5 Steps To Map SEO Keywords For Content Optimization
The search engine optimization (SEO) process doesn’t end with keyword research. An important next stage in the SEO plan is to construct a keyword map where you’ll identify relevant keywords for the most critical pages of your website. Keyword mapping will be the major technique you’ll use to determine the keywords for which you’ll optimize the content on each page.If you are looking for a digital marketing expert in India then let’s connect.
Follow these five steps to immediately begin mapping keywords to each page of your site.
-
Gather All the URLs for the Collection and Product Pages
Depending on the size of your website, there are two approaches to generate a list of your URLs. For larger sites with thousands of pages, you can crawl your website with a crawler like Screaming Frog to extract all the category or collection URLs to start. Eventually, you’ll want to optimize product pages too. If it’s a smaller website, you can use the site’s navigation to collect the URLs of your categories and product pages. Also read: Social Media Marketing Trends
On ecommerce sites, the category pages tend to have a larger likelihood of ranking than a specific product page. The reason being is that the user can land on a product page that may be near to what they are looking for, but the product on the page doesn’t appeal to them. In that instance, they will bounce right out. Search engines see this pogo-stick activity as a failed result and will begin to reduce its rating over time.
On the other side, if the searcher gets on a category page with every product in that collection listed, they may find exactly what they are seeking for and ultimately purchase the product or service you are selling.
-
Create a Keyword Map in an Excel Spreadsheet
Use Excel to construct an ordered keyword map. The goal is to identify three relevant keywords in the same subject for each page, thus add these nine important headers in your keyword map spreadsheet:
Page \sURL \sTotal Searches
Primary Keyword \sSearches/ Month \sSecondary Keyword \sSearches/ Month \sTertiary Keyword \sSearches/ Month
-
Match Relevant Keywords to Each URL on Your Website
Open the keyword research you already conducted to select useful keywords that describe each page appropriately. As you try to link a primary, secondary, and tertiary keyword to every individual URL, you’ll want to explore each page to see what resides on those URLs and choose which three keywords fit best.
The keywords you choose are the terms that you’ll optimize each page for to rank for within the search results. Remember, keywords are the places where you meet searchers, therefore utilising this data that you already acquired from the Google Keyword Planner tool is vital.
In the example above, we are using a women’s perfume ecommerce site. Start by filtering the keyword research for topics that are applicable to a given page, and pick what makes sense as the logical keyword theme for that page. You’ll want to pay special attention to the keywords and the column with the average monthly searches. Make sure that this column stays filtered from largest to smallest so you can tell at a glance which keywords produce the most searches.
Begin filling out the data in your keyword map, as seen in the example above.
Page — Label pages whatever you see appropriate while accurately defining what they are.
URL – Copy all the URLs that you plan to map from the navigation or the crawl into the keyword map.
Total Searches – Sum up the total of the primary, secondary, and tertiary searches per month in the total searches column for each page across your site in the keyword map.
Primary Keyword –
The Primary term will be the most relevant keyword for this page with the biggest value of average monthly searches from the Google keyword planner. Err on the side of relevancy, though. Don’t just pick the term with the biggest searches each month. If the keyword is more relevant, it should be the priority, even if it has less searches.
Searches/ Month –
You’ll find this column three times — following each of the three keywords. This is where you will input the average monthly searches for your primary, secondary, and tertiary keywords from the keyword research. To make things easier, use a VLOOKUP formula to automatically obtain the searches each month for you.
Secondary & Tertiary Keywords – These keywords fall into two camps: A) They are just as relevant as the core keyword but get less searches per month, or B) they’re slightly less relevant but still more relevant to this page than to any other page on the web.
Remember, keyword mapping is about applying logic to match what lives on each page with keyword research to identify the language that searchers use to find the items and services that your site sells. Since each page is about something different, each page’s keywords assigned in the keyword map should likewise be unique. Do not assign the same keywords to several pages. The only exception is the homepage since it has to represent everything on your ecommerce site. Every other page should have its own distinct keywords.
-
Determine the Pages with the Highest Potential Value for SEO
Once the process of keyword mapping is complete and all of your pages have relevant keywords associated to them, sort the total searches column by largest to smallest. This will tell you the order of pages to improve first based on possible organic search value.
-
Use the Completed Keyword Map to Begin the SEO Content Strategy
Now that you have a thorough SEO keyword map, begin optimizing your pages, starting with the most valuable pages. Often, the homepage has the biggest potential organic search volume because you choose keywords here that include the full site, but not always.
Now, with this rich, data-filled keyword map, you can begin your SEO content optimization. The keyword theme you’ve developed for each page — the primary, secondary, and tertiary keywords — will be used to optimize the title tag, meta description, H1 heading, and body copy.
Keep this keyword map ready at all times, and you’ll never have to second guess which keywords are the focus of your optimization efforts.
Also read: In the metaverse, how will digital marketing look?
