The OVERKILL Content Concept

I’ve built up a fun content publishing business pushing out a ton of content fast targeting low competition keywords.

It’s the foundation of my biz.

I now have thousands of articles each earning a little. Combined it’s a decent amount.

It’s a solid foundation.

It’s still my main strategy.

My aim is to publish content more than sufficient to address the topic and that will stand a good chance for ranking.

However, sometimes for the right keyword, content overkill is is a good idea.

I’m talking some epic guide that takes 25 hours to produce for a seemingly little keyword.

Why would you do that Jon?

Why invest $700+ in an article that might get 250 monthly visitors?

Because there’s a chance it could end up ranking for the seed keyword.

I’ve been noticing this happening on my biggest niche site which is exciting.

And then one of my writers emailed me last night saying “hey Jon, I think I may have gone overkill on this article.” She explained how far down the rabbit hole she went. At first I thought maybe it was a big waste, but when I thought about it in connection to ranking for some single word KW, I figured that sucker just might rank for the seed word over time.

I told her it sounded exciting and that I’m looking forward to reading it.

I may have her take that approach on more content.

Two prerequisites:

1. It must be the right keyword. What is that? It must be a topic that lends itself to becoming a full guide.

A great example is “What is…” articles.

What is veal?

As a phrase it has a keyword difficulty of 3 with 24,000 monthly searches.

But the word “veal” gets 93,000 monthly searches and has a KD of 15.

I’d be thrilled to rank for “what is veal”.

But then ranking for “veal”, that’s amazing.

I can tell you it’s amazing because my biggest niche site that now has some great authority does rank for some single words.

An example of a BAD keyword for the content OVERKILL strategy would be any phrase that couldn’t be construed in a broader context.

For example, “what is the best color for a car?” would never rank for “car”. The topic itself has very clear, limited intent. It’s a decent keyword but there’s no chance it would rank for car.

If you owned Google, would you rank that question for “car”? Of course not. I wouldn’t, not matter how good the article was.

2. Another prerequesite is in most cases your site needs some good authority.

This is a very long term strategy. It won’t happen overnight unless you build links like a maniac.

Are there any downsides to this other than the effort and cost?

Yeah, there are in a way. Maintaining rankings for these single word KWs is not easy. It’s easy to get dependent on massive traffic growth from them but keep in mind if you lose rankings for some of them, you could lose a lot of traffic. Consider it a sweet, sweet bonus.

These single word keywords are elusive. It’s like holding onto an eel. They’re so broad that search intent is very difficult for Google to determine.

There is a lot of different intent behind searching for “veal”.

One person might want veal recipes.

Another person might want to learn what veal is.

Because intent is elusive, Google likely adjusts the rankings regularly.

So if you hit the big time ranking for one of these, consider it gravy.

However, if you rank for enough of them over time, you might establish some mega traffic consistency.

Should you use this strategy when starting out?

Probably not, although it never hurts to publish some “overkill” epic guides. That’s always good for a site.

But it won’t be economical during the early days.

What you can do as your site gains traffic and authority is go back to some of those articles that could rank for the seed word and turn them from good to overkill. This is what I’m attempting for more of my articles now that I have some authority.

It’s a gamble though because the effort and cost is high.

Give it some thought.

There’s sometimes more to a low competition keyword than meets the eye.