Rand published MOZ’s Whiteboard Friday this morning, much like he always does. But the topic of today almost aligned perfectly with a topic I’ve been working on a lot recently.
The concept is based around SEO and the diminishing importance of keywords, and the equivocal rise of topic correlations.
The question he tries to answer is:
Does targeting topics lead to more search traffic?
As always, Rand is spot on here. He actually saved me from having to write a ton on this topic.
Keywords will never go away. Google needs to use exact match word recognition to even parse your website’s existence for any given query string. However, clustering your keyword strategy into topic-based pillars allows you to better optimize the positioning of your website’s messaging without obsessing over keyword stuffing.
What are your takes on this topic? How are you moving away from keyword tracking to better conform to entity search and the way your brand is perceived by search algorithms?
I’ll continue experimenting with this. Perhaps it will warrant a follow-up post down the road.