In order to win in competitive markets like finance, you need to understand the market, your audience, and the opportunities. You can only do this from an orbital view of keywords, language and behaviour - and to then zoom in to specific niches and areas of focus. Stop thinking about 'keywords', and start thinking about keyword 'families' - groups of contextually related phrases which indicate similar need groups; from synonym phrases through to simple typos, there's a world of insight you're missing out on.

1. Getting Around Finance
Jono Alderson
Head of Insight @ Linkdex
@jonoalderson

3. I believe...
It’s doable.
Winnable, even.

4. ...but that you have to...
Pick your fights

5. ...and
Set yourself up for success

7. “There's virtually no such thing as an industry or niche
where thought leadership, interesting/share-worthy
content and great inbound marketing can't work”

8. “They said elevator installation couldn't have anything
good, then Grant launched their great news section
including awesome infographics”

9. “In five minutes, you can have a WordPress installation
running in a subfolder of your site.”

10. “If you can't get executive approval; create your own
blog/site, show them the success you're having”

13. Same old story

14. Content Marketing

15. TOO MUCH RESOURCE

16. Social Engagement Strategy

17. TOO RISKY

18. Changes to the website

19. TOO COMPLICATED

20. Isolated Campaigns

21. TOO LIBERAL

22. Thought Leadership

23. TOO RADICAL

24. How about we start simple?

25. Writing some articles, or
some ‘basic’ content

26. OK!*
*(as long as it costs next to nothing)

28. 150 words
0 links
0 likes
CPC £40+

29. 22 likes
1 comment
0 links
ROI ???

30. “WHERE ARE MY
CONVERSIONS!?”

31. Competitive Mediocrity
When decisions are informed by
“What are my competitors doing?”

32. Or people just cheat.
It’s not a level playing field

33. #2 for ‘car insurance reviews’ ...but isn’t this the category page, at #3?
Independent and trusted, or
manipulated and biased?

34. This is demoralising.
*sigh*

35. But it means that
there’s money left
on the table.

36. Let’s look at Car Insurance

37. Saturated.

38. Terrifying
numbers!

39. ...or maybe not?

40. “Young Drivers Insurance”

41. 6.6k monthly searches

42. But what about all of the...
[variants, plurals, stems, synonyms, metonyms, typos]

43. This is not enough, and not
your world.
Keyword research is too limited

44. What if you could see
your whole market?
...but focus in on an area
with a microscope...

45. “Young Drivers Insurance”

46. Oh. Look.
266
“young drivers insurance” keywords...

47. 6.6k
65k monthly searches

48. £318k media value

49. ...and the site in #2

50. 13% of market

51. 8k visits per month

52. £41k media value

53. Hanging off a page with 121 words

54. ...which has no links

55. ...and no shares

56. !!!

58. One off?

59. “one day car insurance”
12k

60. But also...

61. “1 day car insurance”
6.6k

62. “day car insurance”
2.4k

63. “car insurance for a day”
1.9k

64. “daily car insurance”
1.6k

65. etc.

66. 71k monthly searches
...and the biggest brands have
<10% market share

67. !!!

68. Stop thinking about
keywords

70. This is about need groups
(and how they overlap)

71. Finding keyword families

72. Do epic keyword research
...and tag the hell out of it.

73. Brand / non-
brand
Short / long-tail

74. by niche

75. by modifier

76. by language

77. by location

78. by context

79. by persona

80. by language

81. by behaviour

82. E.g.
Keywords with significant search volume
where the user is asking a question
about a service we provide, indicates a
propensity to buy, and where we don’t
have a targeted page

83. There are TONS.

84. But nobody searches for
“buy young driver mini car insurance”
Stop thinking of this as a single keyword

85. How many terms define
an industry?

86. This lets you change the
way you think about
performance

87. It’s not about where you rank
it’s about where you’re mentioned ranks

88. This is much more powerful than “top 10
rankings” for individual keywords

89. Run campaigns, engage
with content producers,
make stuff better at a
BRAND level

90. Doing this manually, at
scale, is a lot of hard work.
Complex rules and logic

91. So here’s a treat.

92. Coming soon!
Talk to me in the
meantime.

93. We’re using this in Linkdex

94. E.g.
Find authors who are authoritative on a
specific combination of topics, who don’t
link to me, who focus on a specific niche
or stage of the buying cycle.

96. So.

97. Start thinking about
keyword families

98. Tag the hell out of
everything, in every
conceivable direction

99. Go broad, then focus in
to discover opportunity

100. Look beyond your own
domain(s)

101. Remember that this is
about connecting people
and brands

102. Thanks!