Branch Tool’s VP of Product, Noah Learner, was on stage in July at MozCon 2022 speaking about “Breaking into New Areas with Topic Maps”. He explained how to go beyond keyword research to explore how to build topic maps and internal linking maps (that align with Google’s understanding) to help conquer new SERPS and win more budget from stakeholders along the way.
Moz has made Noah’s slide deck available here, and below are some resources referenced in his talk.
Slide 2. https://www.localseoguide.com/seo-the-lsg-way-earn-your-knowledge/
Slide 3. Branch Explorer is a tool we’ve built for exploring GSC data at scale.
Slide 8. https://blog.marketmuse.com/the-difference-between-keywords-and-topics/
Slide 29. https://developers.google.com/knowledge-graph/reference/rest/v1
Slide 30. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kbf78c6v_5eBfiiIBRYdaj30CvwtFyHPS06k2hizWnY/edit?usp=sharing
Slide 30. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/linkclump/lfpjkncokllnfokkgpkobnkbkmelfefj
Slide 35. The Wiki Playground Google Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1r7y3OhGvSalrh90D5J848tFDrtSuNIjEz0_Bn2QGtUE/copy
The Wikipedia and Wikidata Tools Free Google Sheets-Add-on: https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/wikipedia_and_wikidata_tools/595109124715
Slide 44. Difference between Autocomplete and Google Trends
Slide 47. Google Trends
Slide 54. DataForSEO – Google Trends API
Slide 70-75. ObservableHQ. I experimented heavily with this platform and think it’s a great tool to use to build different visualizations of your data. Each of the different visualizations mentioned gives a different way to see the data. Pick what works for you!
Slide 87 – Lee Foot Colab (Noah’s Fork) – https://colab.research.google.com/gist/noahlearner/e498edfc2ceee94d0fa632ea8cc1ab72/sej-semantic-clustering-tool-by-leefootseo.ipynb
Onboarding Questions to ask
- Who is your ideal customer?
- How do you make your money?
- What services do you offer?
- What is most profitable?
- What is a conversion worth?
- When do you make your money?
- Where do you make your money?
- What is your sales process?
- What questions from potential customers drive decision?
- How can content support the sales process?
Noah’s Google Trends Sunburst Output
Play with this topic & query tool. I think you’ll find it’s a total hoot. Use it to see relationships (but not parent/child relationships).
The Knowledge Graph Search API tool
Use this to ask questions of Google’s knowledge graph:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kbf78c6v_5eBfiiIBRYdaj30CvwtFyHPS06k2hizWnY/edit?usp=sharing
Wikipedia Workflow
- Go to Wikipedia and search for the service.
- Link clump Chrome Extension
- Grab anchor link text.
- paste results to our sheet.
Lee Foot’s Colab Workflow
- Edit the output CSV name
- Click Runtime > Run All
- Upload your CSV when prompted
- Your CSV will Download into your machine
Content Gaps Workflow (using Count)
I experimented heavily with Count and found it to be super useful and easy to use for folks who have even the smallest amount of sql knowledge.
Joining our “Gap” data back up with its enriched data gives us great visibility into how useful it would be to write about a specific topic.
Photo Credits
Background Images:
