Map Your List of Keyword Phrases to your Content for Maximum Effectiveness
All SEO/SEM efforts start with keyword research, but what do you do with the long list of keyword phrases after you have collected them? The next step is to map them to your existing content and develop plans to add content for keywords which have no relevant place on your current website. We recommend running a ranking report to determine where your website currently ranks for your target keyword phrases.
- Preserving High Rankings – If you have pages which already have a #1 ranking for important keyword phrases, we recommend being careful not to make changes to those pages which will hurt your rankings. For example, incorporating other keyword phrases into top ranking pages can damage rankings.
- Increasing Preexisting Rankings – If you have pages which currently rank #2 through #15, we recommend enhancing these pages with the phrase which you rank highly for in order to boost your rankings to one of the top positions. The click through rate for sites that rank #1 is much higher than those who rank #2-20. Read our blog post on click through rates by rank for more information. You may enhance the page by incorporating the phrase into the title tag, header tags, alt tags and into the visible text. Be careful not to over optimize (keyword stuff, spam the search engines) by using your keyword phrase unnaturally.
Keyword Map Visualization
Mapping Your Keyword Phrases
- Map your most important fat head keyword phrases to the pages on your site which are most relevant to the phrase. In most cases, you will target fat head phrases on the homepage and the top category level pages.
- Map long tail keyword phrases to pages which are relevant to the phrase. In most cases these pages will be subcategory pages or sub-pages. If there is no relevant page on your site, consider writing a blog post that targets the long tail keyword phrase. Your blog is a great place to write articles targeting keywords that would have no other place on your site other than in the blog.
Be Realistic About Your Chances to Rank Highly
In most cases, you will not ever be able to rank highly for all of your top keyword phrases. For example, if your company services a specific state or list of towns, it may be best to only target keyword phrases which are geographically specific.
For phrases which you have no chance of ranking highly for in organic, we recommend a carefully crafted, geo-targeted pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. All companies budgets, goals and objectives are different so PPC may not be for everyone. However, for most, it is a great way to give your website some presence in the search engines for keyword phrases which are too broad or too competitive to rank highly for. This integrated approach to SEM using a combination of SEO and PPC will give your site coverage for all of your most important keywords phrases. It ensures that your target visitors can find your site when searching for any of the keyword phrases from your keyword research.
