Keyword Research & Content Strategy:
The Complete Resource Guide
Keyword research is where most SEO campaigns get their first and most consequential decisions wrong. Volume is a start, not a strategy. This guide collects 19 years of hard-won perspective on how to research keywords the right way — filtered through human intent, shaped by SERP reality, and connected to the content decisions that actually move rankings.
“The best keyword research I’ve ever done didn’t come from a tool. It came from listening to 30 minutes of conversation between two subject matter experts and pulling out the phrases their customers actually use. Tools tell you what people search. Podcast transcripts tell you what they mean.”
The biggest mistake I see in keyword research is treating it as a database query rather than an empathy exercise. Volume tells you how many people are asking. It doesn’t tell you who they are, what they actually mean, or whether your site has any business trying to answer them. The posts below cover the full workflow — from SERP analysis before any tool, to local keyword adjustments, to human-first framing that identifies the real intent behind a query.
Keyword Research Tip: You Really Should Look at the SERP
The most overlooked step in keyword research — actually looking at what Google is currently ranking before deciding whether to target a term. A simple habit that saves weeks of wasted effort.
Read the Article →SEO’s Guide to Keyword Research for Niche Topics
When head terms won’t cut it — 9 methods for finding the specific language, intent, and content angles that connect with a niche audience that isn’t searching in obvious ways.
Read the Guide →#SEOBits: Updating Keyword Research for a Local Business
How keyword research needs to change when you’re working with a roofer, plumber, or home inspector — the geographic filter problem, volume blind spots, and why competitor analysis misleads in local niches.
Read the Article →#SEOBits: Human-First Keyword Research
Before algorithms, before tools, before volume — the case for starting with what real humans actually want and working backwards to the keyword strategy that serves them.
Read the Article →“It’s not search engine optimization anymore. It’s more like search experience optimization. We’re not just looking at those key SEO things. Now you’re looking at crawl depth, user depth, UX — all at once.”Jesse McDonald · Senior SEO Director, Siege Media — via Unscripted SEO Podcast
The era of “create enough content on enough keywords and eventually the traffic comes” is over. Google’s Helpful Content Update made an explicit statement about content created for search engines rather than people — and the sites that survived were the ones that did things that didn’t scale. The content that wins in 2025 is written for someone who already has one hand on their credit card, or deep enough in their decision process that they’ll still be thinking about you when they get there.
Create Content That Satisfies User Needs
How to structure content that hooks, navigates, and delivers — a practical guide to the formatting and framing decisions that separate content users finish from content they bounce from.
Read the Article →How to Create Content During Constant Google Algorithm Updates
A community conversation on adapting content creation processes to an algorithm that keeps moving — with practical frameworks from practitioners who’ve maintained traffic through multiple update cycles.
Read the Recap →SEO Content Creation for B2B
How B2B content strategy differs from B2C — longer cycles, more knowledgeable audiences, and the specific content formats that build trust in industries where a Google search is just the beginning of the buying journey.
Read the Recap →Non-Obvious Ways to Promote Your Content
Creating good content is half the job. The other half is getting it in front of people who will link to it, share it, or come back for the next piece. A collection of distribution tactics that most content teams aren’t using.
Read the Article →Jesse McDonald’s Keyword Analysis SOP for Better Search Performance
Siege Media’s process for analyzing keyword opposition, SERP features, image presence, update frequency, and trend direction — a systematic approach that goes far beyond volume and difficulty scores.
Read the SOP →Queries in Google Fit Into 1 of 8 Categories (Based on 90M Data Points)
Mark Williams-Cook’s research on how Google classifies queries — SHORT_FACT, COMPARISON, INSTRUCTION, BOOL, and more — and what it means for matching content format to query intent.
Read the Article →Leverage Long-Tail Keywords With Higher CTR
Why ranking is only half the equation — how long-tail keyword targeting naturally improves click-through rates and surfaces intent signals that head terms completely obscure.
Read the Article →Content Cannibalization: The Unholy Problem Explained
When two of your own pages compete for the same keyword — what it is, how to identify it in Google Search Console, and the consolidation and de-optimization strategies that actually fix it.
Read the Recap →“People also ask data tells you where Google understands user intent at different knowledge levels. If you combine Screaming Frog with the Also Asked API and ChatGPT, you can automate content gap analysis at scale — finding the questions your content doesn’t answer but should.”Mark Williams-Cook · Director, Candour / Also Asked — via Unscripted SEO Podcast
The Future of SEO: Leveraging AI Writing Tools
AI is the best SEO assistant available right now — and a terrible strategic replacement for human judgment. How to use LLMs to speed up research and drafting without commoditizing your content in the process.
Read the Article →SEObits: How to Improve Your Blog Homepage
Why your /blog page shouldn’t be a reverse-chronological list — and how treating it like a mini homepage, surfacing categories and high-value evergreen content, changes both UX and crawl efficiency.
Read the Article →Turn Keyword Research Into Revenue Projections
The SEO Arcade Keyword Forecast Tool takes your target keyword set and models traffic potential, conversion estimates, and revenue scenarios across ranking positions — so the next time someone asks “what will we get for this?” you have a defensible answer.
Try the Keyword Forecast Tool →