to achieve 1,830 rankings with just one article

Our “resignation letters templates” article reached the top of SERPs within months after publication for a client.

This shouldn’t surprise you if you already know how to engineer your success before beginning.

This article’s ranking number one in a single keyword was impressive, but it wasn’t its most important achievement.

was ranked for 1,830 keywords after a little over a year.

It’s not a mistake. It wasn’t an accident.

This article will show you how to do it.

Long vs. short content? You’re asking the incorrect question

“It depends.”

Everyone is searching for a new trick or hack. The silver bullet is a way to print money without having to do anything.

Unfortunately, the answer is “it depends”.

• Do you want to write a lengthy, detailed article, or a concise, snappy article? It depends.
• Should you create content in large quantities or prune your website to reduce the noise? It depends.
• Do you want to use one keyword per article, or several? Once again, it depends.

It is not a one-size fits all approach. LinkedIn experts do not guarantee success.

Here’s a quick example:

You’d typically want to write one article on a single topic.

Add in your semantic themes and blend them together with similar-yet-complementary, laser-focused content.

Create a dense network of content by tying it all together with internal links.

Let topical authority + a few high quality backlinks take care of themselves.

Butthis may not always be true.

Imagine you’re doing your keyword research. As you do. You see this:

• There are many keywords that have similar meanings.
• Volume at the lower (to long tail) end of the spectrum.
• You can also set lower keyword difficulty goals.

The next step doesn’t send all of these to your favourite cheap writer. Or, God forbid, chatGPT.

You won’t be helped by the wrong or bad content.

It’s better to get your hands dirty and conduct some basic research.

Compare parent + child keywords first (and compare ‘volume’ with ‘potential’ volume)

The SEO tools that generate raw data aren’t very helpful, mainly because they’re garbage.

Let me explain.

Volume numbers are completely inaccurate. You’ll get different results if you use three different tools to calculate volume.

What other will these three answers have in common? These numbers are completely off from what you would see in real life, such as click-through rates or volume.

keyword difficulty is one example of a tool that heavily favors the number of referring pages, rather than the quality or strength of those domains, and even the domain rating across the top 10.

It is important to look at the relationships between the numbers, rather than the actual numbers.

Look at this “construction project” example. Search for it in Ahrefs and then drill down to the “child” keywords sorted under the primary “parent”.

You’ll now see a list with keywords that are closely related. This could be a great starting point for creating a new cluster of articles.

You could also write a very long and detailed article.

How can you tell?

Here’s the big clue.

Compare the ratio or difference between Traffic Potential and Volume . If you want to appeal to international clients, you can compare Global Volume.

This ratio of 4 to 1 tells me you have many keywords with similar content.

The same article, which is probably much longer and more in-depth, will be used for a variety of long-tail variations on the theme.

You don’t have to create any unique content in order to rank.

That’s exactly what has happened.

The article was ranked first for a number of keywords that were similar. This is a 4x or more increase in traffic compared to what if any keyword tool had originally said.

You don’t need to rely solely on your hunches, or even decades of experience, to confirm this.

When you see these clues, it’s only necessary to do some extra legwork.

Compare the content ranking on each SERP unique to see if there are any ‘overlaps.’

SEO isn’t that difficult at all.

There are some complex elements that need to be considered. It’s not all black or a mystery.

Heck. Google will show you what works and what doesn’t. Hiding in plain sight.

This means that whenever you are unsure about what Google is trying to show, or what the people searching for a keyword want to know, simply…

Google it!

Don’t worry about it too much.

Look at the content that is already ranking for the keyword you’ve chosen, such as “steps of building.”

• What are they all like?
• What do they all do well?
• What are the gaps that you believe you can exploit?
• How much of the same content appears for similar keywords?

It is easiest to compare the two side-by-side. Take your “steps in construction” SERP…

Compare it to the top 10 ranking articles for “process construction” as well.

What do you see?

Most keyword research tools will tell you that the articles are separate, but they are not.

Google thinks they are and not.

This is the only thing you need to consider when it comes SEO.

The conclusion of the article is:

You shouldn’t miss the forest for the trees.

When viewed in isolation, SEO metrics or “best practice” tactics are at best limited or at worst completely misleading.

Ahrefs volume metric is irrelevant. The same as Moz or Semrush or [insert hipster tool].

They don’t. They don’t.

It’s important to interpret data and look for patterns or relationships in SERPs so you can understand what is happening below the surface.

You may want to write shorter, more frequent articles. Sometimes you may want to do exactly the opposite.

The saying goes that everything looks like an ax to a man wielding a hammer.

The first article Search Engine Land to appear was How you can achieve 1,830 rankings positions by using only one article .