When developing a strategy for an SEO campaign, we are often too fixated on optimizing keywords with high volume or number of searches. In fact, this approach is not necessarily effective because it could be that the keywords your friends are targeting are too competitive so that the possibility of getting a high search ranking becomes very small.
Instead of wasting your SEO budget on optimizing keywords with a very high level of competition, you can shift your focus to low-hanging fruit keywords which might bring more satisfying results to your SEO campaign.
In this article, we will provide an explanation of what the low-hanging fruit keywords strategy is and how to implement it in your SEO campaign.
What is the Low Hanging Fruit of SEO?
Low hanging fruit SEO is a website optimization strategy that uses opportunities to use certain keywords. Literally, low hanging fruit means fruit that is easy to pick with little effort. So you could say, low hanging fruit SEO is a way to get high rankings without spending a lot of optimization effort.
Usually, an SEO strategy using the low hanging fruit technique targets certain keywords that do not have high search volume and competition. This creates a golden opportunity for a website to gain a strategic position in SERP which can increase its visibility.
By appearing more often on the first search results page, the website can be recognized by users and get organic traffic effectively.
What is the Low Hanging Fruit Strategy?
Low-hanging fruit, which can be interpreted as "the lowest fruit on the tree, so it's easy to pick", is an approach in the business world that focuses on the easiest efforts that can bring the fastest results. So if pulled into the context of SEO, the low-hanging fruit strategy can be interpreted as the easiest optimization strategy that can bring the fastest results.
Of the many strategies, one of the simplest that friends can do is optimize keywords that are already at the bottom of page one, or page two of Google searches. Keywords like this usually have a higher potential to be able to increase their ranking again, assuming that:
This keyword has a relatively lower level of competition because few competitors have relevant content for that keyword. Google already considers your web content worthy of being displayed on its search results page.
Several activities included in this SEO low hanging fruit strategy can help you as an SEO practitioner to improve website performance. The following are low hanging fruit SEO methods that you can practice:
1. Determine Low Hanging Fruit Keywords
Before getting into the technical aspects of website optimization, you need to determine keywords that can be used to support page performance.
The keywords searched here are not arbitrary. In order to increase website visibility in SERP, the use of low hanging fruit keywords needs to be prioritized.
As mentioned previously, keyword research here needs to pay attention to several things such as search volume and keyword difficulty. To check each metric of a page, you can use Google Search Console which provides details about total clicks, impressions, and position based on organic traffic on the Performance tab.
2. Pay attention to Search Intent
Apart from paying attention to the metrics mentioned above, you also need to see whether the keywords used match the user's search intent. The search intent referred to here is the user's desire based on the search query entered.
Therefore, the keywords used must answer the user's needs so that they do not deviate too far from the information they expect to read.
3. Integrate keywords in content
After getting keywords that have the potential to bring in organic traffic, you can enter the optimization stage on certain website pages.
The first thing you need to do is filter out pages that get low traffic. Then, look for gaps to insert keywords with a focus on content optimization.
For optimal results, also include keywords in the title tag and meta description if possible. Make sure that keywords read naturally in the content so as not to reduce the readability of the page.
4. Implement Internal Linking
Implementing low hanging fruit SEO will be more optimal if you carry out internal linking to strengthen website pages. For this reason, use LSI keywords as a way to provide links to pages whose ranking you want to increase in SERP.
LSI keywords can be found on the search results page. Usually you can find it in “related searches” and “people also ask”.
What is the Low-hanging Fruit Category?
Therefore, shifting focus to optimizing low–hanging fruit keywords can be an alternative strategy that friends can use to get more satisfying campaign results.
Apart from ranking position, there are several other criteria that you need to pay attention to in determining low-hanging fruit keywords, namely:
- Web page content that appears in the SERP is relevant to the search keywords.
- Keywords have a relatively high number of impressions.
- Web pages that appear in the SERP still allow optimization for these keywords.
How do you Find Low Hanging Fruit Keywords?
To start implementing this strategy, of course you need to first identify low-hanging fruit keywords that need to be optimized. You can easily do this via Google Search Console.
On your Google Search Console account, friends can enter the 'Search Result' dashboard which shows historical data from impressions (number of impressions), clicks (number of clicks), average posts (average position), and average CTR (average – average CTR) from friends' web pages on Google.
On the 'Queries' tab, try to find keywords with an average position of 6-15 (located at the bottom of the first page, or the second page) but have a fairly high number of impressions. To facilitate the search process, friends can sort the table based on the number of impressions.
Your friends can collect keywords that have been selected in a spreadsheet with columns for keywords, number of impressions, ranking, and page URLs, for later optimization.
When choosing keywords to optimize, don't forget to also check what web pages appear for those keywords on Google's SERP. Make sure the web page is relevant to the search keywords and still allows for optimization.
For example, friends found that your e-commerce website ranked 11th on the informational keyword 'what is robusta coffee' with a fairly high total impressions. However, it turns out that the web page that appears on the SERP for that keyword is a product page that sells Robusta coffee.
In this case, even though 'what is robusta coffee' has a high number of impressions, friends are not advised to optimize keywords with this technique because the web pages that appear on the SERP are not relevant to the keyword search intent.
A more appropriate approach in cases like this is usually to create new content to accommodate the related keyword's search intent.
Optimization Tips Using Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords
When you have finished collecting low-hanging fruit keywords, you can start optimizing these keywords on your web page. Friends, you can start optimization by making changes or adjustments to the main on-page elements below.
1. Page titles & heading tags
If possible, friends can optimize the page title of the web page with the keywords that have been obtained. However, make sure adding keywords to the page title doesn't seem spammy. For example, currently friends have article content with the title 'Symptoms of Dengue Fever to Watch Out for' which ranks 8th on the keyword 'characteristics of dengue fever'.
So, friends, you can consider changing the title of your article to 'Characteristics of Dengue Fever to Watch Out for' with the hope that friends will get a higher ranking on the keyword 'characteristics of dengue fever'.
2. Content
Don't forget to also add content in the form of explanations or additional information related to your keywords. In adding or customizing content, try to study the content on web pages that rank top for the keywords you want to optimize.
Find out what other information can be offered in your friends' content to bring more value and be different from competitors' content. If there is any personal experience or case study, it is highly recommended to add it there. Remember E-E-A-T, where the E is Experience?
3. Internal links
Finally, friends can add internal links from other pages to that page. Also make sure that other pages have content that is relevant to the page you are optimizing.
How do you Implement a Keyword Strategy?
All keyword research projects and strategies for effective SEO should combine the three important types of keywords in SEO techniques. How to implement this can be by inserting relevant keywords into the content structure of the website, in the content or articles created, and so on, with the aim of helping to increase the ranking in the SERP or Google page rank.
So, how can you find the most appropriate keywords to target? You need to do keyword research!
There are many ways to do keyword research, but you don't need to learn them all at the same time. The most important thing is to do it consistently and never give up when the research results are not satisfactory.
There are quite a lot of free tools for keyword research. You can also use UberSuggest or Keyword Planner to search for keywords you want to target. You can even use the related search feature to find keywords that are suitable and widely used by internet users.
The location of the related search features is usually below the search results, in the form of long tail keywords, and it could be said that these are quality keywords, considering that the search results that appear are direct recommendations from Google. Another way, use people also ask.
Keyword research does require tenacity, perseverance, and time that cannot be determined when results will be achieved as expected. Even so, there are several important steps that need to be taken when carrying out keyword research for SEO, including:
- Create a list of potential keywords using keyword research tools, combined with related searches on Google.
- Use many keyword research tools to find keywords that you might not know about.
- Pay attention to what keywords are being targeted by competitors or marketers using analysis tools. This will be very helpful.
- Determine what keywords are likely to rank high and that you can apply to your website. Then balance short tail keywords that are very competitive with long tail keywords that are more focused and have low competitiveness.
- Categorize each search. After that compare. For example, searches about “buy mini electric oven” and “best electric oven for making cakes”. Between the two, you have to define the difference in the content you create.
- Try choosing words or sentences that come from the list of keywords you have. Then create content that can answer all the questions asked by internet users regarding this term.
Closing
Thus a brief discussion of the low–hanging-fruit keywords strategy for SEO and how to implement it. Some of the tips above are just simple steps that friends can take to start optimizing the low-hanging fruit keywords.
Beyond that, friends can also do other optimizations such as adding visual assets such as images, infographics, videos, or also doing off page SEO. Have other optimization ideas or experience implementing this low–hanging fruit technique? Share in the comments column, OK!