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Imagine you are at a karaoke party and a dozen of people are singing at the same time. Must be annoying, right? What about a hundred? A thousand? Or a million! You wouldn't be able to hear your own voice! And this is the internet in a nutshell.

In order for you to make your voice heard, you need to be bold and relevant. Why? As a result of all those creators, there’s a lot of content floating around. All of which needs to be processed. However, the algorithm which does that, is nitpicky. It prefers what is relevant to the masses, which is your ticket to shine!

Standing out and being constantly relevant is not easy. You have to be aware of the trends and behaviors of your target audience all the time, that come and go in a blink of an eye. However, there are tools that can aid you on your journey of content creation. These tools will help you see what’s on the mind of people, which is how you can optimize the search engine.

We chose these three tools for you on the basis that they are simple, and will give the insights you need to make your content echo throughout the internet for FREE!

1/ QuestionDB

QuestionDB

QuestionDB is an online database that lets you know what people search for. You type the keywords in the search bar and it will show you the results in terms of keywords and questions.

How can you reap its benefits?

Let’s assume you know how to make healthy sandwiches. You want to share your recipes with the world by making a blog. However, you are not quite sure what type of healthy sandwiches your audience is into.

All you have to do is enter the keywords: “healthy sandwiches” for an example, and it will show you what's on the mind of your audience:

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Now, you should have an idea of the type of content your audience craves. By including these keywords in the title of your topic, the Title tag and Meta description of your website, whenever someone looks up “Ultra Healthy Sandwiches”, your blog should top the search results!

2/ Tubebuddy

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Lo and behold, the ultimate SEO tool for your YouTube journey!

Verified by YouTube itself, TubeBuddy will help generate a good looking thumbnail, bulk process all your videos instantly (update the descriptions, thumbnails, for thousands of your videos),  check the type of your videos (if they are categorized as “made for kids”), and the list goes on!

Most importantly, it will help you assess the strength of your keywords in detail:

Source: TubeBuddy YouTube extension for Microsoft Edge

As for how to use TubeBuddy, going back to our previous example, let’s assume you have amassed lots of traffic on your website. However, You are too ambitious to only rely on one platform for promoting your brand. You decide to direct your website's traffic to your channel on YouTube, but you are not sure how to optimize it.

Unlike Google, YouTube’s algorithm is slightly different. You need to include keywords in the description, the title, and tags of each video.

As shown in the image above, if you want to make a video about your blog’s topic titled “Ultra Healthy Sandwiches'' you will have a decent potential to thrive. The topic is unique, isn’t talked about enough by others, and can be optimized.

Keep in mind that you can look up other keywords to get the algorithm to notice you better (for your description and tags).

3/ SEMrush

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Trusted by Apple, Tesla, IBM and even more, SEMrush can be considered the Swiss Army knife of SEO tools!

In addition to keyword search, SEMrush allows you to improve link building, run an SEO analysis on your website itself, establish and build your brand by doing a topic research and more!

Now, the reason why we chose this tool is because it allows you to analyze your competitors when it comes to different areas such as the keyword gap feature, which shows you what keywords they are using.

Let’s assume you have already established your presence on YouTube and you top the search results. The next logical step for you is analyzing your competitors.

For example, you want to run a keyword gap analysis on Subway (Malaysia & Singapore) to get better ideas for content:

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You are supposed to insert your company’s domain in the first box and compare it to another organization but we will be comparing Subway’s branches to get ideas for this example.

As you can see from the image above, your competitors utilized unique keywords which have search volume in the thousands!

By analyzing your competitors’ strategies using this tool, you can find effective ways to improve your business but most importantly, it will contribute to your relevance, without having to break the budget!

Key Takeaways

And there you go. With these free tools, you will be able to optimize your content effectively without spending a dime!

However, it all goes back to your continuous effort and how hard you are willing to work. Searching for new ideas is not easy, you have to be creative so that you can stand out, come up with content constantly and know how to stay relevant to the market. With keeping in mind all these factors, you will be able to accomplish your goals and reach out to your audience and beyond!

If you need any assistance in content marketing, feel free to reach us at info@xaviermah.my.