Pick Competitors, Keywords, and a Title

These four steps decide what the article competes against and what it targets.

Step 4: Competitor Articles

NarraSEO shows articles currently ranking for your topic. You select up to 5 to analyse.

What this does: the selected articles are read for the points they cover, so your outline can cover those points and add what they miss. It is gap analysis, not imitation.

You have three ways to fill this in:

• Let NarraSEO auto-select. Fine for most articles.
• Choose from the list yourself. Worth doing when you know your space, because search results often include pages that rank for reasons you cannot replicate.
• Paste specific URLs. Use this when you have a particular article in mind.

Competitors from your Brand Profile are also available here.

Choosing Well

Prefer genuine competitors over whatever ranks. Directories, marketplaces, Wikipedia, and national publishers frequently occupy the top results without being useful models for your article. Five relevant articles beat five top-ranking ones.

Step 5: Primary Keyword

A sortable table of candidate keywords with search volume, difficulty, intent, and opportunity, where that data is available for your market.

Options:

• Select a row to use that keyword.
• Use Suggest the best keyword to let NarraSEO choose.
• Add your own keyword, which then shows live metrics.

Pick one primary keyword. It shapes the title, the introduction, and the headings.

Reading the Table

Search volume is monthly searches. Higher is not automatically better, since high volume usually means high competition.

Difficulty estimates how hard ranking will be. If your site is new, a lower difficulty keyword with modest volume is a more realistic target.

Intent matters most of all. A keyword with informational intent wants a guide. One with transactional intent wants a page that helps someone buy. Targeting a keyword whose intent does not match your article type is the most common cause of an article that never ranks.

Step 6: Secondary Keywords

Supporting terms, up to 10 selected.

Suggest supporting keywords pre-selects up to 3 recommended terms, which is a sensible default. Adding all 10 is rarely better than adding 3 or 4 closely related ones, because loosely related terms pull the article off topic.

Choose terms that belong in the same article. If a secondary keyword deserves its own article, write that article instead.

Step 7: Title

NarraSEO proposes titles, each with an SEO score. You can pick one, edit one, or write your own.

You can regenerate the suggestion list up to 3 times per session.

What the SEO Score Reflects

Whether the primary keyword is present and positioned well, and whether the length works in search results. It is a guide, not a ranking prediction. A title with a slightly lower score that reads better to a human is usually the right choice.

If none of the suggestions land, write your own. Include the primary keyword, keep it under roughly 60 characters so it is not cut off in search results, and make it a promise the article keeps.

Notes

Everything here can be revisited before you generate. Changing the primary keyword after you have a title is fine, though it is worth regenerating the title afterwards.

If keyword metrics are unavailable for your country and language combination, you can still proceed. You will be choosing keywords without volume data rather than being blocked.

Keyword research in the wizard does not cost credits.

Coming in from Keyword Research

If you started this article from Keyword Research or Keyword Planner, your primary keyword and up to 3 secondary keywords are already filled in. Check them rather than assuming, then carry on.