In this article I’ll discuss the 3 main ways I use the RankIQ software. Plus, I’ve just recently started using a new method that I’ll share with you. I’ll call this BONUS method, number 3.5
Scroll through all the ways I use RankIQ to see if these methods can help your blog pull in more organic search traffic.
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Table of Contents
Brief Summary of what RankIQ does:
RankIQ is a software that uses artificial intelligence to scan the top 30 Google results for a given target keyword, and it returns a list of about 100 keyword phrases that those top-ranking articles contain in them.
What does this mean for you?
It means if your article also contains these words and phrases, then there is a better chance your article will also rank higher in Google and other search engines.
If your competitors’ articles are ranking high in Google for a certain keyword, they must be doing something right. They’re using the correct keywords to trigger the Google algorithm to rank them high.
So RankIQ finds those keyword phrases for you, giving you the best chance of ranking well too.
You can click here to read my full RankIQ review.
How to use RankIQ – different ways to use RankIQ
I’ve been using RankIQ for about 15 months now. I have been paying for it each and every month because I’ve found the software helps my blog and helps me write better content.
I am an affiliate for the software, so I may receive commission if you sign up for RankIQ after clicking one of my links, but keep in mind that I do use – and pay for – the software. I’m writing about it because I actually use it.
And hopefully the ways that I use RankIQ will help your blog too.
Let’s get started.
Way #1 – Write New Articles using keywords provided by the RankIQ team
RankIQ was created to be the go-to software for a new blogger.
It aims to be an easy to use software that a new blogger can use to improve their odds of ranking higher in Google.
And for a new site to rank, they should go after low-competition keywords. Basically, writing articles on keywords that new blogs have at least some chance of ranking for. (Good luck ranking for terms like “best mortgage rate” or some other highly competitive keyword.)
The low competition part means that at least some of the websites currently ranking in the top results are also newer sites, or sites with low domain authority. (Sites you have a chance of ranking higher than.)
One of the most overwhelming things for new content creators is deciphering all the data involved with Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short).
- What are the low competition keywords in my niche?
- What does search volume mean?
- What does keyword difficulty mean?
- And many more questions.
It can feel overwhelming.
So, to help simplify things for new bloggers, the RankIQ founder and host of the Blogging Millionaire podcast – Brandon Gaille – and his team have compiled a huge list of low competition keywords that new blogs could rank for.
And they’ve organized these keywords into dozens of different niches in the “Keyword Library” section of RankIQ.
You can scroll through the list of niches – which I suggest you do – and try to find your niche or related niche.
Click on your niche. Then scroll through the dozens or hundreds of pre-chosen keywords that the SEO experts at RankIQ have deemed to be winners for new blogs or other websites with a low domain authority.
If you find a keyword that you’re interested in writing an article about you can simply press the green button on the right-hand side of the screen labeled “Run Report” or you can click the checkbox to the left of the keyword and click “Add Selected to My KWs” button.
This will save it under a section of the software called “My KWs” which stands for ‘my keywords’.
It is basically where you put a list of keywords that you’re interested in writing about, but you may not be ready to run the report at this minute.
RankIQ founder Brandon Gaille suggests that you don’t “Run Report” until you’re ready to write the article. So don’t run the report now if you won’t get around to writing it until next month.
Because when you run the report, the AI collects data of the top 30 results at that moment. And who knows, by the time you’re ready to write the article next month, there may be new top-ranking competitors that your old report didn’t even know existed.
To learn more about how to use RankIQ for keyword research, check out this article I wrote about that topic.
Click here if you want to start using RankIQ’s curated, keyword database.
Way #2 – Write new blog posts using Keywords you discovered elsewhere
The first way to use RankIQ is running reports on the keywords that the RankIQ team has provided you in the Keyword Library. Which can be a great start especially for newbies.
But you aren’t limited to just using the keywords within the RankIQ keyword database.
You can use RankIQ is to run reports on keywords that YOU have discovered on your own. (This is the second main way I use RankIQ.)
Perhaps you’ve come across a golden nugget of a keyword using a different keyword research tool such as AHREFs or SEMRush.
Or maybe you’ve used Google’s own auto-suggest feature to discover a keyword where the top results aren’t stuffed with big media brand: a keyword that you have a chance of ranking for.
You can take this keyword and type it into the white box at the top of the “Reports” page just under the title that says “Run New Report.” (You can see it in the screenshot below.)
RankIQ will analyze the top results for that keyword and return the list of words that your article should have to increase the chance of your article ranking on the 1st page of Google.
Note: “popular tourist attractions in NYC” is not a low-competition keyword. There are a lot of big websites on the first page of Google for that search term. I’ve just used that as an example to show you how you can use your own keywords in RankIQ if you want.
Way #3 – Use RankIQ‘s reports to update old underperforming posts
The third main way to use RankIQ is to use it to help improve your old blog posts.
Review your old posts and determine which ones need to be improved. Perhaps an article used to rank on the first page of Google, but now competitors have bumped it back to the bottom of the page two.
Or perhaps you spent time writing an article that you thought was good, but it just never ranked well.
Well, now you can use RankIQ to help improve those old lagging labors of love.
One thing I’ve found with old articles is sometimes you just miss the mark.
And in my case, I missed the mark (a lot) because I didn’t even know what I was aiming for.
I wrote articles with no clear understanding of SEO or even what a target keyword was.
That old hard work isn’t necessarily wasted though…there is a chance you can improve their Google rankings by updating those old posts.
You can use Google’s Search Console to see what keywords your articles ARE ranking for. You may be surprised! They may rank well for search terms that you weren’t expecting.
For instance, your article was primarily about “keyword A” but your article is actually ranking on the second page of Google for “keyword B”.
You can use RankIQ to run an AI SEO report on “keyword B” and determine how you can tweak your existing article to rank even higher for “keyword B”.
After you’ve run the report, you copy the text of your existing article and paste it into the “Content Optimizer” pane of RankIQ.
RankIQ will analyze your article and give you a content grade between A++ and F.
Most of the time my old, underperforming articles receive a poor grade: usually an F.
So, this means I have work to do. In the screenshot below you can see the old article I pasted into RankIQ received a D- grade for its target keyword.
You could change the entire article at once in RankIQ, then copy the improved text and paste it back into WordPress.
But I do it a little differently. I chose to edit my WordPress article at the same time I change things in RankIQ.
I open two tabs on my browser. One for RankIQ and one tab for my WordPress article where I can “Edit Post.” Then when I change a sentence or add some words in RankIQ, I copy that changed sentence and make the same change in the WordPress article.
I keep improving my article and incorporating the words from RankIQ’s report until I get the article’s letter grade up to a passing grade.
My method of flipping between browser tabs may not be the best way, but it works for me.
Do you want more traffic to your old blog posts?
Click here to learn more about RankIQ.
Way #3.5 – The 3.5 Way to Use RankIQ (Bonus method)
I call this the “3.5 way” I use RankIQ because I use RankIQ along with ChatGPT version 3.5.
(I use the ChatGPT free version 3.5, but you could use version 4 too.)
This method isn’t a standalone way to use RankIQ, but rather a way to combine RankIQ with the generative abilities of ChatGPT.
Some bloggers have created entire websites filled with AI-generated content.
But that isn’t what I’m referring to.
I use the important keywords uncovered in the RankIQ reports to provide guardrails so ChatGPT can write some paragraphs related to those keywords.
If you just tell ChatGPT to write an article about “keyword X” the results can range from mediocre to confusing.
I am still blown away by ChatGPT, and I’m curious to see how good it will get, but I’ve heard someone say “crap in, crap out”. Meaning the better your prompts and inputs into ChatGPT, the better the results.
So I use a selected group of keywords from RankIQ to help improve my ChatGPT inputs.
I’ll write about it in more detail in a different article, but basically I scan through the list of keyword phrases in the RankIQ “SEO Report” for my target keyword.
Then I determine which of these keyword phrases will make up the main topics in my article.
I tag these keywords by pressing the “Theme” button just underneath the keyword. This groups these keywords as the main topics I should address in my article.
For instance, when I ran the content report on “Popular Tourist Attractions in NYC”, there are places such as “Statue of Liberty”, “Empire State Building” and “Times Square” included in that list of 100 words. So I scan through the list and tag those places by pressing the “Theme” button like in the picture above.
Then you go to the “Content Optimizer” pane of RankIQ and along the right side of the screen there is a tab that says “Tagged“.
Pressing this will show the list of words you tagged with the Theme button in the earlier step.
Copy this list of keywords that you’ve deemed to be the main topics in your article, go to ChatGPT and ask it to write a couple paragraphs about each item in the list.
After I write the prompt shown above, I paste that list of tagged words from RankIQ into ChatGPT and await its response.
Then you copy ChatGPT’s written response and paste it back into the “Content Optimizer” pane of RankIQ.
You can edit it, change it, add more of the suggested RankIQ keyword phrases and keep working on your article until it is a well-written, quality piece of content.
Add your own human touch and experience to the article. You can use ChatGPT as a springboard to be more prolific, but edit the article to make it your own.
And that includes fact checking too. Generative AI like ChatGPT has been known to make stuff up so don’t take its response as the absolute truth.
For instance, in its response about the Empire State Building it says the building is 1,454 feet tall, but that’s only if you include the antennae. The building itself is 1,250 feet tall. So ChatGPT wasn’t completely wrong, but it only told a part of the story. (Reference)
You may be thinking, “Aren’t all the words in the RankIQ report a topic to cover?” And the answer is no. Some of the keyword phrases returned in a RankIQ report are “LSI keywords”. These are basically a different way to say the same thing. Such as “NYC Times Square” means the same as “Times Square” in this context, but to improve your chance of ranking well, you may need to include both these keyword phrases in your article.
Other Features of RankIQ
You’ll also benefit from RankIQ in different ways.
The simplicity of RankIQ is what makes it a great option for bloggers, and it is adding more advanced features but you don’t have to use them to benefit from the software.
So, it’s nice that it has these features, but you don’t have to use them to succeed with the software. (I don’t use all the features.)
Title Analyzer
It has a title analysis tool where it suggests a list of words that you should have in the title of your new post.
You type your title into the text field box and it gives a letter grade and shows the lengths of characters in your title. You can look at these two metrics to try and craft a winning title.
Rankings Audit section
RankIQ also has a feaure they call the Rankings Audit that allows you to connect RankIQ to the Google analytics for your site.
To be honest, I don’t use this feature at this point. I review my Google Analytics and Search Console data separately.
But they have this feature if you want it.
If I start using it I’ll provide an update on its benefits.
Thank you for checking out the ways I use RankIQ. Hopefully seeing these options has made it more clear whether this software will help you or not.
Ready to use RankIQ to get more traffic to your website?
Click here to check out the RankIQ website.
For more in-depth analyses, check out my honest RankIQ review that you can see by clicking here.
(I wrote that review after 2 months of using RankIQ, now I’ve used it almost 15 months, and I’m still using and paying for it monthly.)
Up Next:
Is RankIQ worth it for bloggers? (my RankIQ review)
Check out this tutorial on how to use RankIQ for keyword research to find winning keywords for your blog.
Check out the list of niches in RankIQ
Tim worked in construction for a few years before going to university. Then he worked as a community pharmacist for 10 years and now works as a full-time writer and online publisher. He has experience in several different, far-reaching lines of work.
“I sincerely hope you find the articles helpful and informative.”
Tim from LearnAlongWithMe.com
