Stop Thinking Keywords, Think Topics

Things are always changing and evolving.  Nothing is exempt from this fact of life.  Not even Google’s search engine.  As you already know, there is a multitude of different updates, big and small, coming out for the search engine on a regular basis.  You’ve got your small changes here and there, that Google probably doesn’t make to big a deal out of, and there’s the big ones like Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird.

It’s the same thing with keywords.  With Google pushing not provided on us, you know that it could be anytime now where keywords won’t be nearly as relevant anymore.  But you know what will probably take their place?  Queries.  individual keywords will be taking a backseat to full search queries (or topics if it sounds easier to say it that way).

Kate Morris has been thinking about the future of online marketing, as explained in her article, Stop Thinking Keywords, Think Topics.  It hit her one day as she was explaining Keyword Planner to some new hires.  When searching, we need to start thinking broader than keywords alone.  We have to start focusing on what the user is looking for, rather than how he or she is phrasing it.

Kate has written her article to  help explain this thought process of focusing on queries instead of keywords.  To read it, you can follow the link below:
http://moz.com/blog/stop-thinking-keywords-think-topics