Hi, hi, hi Reader,
Okay, tell me if you can relate to this...
You sit down, about to plan some blog post ideas.
You're like *actually* kinda excited about it???? (You think: "Is Mariah's excitement about SEO FINALLY becoming contagious?!?!?!")
You have a list of topics you KNOW your audience needs to hear.
They're things people ask you about all the time, things you could talk about for YEARS, things that feel legit hepful and aligned with what you do.
And then you open your SEO keyword tool of choice...
*cracks knuckles*
Let's get this search volume dataaaaa ππππ
But a big fat goose egg comes up.
The search volume is...zero.
And the closest keyword to that one is sooooo broad that it doesn't even really fit what you wanted to say.
And everything that does have any sort of search volume feels generic as hell and like every other person + their mom in your industry has already written about it 47 times.
So you close out of the keyword research tool.
Feeling deflated.
And the blog posts never get written.
IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS.
Not every blog post you write is supposed to bring in cold traffic from Google or AI tools.
YES, of course, some blog posts exist specifically to get found by brand new people who don't know you yet.
The people typing a question into Google or ChatGPT and landing on your website for the very FIRST time.
Those kinda blog posts are your discovery posts.
They're the ones where keyword research matters most bc you wanna show up for the people already out there searching.
But some blog posts are for the people who already found you.
The humans already on your email list, already following you, already warming up to the idea of working with you. These posts deepen the relationship. They answer the question that keeps coming up in your DMs. They make someone go "okay, YASSSSSSSS SHE GETS ME"
These are your nurture posts.
And nurture posts do NOT need a high search volume keyword to be worth writing.
Your blog post strategy should contain DISCOVERY + NURTURE type content.
So, enough with the sad girl tears about the ZERO in the search volume column.
If you're excited about the post, and you KNOW it'll be helpful...
WRITE THE DAMN BLOG POST ANYWAY.
Bonus reasons why you should write the blog post regardless:
- Zero search volume doesn't usually mean LITERALLY zero searches for it.
- The tools lowball the numbers allllll the time, and they're a guesstimate, not the absolute.
- Your post might STILL show up for different keywords you're not thinking of. We can't think of EVERYTHING all the time, ya know? (this happens to me all the time TBH).
- The content on your website is the training manual for Google & AI tools about your business
- Even if the post doesn't *connect* to a keyword, it's still supporting your topical authority
Wanna learn more about approaching your blog strategy from an "Audience-First" perspective?
My friend Natty of Natty Writes; blog writer and strategist for creative business owners, (and a proud Search Club member) just published a guest post on my site that breaks ALL of this down even more.
It's hands down the best guest post I've ever received for my website.
SO IN DEPTH, just how I like it π
She covers the 3 types of blog content every strategy needs (discovery and nurture are 2 of them, read the full blog post to get the tea on the 3rd one!), plus how to reverse-engineer SEO for the topics you're already excited to write about.
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Action step for this week:
First things first; go read Natty's full guest post. It's the perfect companion to everythannnnng in this newsletter and it'll give you even more clarity on how to approach your blog strategy.
Then, do this:
Step 1: Write down 3 blog post topics you've been twiddling your thumbs about bc the keyword tool said zero.
Step 2: For each one, ask yourself: "is this a discovery post or a nurture post? Is this something a cold audience would Google, or is this for the people already in your world?"
If it's discovery = pop back into your keyword tool and look for the closest searchable version. Consider synonms, or different angles for the post. And if the search volume is zero, hit it anyways (if it's a good fit!)
If it's nurture = write the damn blog post anyways. No keyword required.
BONUS ACTION STEP:
Wanna go even deeper on getting your content found????
Ya know on Google, in ChatGPT, in AI Overviews, Claude, and everything in between...
That's exactly what we're covering at my SEO & AI Search Visibility Workshop on June 10th.
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