Mastering the Art of Keyword Research and Site Mapping

MASTERING THE ART OF
KEYWORD RESEARCH & SITE MAPPING
Presented by Rebecca Gill and Liquid Web

THREE KEYS TO SUCCESS
1.  Research & Plan - Everything is
based on research, data, and
planning. Don’t write content
until you have clear direction.
Research and explore possible
keywords to help guide you in
your efforts.
2.  Create and Optimize - Create
quality content that is closely
tied to your target market and
the data discovered with your
keyword research.
3.  Strengthen Process - The
process doesn’t end when
content is published. Continue
to optimize on and off-page as
needed until desired results
are obtained.
Copyright © 2016 RebeccaGill.com, All Rights Reserved

RULE #1
Don’t be greedy when
selecting keywords.

KEYWORD RESEARCH
1.  Create list of “seed words” using a variety of sources and data points
2.  Remove any branded keywords (we don’t optimize for those)
3.  Plug seed word list into your favorite tool to obtain additional options
and monthly search volumes
4.  Extract reports in batches and create one uniform report
5.  Remove unnecessary data columns so you can focus on the right data
6.  Remove duplicate entries
7.  Remove branded keywords (yep we’re doing this again)
8.  Remove keywords that are known to be incorrect (spelling errors)
9.  Remove keywords that seem to be outside your target demographic
and market
10. Sort the report by volumes and remove phrases that have very large
volumes (generally broad and difficult to achieve)
My keyword research formula is ten steps that are entirely focused on getting
your brain focused on the right content to help your visitors.

RULE #2
Don’t rely on Google
to brainstorm YOUR
keyword phrases.

BUILDING THE SEED LIST
Keywords are everywhere so keep your eyes and your mind open.
Once you start thinking about keywords, you’ll see endless possibilities.
§  Your own ideas
§  Manual variations of initial search phrases
§  Reports, presentations, emails
§  Google Search Console’s Search Analytics
§  Google Analytics reports
§  Google Adwords reports
§  Google auto suggest and related searches
§  Bing Webmaster Tools
§  Competitors’ visual content and sitemaps (HTML & XML)
§  Competitors’ meta titles and descriptions
§  Competitors’ existing keywords found in SpyFu or SEMrush
§  Suggestions from tools like KW Finder

PULLING SEARCH VOLUMES
There are lots of places to grab monthly search volumes. Pick your favorite, but
stay with one tool so volumes are consistent.

Since Google Adwords
has limited data to non-
advertisers, I now use
KW Finder.
This tool is inexpensive
and full of great data
options for both search
volumes and offering
alternative keywords in
the form of suggestions,
autocomplete, and
questions.

Let’s jump into KW Finder and
look at a real example of data.

RULE #3
Keywords should equal
your customers’ verbiage
and should not
be industry jargon.

KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER
1.  Don’t optimize for branded search terms,
because Google already knows this is you.
2.  Don’t optimize for spelling errors, because it
degrades your authority with Google.
3.  Zero search volumes isn’t always zero. Google
will show this even when we know searches
have occurred for actual client websites.
4.  Low volume searches are still good searches,
because they:
•  Make great blog posts
•  Are easier to rank on in the short term
•  Help support cornerstone content
•  Provide options for fresh content

KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER
5.  PPC dollar should be reviewed because they
help provide insight on search terms that
convert into sales. A term with lower search
volume and higher PPC amounts is always of
interest.
6.  As you work through next steps you want to
look at the phrases and think about where we
could apply these to actual content:
•  Cornerstone pages
•  Supporting pages
•  Products
•  Blog posts
•  Training or resource materials
•  White papers or eBooks
•  Categories and tags

RULE #4
Pick your battles!
You can’t win every keyword
phrase so don’t waste
valuable time trying.

SITE MAPPING FORMULA
1.  Create a new column in your master keyword spreadsheet for
Relevance Score and start assigning a relevance ranking to each
keyword:
•  High – Very relevant to your target market and audience
•  Medium – Fairly relevant to your target market and audience
•  Low – Semi relevant to your target market and audience
•  None
2.  Once done, sort your spreadsheet by
relevance so you can see how many
phrases apply to each level.
3.  If you have thousands of keywords
and/or hundreds of phrases per
relevance level, separate them into
different tabs so you can focus on one
group at a time.

4.  Next start with the highest relevance tab and sort this list by keyword.
5.  Create a new column and label it Content URL.
6.  In this new column, assign any existing content to applicable keywords
by placing the URL of the content in the appropriate row.
7.  If you have a large site and you’re struggling with the above step, use
Google Search Console to locate ranking keywords and content
combinations.
8.  Sort your spreadsheet to separate
phrases with existing content from
those without content.
9.  Now create a new column and label it
Focused.
10. Review the list of phrases and
determine which ones you’d like to
add to your website or blog and mark
them in a new column.

11.  Next review this list of focused keywords one by one in Google search
or KW Finder to see what lands on page one of SERP.
12.  Ask yourself if you can beat content in this list with organic SEO. This
step is painful.
13.  Keep phrases you feel confident about as focused phrases in your sheet
and remove any you question.
14. Now assign a new content piece to
the focused keywords. Remember
these could be pages, posts, products,
etc.
•  Assign higher search volumes to
cornerstone content like
products and pages.
•  Assign lower search volumes to
blog posts or categories.

EXAMPLE BREAKOUT
Keyword
Phrase
Monthly
Search
Traﬃc
PPC
Cost Diﬃculty
Relevance
Score Focused
Content
Status
Content
Type
Existing
Content URL
ERP 60,500 $18.79 63 High No
ERP
Software
14,800 $26.72 59 High Yes Existing Page
mywebsite.com
/erp-software/
ERP
System
9,900 $16.42 61 High No
ERP
Vendors
390 $12.12 Low No
ERP for
Small
Business
260 $24.68 Medium Yes New Post
What is
ERP
Software
1,231 $12.38 Low Yes New Post

RULE #5
Find your sweet spot
and master it.

DATA LEADS TO SUCCESS
Plan
Brainstorming keywords forces you to take a step back and plan your SEO
strategy. If you stop yourself from jumping ahead into content writing,
you’ll find greater success with SEO.
Research
Researching keyword volumes, scoring keywords, and assigning content
provides a structured method for content creation. When you use data it
will help illustrate real opportunities for winning in organic search.
Focus
Mapping your future website to desired keywords and doing so based on
existing content, market conditions, and known data will help you stay
focused on the content that really matters.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Let’s take another look
at the fundamentals we
reviewed earlier this week.

MY SEO FORMULA
1.  Research Keywords – Start with an audit of
your website and your competitors. Next
grow a seed list of research keywords and
research search volumes. Finalize your list of
preferred keywords by ranking them for
relevance to your target market and offering.
2.  Map Keywords to Content - Map your
preferred keywords to specific pieces of
content within your website.
3.  Write Content - Write content based on
keywords, but stay focused on the user
experience.
4.  Optimize Content - Optimize URLs, headers,
text, links, meta titles and descriptions for the
keyword.
5.  Build Internal Links - Build internal links to the
content via your navigation menu, footer,
sidebar, content.

MY SEO FORMULA
6.  Build Social Shares - Share content on Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram,
or anywhere else your target demographic
spends time.
7.  Build Off-Site Authority - Get your main URL
noticed and your company mentioned via
external sources to strengthen authority.
8.  Check Ranking Progress - Give Google time to
index and rank the content, then check on your
progress.
9.  Optimize Further – Ask yourself how can you
improve your content. Fix what you missed. We
all miss something and we can always improve
our initial efforts.
10. Document and Repeat Success - Document what
ranked, reverse engineer why it was a success,
and repeat process on other content.

Rebecca GillWordPress Agency Owner & SEO Instructor
@rebeccagill
RebeccaGill.com
Digital agency serving small business through enterprise level
clients. Services and products include custom website design and
development, SEO consulting, and stock WordPress themes.
www.web-savvy-marketing.com
Eight hour online course for DIY SEO education. Course includes
videos, how-to tutorials, template downloads, and quizzes.
www.diySEOcourses.com
Three day intensive SEO training workshop taking place in January
of 2017. Learn my SEO process from start to finish in an interactive
and activity driven classroom setting. Tickets are limited.
www.SEObootcamp.com

Mastering the Art of Keyword Research and Site Mapping

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