What Comes First: The Research or the Ranking?

I’m going to tell you something that might shock you. Brace yourself.

For some of the best-performing content I’ve created, I didn’t do an ounce of keyword research before publishing.

[Insert appropriate appalled emotion here.]

“Why?” I can practically hear you shouting. “Why on earth would you forsake the one step that we content marketers hold so dear!?”

Easy—I didn’t know better.

That’s right. When I first began to understand the value of content from a business perspective, keyword research was just a vague concept I remembered floating on the interwebs here and there.

That didn’t stop the content I wrote from ranking well. In fact, one of my clients just hit the #1 Google spot (above Booz Allen and 5 industry journals) and landed a featured snippet for a commercial pharma keyword. Based on what I did for them a few years back as a keyword noob. (I’ll admit, I did a little happy dance when I saw that.)

Now I have the benefit of hindsight (and a couple of years’ worth of data) to figure out how I managed to woo the Google gods into giving me favorable rankings.

What I learned surprised me too: Keywords aren’t the backbone of great content marketing strategies.

A lot of what’s considered common knowledge for how to craft content that ranks well is centered on finding the keywords, optimizing for them, and using them meaningfully, instead of on the audience.

This thinking is dated, harkening back to the days when Google took your word for what your website was about.

My answer to the question of what comes first, the research or the ranking, is neither. What comes first is providing value to your audience.

Hear me on this point. I’m not saying that keyword research doesn’t have a place in content marketing. I’m saying that content marketers spend too much time finding the words that they think Google will value and not enough time understanding what their audience values.

At the end of the day, for all its glitz and glamor, Google doesn’t make purchasing decisions. Real humans do.

This means that your content shouldn’t focus on appealing to Google but on appealing to the people who you want to read you’ve written.

Google has also gotten smarter and better at pairing content with search intent, which makes writing to integrate keywords (instead of writing for humans) more difficult. There’s only so many times you can work “how to find the best Star Wars coffee mug” into a 2,000-word article and make it sound natural.

But, by focusing on helping your audience learn about the Star Wars coffee mug market, you’re more likely to capture valuable keywords and give your audience a reason to do business with you.

I learned this while writing for a healthcare consultancy who was trying to rank for a keyword similar to “healthcare content marketing.” I saw our pieces pick up traction in closely related (but not explicitly used keywords) like “content marketing healthcare industry,” “health care digital marketing,” and “content marketing for healthcare companies.”

This information taught me that the best keyword research tools on the market can’t predict with 100% accuracy how people will search for what they need.

Just try asking 10 different people to use Google to find something specific. You’ll get less overlap than you might think, even for something relatively straightforward. That’s because us mere mortals process things differently and search for things differently.

The good news is that since Google is getting more advanced, you don’t have to focus on “gaming” it into ranking your site.

You just have to publish relevant, useful information for your ultimate audience: your prospective customers.