Using Strategizer for SEO

Your SEO strategy is a prioritized list of target keyword niches. Wordtracker's Strategizer makes sure your target keyword niches are your most profitable - those you can beat the competition for, get more results for and get the best response rates for.

Here we’ll show you how to use those keyword niches in your SEO tactics.

First find your prioritized list of target keyword niches by filtering your Strategizer report and then sorting it by your preferred response metric.

An Introduction to Strategizer looks at how you can configure Strategizer to find short or long term strategies. The result might be reports like these examples for a business management website:

Keyword strategy 1: Short term maximum return

Keyword strategy 2: Large scale longer term planning

The amount and type of SEO work you do depends on the size of the niche you are targeting. We can simply categorize different niche sizes into:

• small (less than 1,000 searches/mth)
• medium (1,000 - 1,000,000 searches/mth)
• large (over 1,000,000 searches/mth)

…and we’ll now look at some recommended SEO tactics for each…

Small niches (size is less than 1,000 searches/mth)

Optimize one page (including adding more relevant text) and improve your site's internal linking to that page.

Optimize the page on your site that currently gets the most traffic for the target keyword niche. This will usually be revealed by a simple Google search with the niche’s seed keyword. Eg, with this search query:

Alternatively you can use Google Analytics to find your target page by discovering which page gets the most visits for a target keyword niche.

A page’s optimization can be boosted by linking to it from your site’s home and other key pages, using text from its target keyword niche.

Medium niches (size 1,000 - 1,000,000 searches/mth)

Optimize a number of existing or new pages for different sub niches within the target keyword niche. Make a category (or tag) in your site’s structure for the keyword niche. Make sure you optimize that category home page.

The category home page may be an existing or a new page. The category home page can focus SEO on the niche seed keyword eg, business strategy.

Further pages can focus their SEO on sub-niches. Find these first with Strategizer so that the principle of building on success is used. Eg, here’s a Strategizer report for a business management site filtered to show only keyword niches containing business strategy ie, sub-niches of the business strategy keyword niche:

The report above has been further filtered to show keyword niches with more than 10 visits and a Goal Conversion rate of over 3%. Then it was sorted by Niche Size (blue shaded column) so we can see the niches with the most potential.

I should now build a page (or use an existing page) to target each of these keyword niches. Some of these keyword niches have very interesting conversion rates, especially small business strategy at almost 9% - that page should get some extra attention.

My business strategy category home page should of course link to these six new pages.

If further digging into your Strategizer reports doesn’t reveal enough sub-niches to target with new pages need then use the Wordtracker Keywords Tool to find more.

How many pages you build and optimize will depend on your resources. Build as many you can afford, up to 100 (and can find keyword niches to target).

The content of your pages will be determined by your site’s subject matter but ideally it will be interesting enough for other sites to want to link to. Get ideas for web content here and link-worthy content here.

One effective tactic is to put extra effort into one or two pieces of flagship link-worthy content combined with a larger number of less spectacular and less expensive pages (often called ‘long tail content’).

Whatever your page’s content, first make sure it has as much text as possible (1,000 or even up to 2,000 words). But also try and add images and videos so you can compete for any relevant image and video listings on Google’s search results pages.

I’m often asked “what if I can’t make a page with 2,000 words”, for example, if a site is an ecommerce site. 2,000 words is not compulsory. Use fewer if appropriate.

A medium keyword niche is worthy of a link building campaign. Your goal is to get inbound links with link text (aka anchor text) containing keywords from your target niche.

Large niches (size is greater than 1,000,000 searches/mth)

Create/use a number of categories and treat each as you would a medium niche.

What if Niche Size has no data?

The Niche Size data in Strategizer comes from the Google Keyword Research Tool which only uses a sample of real searches. As with all keyword research tools, it’s very common for the sample to estimate zero searches for a keyword.

If this happens don’t give up on the niche: treat it the same as you would a small keyword niche (see above).

Seasonal trends with Google insights

Before you start any SEO or PPC work, check the season trends of your target keyword niches with the Google Inisghts link. Select up to 5 keyword niches then click 'Google Insights'. See image:

You'll get back cool reports like these which show any seasonal or weekly trends:

Coming soon will be seasonal trends within Strategizer for your site's results.

Author: Mark Nunney
Wordtracker Academy
Twitter @marknunney