Keyword Strategy (Versus Content Strategy Versus Information Architecture)

Keyword strategy, content strategy, and information architecture; any analogy used to describe their interconnectedness runs the risk of misrepresenting how they all tie in together.

Your keyword strategy is all about how you analyze your market through terminology; the words used to describe things, primarily in search, but also elsewhere.

Content strategy describes in general what kinds of content you create for a marketing campaign, what mediums you choose to use, what kinds of strategic content you employ to get people interacting with and responding to your brand, and then at a more specific level, how you create content around particular keywords.

Information architecture describes the interface between technology and content; so for instance, the way content is set out on a website is the information architecture of the site. The construction and connectedness of content works at a user level, in terms of how a user navigates around a site, and it also impacts significantly on how search browsers navigate your site, and therefore on seo.

These three disciplines are all closely interrelated.

On-site and Off-site strategies

Obviously there are elements of content and keyword strategy that can take place outside of your website, but there is much greater flexibility to change course mid-stream with those elements. However, the on-site elements are by nature much more concatenated, with one element naturally leading to another, and therefore a much greater degree of planning and foresight is required from the outset. The way in which keyword research is done partially defines your understanding of your market; your understanding of your market defines what kinds of products and services you offer. Likewise your understanding of your market defines what kind of content you create for your market, and in what format. Then your understanding of your content defines what structure you give your website, and finally, in this brief sketch, your understanding of the structure of your website defines what kind of technologies you use to create the architecture you want.

When you pull these separate elements apart a bit, it is clear that keyword research is to internet marketing as market research is to marketing. In other words, the starting point for your campaign is keyword research. In this respect, I liken keyword research to the boot system of a computer; whilst it is apparently quite simple as a process in comparison to various other things, it really does define the shape of everything you do. Just as a minute virus in your boot system is terminal, with the ability to replicate through all your systems, any error at the keyword research stage has the potential to magnify out of all proportion as your campaign evolves.

More on keyword research

Keyword research presents all sorts of data that needs to be sifted through. Misunderstanding that data, for whatever reason, can mean you are, essentially, aiming your arrows wide of the target. What do I mean?

Well, keyword research must be understood pre-eminently as market research. Because keyword data comes in the form of statistical data, a mistake we often see made is that people take the figures at face value, when in fact there are all sorts of unrevealed factors behind the numerical data.

A simple example would be, say, if you were a beautician, and you offered a skin tag removal service. If one of the keywords you targeted was “Tag Removal”, you would need to interpret the data carefully. There are in fact half a million annual phrase searches worldwide for “Tag Removal”, (i.e. searches which include the phrase “tag removal”), but you would need to qualify those results a bit. Tag removal also has a meaning outside of cosmetic care; it can also refer to web development. As part of your keyword strategy, you would need to break your figures down a bit and see exactly what they represented.

Another example of potentially misleading data comes from within this industry. Whilst there are hundreds if not thousands of search phrases that people use to search for search engine optimization services, the most used term, (apparently), is “seo services”. (For the record, there are around 3 million annual phrase searches). Because it is the most used term by searchers, it is also a highly competitive term, (presumably the most competitive), with many an seo firm seeking to get themselves to the top of the search engine rankings for it.

Do you see the potential problem here? It is a little more obvious if you work within the seo industry.

If thousands of seo companies are trying to rank for “seo services”, (think ultra high competition, since the chief accolade for an seo Company is to be ranked for this term), then there also will be thousands of seo firms who regularly run an “seo services” search to see where they are in the rankings…..

…….so those 3 million annual searches may well be a totally inflated figure. Anywhere from 25-75% of those 3 million searches could be mere statistical aberrations. I.E. not real people searching for seo Companies, but seo Companies checking their own rankings.

There are many other aspects to keyword data that need to be wholly evaluated, (e.g. keyword intent, keyword competition), and therefore the above examples should be understood as purely expository, in order to illustrate how keyword data needs to be understood at a semantic level. Once your keyword research is completed, you are then able to start planning the design and architecture of your site, and in particular, the way you intend to strategically lay out information. At this level you really enter into the nuts and bolts of seo, because the majority of seo hinges on one thing, namely how a search bot experiences your site. Content and information architecture therefore are absolutely critical to seo, but they are whole separate disciplines in themselves. Information architecture involves the technical side of web development, and therefore can only be done in conjunction with a professional website designer, whilst content architecture is really quite a complex skill, requiring a proper understanding of how search bots crawl and experience websites.