How to Pick Keywords That Match Your Vision—Not Your Competition
"Instead of focusing on competitors' keywords, there’s something else you need to do before you touch keywords."
Copying your competitors' keywords may seem like a smart shortcut, a wise first step—but it's not.
This comes up a lot in my DMs & on discovery calls. And every time, it leads to the same problem: keywords that don't actually reflect YOUR vision, YOUR offers, or YOUR clients.
Today I'm breaking down why competitor-based keyword research keeps you stuck & what to do instead so you can build a better bat signal and finally get found online by aligned clients!
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
Why competitor-based keyword research is keeping you stuck
What your North Star is & why it comes before any keyword research
The 3 questions that anchor your entire SEO strategy
The ripple effect SEO has on your entire business
Why keyword research based on your vision is so effective
A 10-minute exercise to help you get clear on your vision
Set a timer for 10 minutes & write out: who you want to help & how you want to help them.
That starting point is way more effective than any competitor research you could do.
Still not sure where to start? Just ask!
I basically live in my Instagram DMs & am always happy to help you find the right fit!
→ DM me "SEO SNEAK PEEK" to get a free SEO audit
Mentioned Resources:
→ Join the next SEO Sprint (next live round starts Aug 10th)
→ Book an async SEO Sprint (with BONUS SEO Day)
→ Keysearch (20% off w/ code KSDISC)
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Hello and welcome to the Basic Bee Podcast. I'm your host and favorite SEO coach, Brittany Herzberg. Let's see what has been going on recently. Oh, I wrapped up the most recent SEO Sprint. I have had students graduate from SEO and Grow and move into Maintain. And we had our SEO report call this month already. So there's been some fun stuff happening and, and in case you don't know, and if you're new here, welcome. Hi. The way my programs work is you start off in this two week SEO Sprint where we lock in your website SEO. We have just a laser focus on that. Then you have the option to move into SEO and Grow, which is a three month group coaching program where we start looking at things we can optimize as far as your content goes. So like blogs, podcasts, even YouTube channel videos and your off site things like your social media profiles, directory listings, any kind of materials that you have for like podcast guesting, you name it, that's what we're looking at after those three months. Then you can move into Maintain, which is a monthly membership. And that's where we really start tracking your metrics, taking a look at what's going on there, using that information to then make aligned marketing moves for that month for you. So it's been really fun. One thing that keeps coming up, no matter if it's in the SEO sprint or even with done for you client work, there's this belief story that it's a good idea to just go look at your competitors and use keywords that they're using. And that's actually not a great idea. So I wanted to talk with you about that today because even just this, this week, in the last couple weeks, I've been having this conversation and also I see stuff on threads all the time. So I was like, we just need to talk about that and we're here and we're gonna be talking about it. So we're gonna look at how you can pick keywords that actually match your vision, not your competition. I know. I could just like leave the entire episode right there. Okay. The reason competitor based SEO is keeping you stuck is because, shocker, your competitors are not you. Even if you vibe, it's highly unlikely that you share the exact same vision, the exact same life or lifestyle. And as more and more entrepreneurs are looking at building their businesses really and intentionally around their life instead of the opposite way, things are just different for all of us. And even take SEO, right? I know of SEO pros who focus on working with photographers. There's other SEO pros who I vibe with who focus on E commerce businesses, some who want to talk about advanced SEO. There are some who only want to offer done for you SEO, others who want to just do white label SEO, and others who want to focus exclusively on website SEO or exclusively on blog SEO. And still others who want to focus on social media SEO or AEO or GEO or bi N G O. All this stuff, right? None of that is me. Some of it overlaps, but it's not an identical vision and, and it's definitely not an identical delivery process or approach to the subject. The same can be said for you. And it would be a really bad idea for me to go and see what so and so is calling themselves or what keywords they're trying to show up for and then just adopt those as mine, you know, sight unseen almost. This is such a weird thing that's coming to mind, but I'm going to share it because maybe it'll help somebody. It's kind of like getting a foreclosure kind of house, but where you don't see any of the stuff, you don't get the backstory, the history, any of it. You're just like, yeah, this seems good. And you don't check out the details. That's not a good idea. Sometimes that ends up being fine. The vast majority of times it ends up not being so fine. There was even just recently a house in Connecticut where there were bones, shall we say, that were found in a house that was foreclosed on. So like, you never know what kind of creepy surprises you're going to get. Let's bring this back to SEO. This is why it's not a good idea just to go and use some tools or creep on your competitors websites and be like, yep, that's what I'm going to call myself. Yep, that's what I'm trying to rank for. Is it really though? Instead of just snagging their keywords, you're not really stealing anything. It's just more or less gathering inspiration from another website. But instead of doing something like that, what I want you to do is get really clear on your vision. I want you to get really clear on who you help, how you help them, and why you're the best at doing exactly what you do, what's your process? What are things that you really enjoy doing? What do clients already come to you for? So in my world, I call this your North Star. It's the thing that you need to get clear on before you touch keywords, and it's something you do instead of focusing on competitors. Keywords. I can't tell you the amount of times people come into my DMs or email me or even like hop on a first coaching call with me, and they're like, oh, I know that there's a lot of people trying to rank for such and such. Keep doing. Do you really, do you really know that There's a lot of people trying to rank for that keyword? And they come in almost with this, like, the market's too saturated, therefore there's no space for me attitude. And that's just not a good thing to have in general. But it's certainly not a good thing to keep in mind as you're incorporating and like, starting to take steps with SEO. There's so much already stacked against us as business owners when we go to learn something like SEO, we don't need to throw any more obstacles in our way. We have plenty of those. So by focusing on your own vision, your own North Star, it's also really opening your eyes to the possibilities and not to the obstacles, which I think is really, really important, especially as business owners, because we often feel like places and fields are saturated and why would we even want to give it a try? So your North Star, once again, who do you help? How do you help them? Why you. Those first two, especially the who and the how, which basically gets at your clients, your ideal client and your offer suite, those two are really going to be showing up in keywords and really going to be showing up in your website copy and eventually in blog posts and things like that. Those are really important. The third one, I mention this all the time, but the third one can trip people up a little bit. That why you. That may be more of an essence, or more of like a brand voice type of thing, or more of a way that you're speaking about stuff in your messaging, in your content. So if you are struggling with that one, at least really home in on those first two. Your ideal client and your offer suite. And if you've been in a season where you're like, I don't know, I'm feeling a little fuzzy on this stuff. SEO really gets you to focus on this and to see why it's so important and to almost like gently but firmly nudge you toward making a decision. And that is something that a lot of people, especially in the sprint, even in SEO and grow done for you clients. Anyone that I talk to in the DMs, they're like, oh, they really realize that it forces with love them to get really clear on this stuff. And SEO does have that giant ripple effect because of that. It gets you so clear on what it is that you want to do. The bat signal you want to build. And it really does make you question, oh, okay, I want to do this and then own it. So that is what really coming up with your North Star does. And then by doing keyword research based on those answers that you have for your North Star, it just like locks it in. And it's really a way that you can claim that thing, claim what you want to be found for, claim who you want to help, claim how you want to help them. So I would really encourage you if you do nothing else, sit down 10 minutes, set a timer and write a couple of sentences or a whole brain dump if you want on who do you want to help? So your ideal client and how do you want to help them? Your offer suite, Just do that. If nothing else, if you're like, girl, I am so ready to actually start taking action on this and get SEO done, I have just the thing for you. Surprise, surprise. So the SEO sprint is the place to go where we get your website SEO done in two weeks from start to finish. You get SEO checked off your to do list in two weeks. It's totally doable. 20 people so far have already done it. There's more people signed up for the next August round, which I'm so excited. We start on August 10th, but. And there's a bonus when you join us before August 1st. So there's a 30 minute kickoff call that you get as a bonus if you sign up before August 1st. We have four live calls during those two weeks. They are almost every other day. So we've got like Monday, Wednesday, Friday that first week, and then Wednesday the second week just again to like kind of space it out enough where you can have some time to integrate and actually take action on these things. And where you can submit homework so that I can review things, get back to you, and you can actually go and then implement stuff. And there's only five tasks. Like, it's not that crazy. It's really funny how big we build this thing up to be in our heads. But you're claiming your North Star, you're taking those answers and then you're doing keyword research. You're identifying the seven to ten pages that you want to work on in this sprint. And then you're building the SEO strategy for each of those pages. So the target keyword, the SEO title, the meta description, all that stuff, there's a whole table and you just fill it in. I review it and then once I've made sure that everything is following best practices and I feel like it's an effective SEO strategy for you, again, based on just like years and years of experience and all the clients I've helped and what I've seen work, you get to go plug that in. It's five steps, start to finish, everything I just laid out. So like I said, we have the next live group round in August, starting August 10th. But you get that bonus call if you join before August 1st. And then there's also a kind of behind the scenes, like, asynchronous version that I'm doing over the summer. So if you're like, I'm gonna get this done, I don't want to be in a group. I want like one to one attention. I want to work at this in my own pace. Whatever the case may be for you, there is an asynchronous version. So the same idea where you're going in, you're watching the video, filling out the workbook. This is the biggest difference. You're getting everything drafted. From writing out your North Star all the way through doing keyword research and creating those SEO strategies. And then once you have the SEO strategies drafted, you're not sending me homework along the way. We're meeting for an SEO day. It's a bonus SEO day that's normally 500. I get in there, I review your SEO strategies, We're back and forth in Telegram or Voxer, whichever you prefer. And I'm in your Google Doc and you can see the changes that I'm making. I'm explaining what I'm doing, and we make sure that you feel really, really good about those SEO strategies. And then again, same day you're going in, or sometimes even I'm going in and helping you to actually get those SEO strategies implemented on your website, saved, published, and then submitting those pages to Google Search Console. So you're getting it all locked in. So no matter which of those two versions you're feeling good about or feeling drawn toward, you have the option. There's links below. Of course, if you have questions, come find me in the DMs. I'm BrittanyHerzberg on Instagram. You can also text the show. There's a link below if you're listening in Apple or Spotify. If you are listening on the blog page, you can leave a comment below. But no matter what, you've got this. This is very, very doable. SEO is just one of those things that we build up in our heads, but once we have a fire under our butt. It's been incredible what I've seen business owners do during a launch, while they're rewriting their website copy, while they've got like two, three, four kids home for a holiday or the summer, whatever it may be. It is just wild what lighting a little fire under your tush can do. So you've totally got this. And as always, remember, I'm cheering you on on your SEO journey.
