable and relevant websites through outreach, guest posting, and creating valuable content that naturally lends itself to link-building.
• User experience (UX) optimization. Improve the overall user experience on your website by making sure it's easy to navigate, visually appealing, and provides clear calls to action. A good UX can reduce bounce rates and increase engagement.
• Local SEO. Claim and optimize your Google My Business listing. Encourage local reviews and make sure that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information is consistent across all local directories.
• Social media engagement. An active social media presence can help drive traffic to your website, engage with your audience, and build brand awareness. While social signals themselves may not directly impact SEO, social media can still help increase visibility as another form of online presence.

What are black hat SEO techniques?

Black hat techniques in SEO are unethical and manipulative strategies used to artificially boost a website’s search engine ranking.

Examples of black hat SEO

These methods violate search engine guidelines and can lead to severe SEO risks and penalties, including de-indexing, lowered search visibility, loss of organic traffic, or a ban from search engine results.

• Keyword stuffing. This is overloading a web page with keywords or phrases in an unnatural way to try and manipulate search rankings. It  often results in awkward, unreadable content.
• Cloaking. You present different content to search engines than what you're presenting to users. This may be done to deceive the search engine into ranking the page higher.
• Invisible text and links. Some sneaky web designers set the text to match the background color or use very small font sizes. Users can't read it, but search engines can. This is usually done to include more keywords or backlinks without them being visible to users.
• Link farms. Link farming is the process of creating or participating in networks of low-quality websites that link to each other to artificially inflate the number of backlinks to a site. These links are not earned naturally and are often irrelevant.
• Paid links. When you buy or sell links with the intent of manipulating search engine rankings, search engines like Google view it as a violation of their guidelines.
• Content scraping. This is the practice of copying content from other websites and republishing it as your own. This can lead to duplicate content issues and is considered theft of intellectual property. With the proliferation of AI-generated content, this is a practice that's rampant, as most generative AI is produced from content scraped from other websites. This is why fact-checking and humanizing any AI-generated text is so important to your brand credibility.
• Doorway pages. This is when you create multiple pages optimized for specific keywords that lead to a single destination, providing a poor user experience.
• Negative SEO. Some websites try to harm a competitor's site by building spammy backlinks to it or employing other tactics to get it penalized by search engines. Don't do it — you're better than that!
• Entirely AI-generated content. When you use software like OpenAI to create large volumes of low-quality content quickly, you're signaling to both readers and search engines that you're not actually an expert in your field. Experts write content that's unique.

What to do if you've been penalized for using "Black hat techniques"

Noticeable drops in organic traffic or search engine rankings can indicate that you have been penalized. Check Google Search Console for any notifications that indicate a manual action or penalty. Google often provides specific details about the type of penalty and the reasons behind it.

Conduct a website audit and look for the types of "black hat" issues and strategies we mentioned earlier.

Address the issues

If you have acquired unnatural or spammy backlinks, use the Google Disavow Tool to indicate which links should not be considered. Reach out to webmasters to request removal of harmful links if possible. Correct or remove any hidden text, doorway pages, or other deceptive practices.

Update your content strategy

Shift to creating high-quality, valuable, and original content that adheres to SEO best practices. Work toward ethical SEO that follows search engine guidelines such as proper keyword usage, on-page optimization, and quality link-building. Focus on user experience, too, including site usability, load speed, mobile responsiveness.

The sooner you change course, the better your chances of avoiding reputation damage. Playing by the rules may be time-consuming and slow to show results, but it’s still your best bet in building an authoritative and enduring web presence. 

Submit a reconsideration request

If you’ve received a manual penalty, prepare a reconsideration request through Google Search Console. In your request, detail the issues, provide evidence of the steps you've taken to rectify the issues, and show a genuine commitment to adhering to SEO compliance and best practices going forward. Don't worry — it's not the end of the world. Recovery from penalties might take some time, and maybe a few algorithm updates, but you'll most likely bounce back from any algorithmic penalty or traffic loss.

Let Rellify help get your SEO on track

Avoiding black hat techniques and focusing on long-term SEO strategy centered on authoritative content is your best bet for boosting organic growth. At Rellify, we're committed to white hat SEO. We help our clients create relevant, optimized, and well-researched content that naturally ranks well on search engines. And with a state-of-the-art Relliverse,™ you can leverage custom AI to find the right topics, use the right keywords, and answer the right questions. Ready to find out more? Schedule a quick demo with one of our experts today.

In today's fast-moving digital age of content marketing, first impressions are crucial. Blog headlines are the first exposure a potential customer might have with your brand. They must capture the attention of readers and entice them to click through and engage with the content.

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If you're looking to boost your online presence and drive more traffic to your website or publication, mastering the art of writing catchy and engaging headlines is a critical skill. Let's dive into the world of SEO friendly headlines, and go over some tips for crafting headlines that captivate readers.

The role of headlines in SEO content strategy

"Headline" is a print media term that has been adapted for the online world. In the SEO field, headlines are referred to as titles and they take two forms— meta titles and on-page titles. When you look a search results page and see hyperlinked text that describes a blog post or landing page, that's a meta title. The on-page title, sometimes referred to as the H1, is the large text at the top of an article or landing page.

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They frequently are the same, but writers and editors can make subtle changes between the two to maximize their value. The meta title must appeal to search engines and readers alike, but H1s are focued on readers. In this article, we'll use the term "headline" to apply to both meta titles and H1s unless we state otherwise.

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Headlines act as the initial gateway and subheadings are the roadmap for both search engines and users. They convey the main topic of the content, which helps search engines understand and index the page appropriately. Search engines like Google use algorithms that consider the relevance and clarity of headlines when ranking pages, making headline optimization a key aspect of any SEO strategy.

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By incorporating the focus keyword and relevant keywords naturally within the headline, website owners can improve the page’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). This increased visibility drives organic traffic, as users are more likely to click on results that appear at the top of the SERPs.

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Beyond their technical importance, headlines significantly impact user engagement. On SERPs, a great headline will make searchers click and become visitors to your site. Once inside, compelling and informative headlines, and subheadings,  can provide valuable information to readers who are scanning, but at the same time encourage them to slow down and read more.

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Don't forget, your web pages are probably peppered with headlines for other blog articles and pages, with links to each one. So a great headline, or a bad one, will be making impressions all over your site, not just on one article.  

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Great headlines improve the "stickiness" or your page and entire site. It makes it more likely that readers will click through to the other content, increase page views, and reduce bounce rates.

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Well-crafted headlines can also boost social media shares, as users are more likely to share content with attractive headlines that are clear, intriguing, and relevant.

Key elements of SEO friendly headlines

To write SEO friendly headlines that drive traffic and clicks, you should keep a few things in mind.

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Start by researching and understand the target audience for the content topic. Who needs this information? Is the reader's intent to learn or to buy? The answers to these questions will help shape your process. The headline should be relevant to both the topic and the audience, capturing their attention and piquing their interest.

Keyword integration

The headline should include the main keyword or key phrase that accurately represents the content. Most of the content on your website (besides pillar pages) should be focused on long-tail keywords. These are more specific, longer phrases that are highly relevant to your content, tend to have lower competition, and can attract more targeted traffic. Using other topic-related keywords in subheadings and throughout the content further optimizes the article for search engines.

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If you're wondering which keywords to use in headlines, the content creation experts at Rellify can help. With a custom Relliverse, you can make data-driven strategic decisions based on a custom-AI subject-matter expert trained on data related to your business. With these insights, you can discern which keywords to incorporate into headlines and build your content around — so you can get better results.

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Finally, use the focus keyword at the beginning of the headline to boost search results.

Optimized structure and length

When it comes to headline length, it is important to find a balance between being descriptive and concise. Search engines typically display only a certain number of characters in the search results, so the most important information should be within that limit. A concise headline that accurately reflects the content can attract more clicks and improve the overall SEO of the article. If you're not sure whether your headline is following SEO best practices, you can always check with headline analyzer tools like this one offered by CoSchedule. Rellify automatically analyzes headlines, tells you if they are too long and gives other SEO-friendly tips for improving them.

Headline strategies

Question headlines can act as helpful tools. If users type that specific question into Google and your website is considered an authority on the topic, it'll encourage search engines to suggest your content as the answer to those queries.

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Readers also find numbers to be compelling. Instead of writing: "How to Write Great Headlines" try "12 Ways to Make Headlines Shine."

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Finally, active voice beats passive voice and powerful verbs motivate readers.

The URL connection

The headline of a blog post and its URL have a natural connection related to search engine optimization (SEO). Ideally, the URL should include the focus keyword, which reflects the content of the blog post. This makes it easier for users to understand what the page is about just by looking at the URL. This can help search engines understand the relevance of the content and improve the chances of a higher Google ranking. Since headlines also benefit from using the focus keyword, they will resemble the URL. In terms of SEO, keep URLs concise and descriptive, with a maximum of 50 to 60 characters, so they're easily readable and shareable.

Avoid clickbait — focus on relevancy and clarity

It might be tempting to use clickbait, but it's a cheap trick that lacks sustainability. Clickbait headlines use sensational, false or ambiguous words and phrases that may initially attract clicks. In the end, they can damage the credibility and reputation of the website or publication. If a reader feels misled or disappointed by your content, they are likely to avoid your website altogether. They also are much less likely to become customers.

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Let your content do the talking. Write valuable, relevant content and headlines that accurately represent it. This creates a positive user experience, builds trust with readers, and encourages them to engage further with the content.

Can AI help me write SEO friendly headlines?

Well, yes and no. Generative AI is a helpful and effective tool for brainstorming headlines, especially when you have writer's block. These kinds of tools can be helpful for suggesting power words, too. However, most AI is not yet capable of optimizing headlines for SEO. You'll find headlines developed by generic AI are often too long and seemingly use headline formulas.

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"Number or Trigger Word + Adjective + Keyword + Promise/Benefit"  is one of the most common formulas you'll see when using generic AI tools.

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We're not saying AI isn't useful in this area — it certainly is. That's why Rellify offers generative AI in our platform. When you highlight a text and hit "suggest headline," you'll be provided with a catchy, compelling headline that you can customize as needed.

The art of writing catchy headlines

One could say it's both an art and a science, just like all content optimization.

Inspiration and creativity in headline writing

Have you researched the latest SEO trends in headlines? Another way to find inspiration is by researching successful headlines within your industry or niches. Analyzing what makes those headlines effective can provide insights and ideas for creating unique and compelling headlines. Additionally, brainstorming sessions and collaborating with other creative individuals can help generate innovative ideas for headline writing.

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Clever and engaging headlines require a combination of creativity and strategy. Clever ones often use wordplay, humor, or unexpected twists to capture the reader's attention. Engaging headlines, on the other hand, appeal to the reader's emotional triggers or offer valuable information. You might even be able to incorporate both if you're a pro!

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Here, the difference between meta titles and H1s come into play. Cleverness and wordplay work best in H1s, where they can delight readers. For meta titles, which are being assessed by bots, straighter is better.

Capitalization and grammar rules for headlines

When it comes to capitalization and grammar rules for headlines, consistency is key. Be sure to follow the established style guide of the publication or website. There are two common styles.

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Sentence case capitalizes the first word and proper nouns.

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Title case capitalizes all major words and puts minor words, like "the" "and" and "but" in lower case.

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Within those types, there are differences in style, so know the style for your site and be consistent.

Analyzing the success of SEO headlines in driving traffic

By monitoring the click-through rates and traffic generated by different headlines, content creators can gain insights into what works and what doesn't. Google Analytics is a great place to start for comparative research and A/B testing headlines. This data can then be used to optimize future headlines and improve the overall performance of the website or publication. When you're updating evergreen content, analyze and adapt SEO headlines to make sure they are effectively driving traffic and meeting the needs of the target audience.

Let Rellify help you create SEO friendly headlines

Your SEO strategy needs content with strong, compelling, optimized headlines. Fortunately, Rellify makes the process of writing them simple and effective. It all starts with topic research — enhanced by deep machine learning and customized AI that finds topics within your niche that are already poised to do well on search engines. Once you have the right focus keywords, you'll be ready to create stellar content framed by SEO-optimized headlines. Ready to improve your digital marketing? Book a quick demo with one of our Rellify experts to find out exactly how Rellify can revolutionize your content processes.