SEO Keyword Research for Docker

I recently got some SEO religion, and now look at the Keyword Planner tool before writing. It’s supposed to help me learn what searchers are seeking out, so I can tailor my writing to the audience.

I’m doing this for the money. This website generates almost no clicks, despite having a handful of pages with low bounce rates (meaning that people read the page).

Much to my surprise, Docker is a hot and valuable keyword. Look at this:

To bid on an ad space for the search “docker images filter”, Google recommends $35! So it’s possible that an article about docker images could get an ad showing up on the page that is worth a lot of money, per click.

However, the first line was my keyword search: “docker intermediate image”. Nobody is searching for that.

I don’t know why docker’s so valuable, but it is. My speculations:

  • Coders do not click on ads, but see them, and the brand exposure is worth it to advertisers.
  • Extremely beginner-level pages are more effective than what I wanted to write on.
  • People seeking beginner level material are more likely to click, and have a good response to the ad.

“docker remove image” is worth $22, and thousands of people are searching for it. It’s like a 1-line topic: docker rmi <imagename>

I may have searched for it myself, even though “docker images –help” would have shown me the command.

My point: this is rudimentary stuff people are seeking out.

This is a real downer for me. I thought the article I was going to be writing was “newbie level” stuff, because, I’m really a newbie to Docker. It turns out that my article has few searchers.

That probably explains why traffic to this site has been steady and low for a long time. The articles are long-tail. Some get linked, most do not. Most are written for me, to keep track of how I did something.

“Oh well.”