Now that I’ve got some content on the website, it’s time to start optimising it. The first thing I’m doing is adding metadata to the pages and posts. I’ll write up the results in 7-day periods. I’m trying to avoid shortcuts where possible.* I know a lot of this can be done elsewhere, with AI and whatever else, but this is a from-scratch project, and I’ll cover that later.
Keyword Research: The Old School Way
The next page on the list was the CAC calculator: I am aware I am building links as we go, but that’s the point. That’s not lost on me. Using a SERP from a generic search “CAC Calculator,” I’ve now got all the page titles and descriptions, and the people also asked snippets. The AI Overview hasn’t come into play yet, presumably because it cannot provide much more value than the Omni Calculator result. Now it’s time to get a pen and paper out.
I can already see here that there are review snippets, and people also asked snippets, so we are going to need a half-decently optimised page to get on page 1. On-page tagging may not be enough here. We may have to bring in some big guns later. In the top ten search results, all 10 mention CAC & Calculator. That makes sense. But looking at my tally chart 60% of them use the phrase “Customer acquisition cost.” It looks like I’ve found my base keywords.
I’ll get by with a little help from my friends
Google Trends
Trends is a free Google tool. You can see search volume over time. Here we have the CAC calculator phrase; it’s pretty much nonexistent. In search engine tools could mean low competition.
When switched to a topic, however, we can now see there is higher demand for the second keyword. People just are not looking for a calculator. But that doesn’t bother me, I know it’s niche, and that means low competition.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a tool in their ad platform that gives an indicator of monthly search volume and difficulty. It’s a bit like SEM RUSH in that respect, but in nothing else.
As predicted in my own research, CAC, with its low search volume and low competition (niche), and the secondary keyword customer acquisition cost is low competition but higher search volume, validates what I was saying. I can now move forward with confidence in my keywords after that piece of research. This is the outcome below.
Now I’ll complete the rest of the pages in the same way, and report back with my findings. Moving forward, there will be weekly changes to see how it grows.