If we tried to compress all SEO tricks in a single article, we would be lost. Search engine optimization is a complex process, which involves practices that haven’t been proven to work. Lately, we’ve been seeing the concept of “hidden” keywords a lot. It looks promising.
To be clear, let’s explain what hidden keywords are.
Coffeecup.com defines hidden keywords as “text that cannot be seen by regular visitors but that can be seen by robots and spiders.” Further on, they recommend marketers to stay away from the use of hidden keywords, saying that the search engine bots recognize them as spam.
However, there’s another form of “hidden” keywords, and we’ll be talking about it today. These are the keywords that aren’t suggested by any tool. The search engine doesn’t see them as commonly used search phrases. However, they are unique to your brand, and they get you a great website ranking, no questions asked. Those are the type of keywords that you need in your SEO campaign.
Let’s see how they can help you boost your brand’s Google search ranking.
The First Step: Measure Your Rankings
Before you can tell how keywords affect your rankings, you must measure your position at this point. As any other marketer and website owner, you probably use the Google Search Console to get data about your site’s performance.
When you go through those reports, you’ll get these insights:
- What keywords and landing pages don’t give you the results you want?
- Where can you make instant changes that you can track?
- What pages bring you the most traffic and what keywords have you used there?
Once you get all these insights, keep them. When you start introducing hidden keywords in your content, you’ll measure the same parameters again. By comparing the two reports, you’ll see if the new strategies give you any results.
5 Keyword Types You Need for a Successful SEO Strategy
These types of keywords are proven to lead to SEO best practices:
- Branded Hidden Keywords
These are the keywords that are hidden from the Google Keyword Planner and similar tools. Your competitors will not target these same keywords, simply because they are useful only for your project.
Here are a few suggestions:
- You can create your own hidden keywords simply by adding your brand name to the popular keywords that are being targeted in competitor SEO practices. For example, let’s say “cosmetics layering” is a commonly targeted keyword for your industry. We’ll imagine that your brand is called Indira. By including “Indira cosmetics layering” in your text, you’re targeting a phrase that’s hidden from your competitors. But your target audience may be using it, and they will definitely land at your site when they do that.
- When you use the SEO software, focus on the most successful landing pages. Are there any words or phrases that you can extract from them? Go through the comments – what are the questions that your visitors asked?
- Each brand has user-generated keywords. You can notice these if you carefully look at the comments, frequently asked questions, and discussions regarding your brand. These are the keywords that your competitors miss out on.
How can you use these hidden keywords in your content? Just as you use any other phrase that you’re targeting.
- Niche-Related Hidden Keywords
When you explore an industry that’s related to your niche, you can combine its keywords with yours. That’s how you’ll come up with your own phrases that no one else is targeting at the moment.
For example, let’s say you’re writing content for cosmetics. You and your direct competitors are focused on makeup- and skincare-related keywords. What if you explored another industry, such as dentistry? You can come up with a unique phrase, such as how to do makeup after teeth whitening.
- Interview-Related Hidden Keywords
How cool would it be for a makeup blog to do an interview with Julia Roberts and use the keyword “Julia Roberts makeup routine” in the SEO title?
This strategy works for any niche. You just need to find an influencer and arrange an interview. Then, you’ll strategically blend their name into the keywords you want to target.
Since you cannot over-edit their answers, you’ll include these keywords in the questions or explanations.
- Unique Niche Keywords
This is the hardest category of hidden keywords. Your competitors have written so much content so far that it’s hard to reinvent the wheel at this point.
But if you’re a true expert, you can think of phrases that most competitors don’t use. You can give your own terms to different phenomena, so your audience will learn to recognize them.
This is what Tim Urban does through his blog. He explores existing concepts, but he adds his own twist to them. You’ll see keywords such as political Disney world, Gen Y yuppies, and horizontal history. Then he develops a series of posts around those keywords. People start recognizing them, and they search for them on Google.
- Long-Tail Keywords
Your competitors may see these suggestions in the tool they use. However, they are not likely to target them too often. That’s because long-tail keywords are hard to fit in a simple sentence. They usually represent complete questions, which people type in the search engine.
You can use these long phrases as subheadings. You can target them in your Q&A section. Don’t miss the opportunity to benefit from phrases that your competitors rarely consider!
Create Attention-Grabbing Titles
When someone uses a rare keyword that you’re targeting, you want them to see it right away. That’s why it’s important to use it in the title. This may be impossible to do with long-tail keywords, but all other types of hidden keywords are perfect for creating unique titles.
As for the long-tail phrases, you can save them for the subheadings.
Use Them in Content for Featured Snippets
Getting your content as a suggestion in a featured snippet will drive tons of traffic your way.
How do you get there?
- Set specific questions as your topics. Answer them directly!
- Use lists, which guide the reader through actionable steps
- Create a table that would answer a question
- Define complex terms
Don’t forget to use the hidden keywords!
Let’s Wrap It Up
We’ve been trying all kinds of SEO techniques so far. There’s one thing they all have in common: we are always striving for uniqueness. Hidden keywords help us meet the ultimate goal.