SEO for cheats: Keyword mapping

If you’re planning or managing search engine optimization (SEO) then you’re going to have a list of target keywords. Each target keyword needs to be 'mapped' to its own page on your site. Mark Nunney shows you how to use keyword mapping to display a wealth of information to help you plan, monitor and report on your SEO.

Google's search engine results list pages and not websites.

And your site's pages have more chance of getting high listings for your target keywords if they each focus their SEO on one primary keyword.

So you must map each of your target keywords to a page on your site.

You need to decide which page should be used for which target keyword.

The image below illustrates a simplified example of target keywords being mapped to different types of pages on a site:

The pages might already exist or they might be new pages that need to be created.

And of course you need to keep a record of that, a list of your target keywords and their target page's URLs.

On that record, why not add some useful information for each keyword, such as:

•  How many visits they brought in the last month and year
•  Conversion rates for your site's wanted responses
•  Your site’s rank on Google’s search engine results page (SERP)
•  Google’s estimate of the number of searches made on search engines

You can then use that information to compare your different target keywords and decide which:

•  are the most responsive
•  offer the most potential for investment
•  should be targeted first

Using the same data in the future, you can then:

•  Track success
•  Learn from failure
•  Report results
•  Change your priorities
•  Compare any new targets with old

Here I’ll show you two ways to make this record - this list of target keywords and pages. One is quick, easy and automatically updated; and the other not.

First the slow way …

Keyword mapping with spreadsheets

I’ll use an example of a UK ecommerce site, www.facewest.co.uk, selling adventure equipment.

A site like this targets hundreds of keywords but here we’ll use the following five only to make this article manageable:

suunto
dakine
dry bags
thermarest
exped

(Those are all brand names, by the way. Except dry bags which are, er, bags that keep your gear dry when you're kayaking, sailing and doing other wet stuff.)

Go to your site’s visitor analytics software, eg Google Analytics, and export a report showing the keywords searched with to reach your site. In Google Analytics, you’ll find that here:

The exported file will contain records for:

•  As many keywords as your report displayed. For GA, that's 10 – 500.

•  The metrics you had displayed. This will depend on how you have configured GA and the view chosen. See some options in the image below:

If your site is configured for Ecommerce then use that.

If not, then if your site has Goals configured, use that.

If you don't have Goals then use Site Usage which gives you Bounce Rate, Pages/Visit, Av. Time on Site.

You can save that exported sheet and add columns for:

•  Target URL (the page the target keyword will be mapped to)
•  Google Rank (your site's rank on Google's SERPs)
•  Status (to indicate if a keyword is a target or not)

You can then:

•  find your target keywords on your exported sheet
•  mark them as targets
•  sort the sheet so the targets are at the top
•  search, find and add your site's Google Rank for each

That's all ok. But there is a problem with this data though …

Problem: this data is missing the big picture

The data from Google Analytics is for exact keywords. Eg, visits and response for the exact keyword dakine. And …

… the exact keyword dakine brought 266 visits

But I want to see results for the dakine keyword niche. Ie, all keywords containing dakine. And look at the difference (for the same period) …

… the dakine keyword niche brought 16,690 non-paid visits via 4,983 keywords

By analyzing keyword niches and targeting keyword niches, you can work at the scale required to make a profit.

This website brings visits from over 116,000 different keywords. If you only target single (exact) keywords you are going to miss out on a lot of visits and response.

If you only look at reports for single (exact) keywords then you are not going to see most visits and response.

But if you target keyword niches (groups of keywords) then you see and target the big picture.

If you target keyword niches you are already successful for then you know your site can beat the competition and get response.

For good reason, I call this really really really easy SEO.

Back to your mapping spreadsheet …

Add keyword niche data to your mapping spreadsheet

Find your keyword niche data with Google Analytics filter like this:

See the keyword niche results on the report:

 Add them to your spreadsheet.

Add some keyword research data from Google estimating the size of each keyword niche.

Finished it might look something like the one below (I've highlighted the column that waits for the Target URL to be entered):

 I've made up some of the values in that spreadsheet above, by the way. We are just illustrating a process here and I thought I might die before I finished looking them up manually.

And this is the first problem with doing this manually – it takes so long.

I've only been working on five keyword niches and it's now 1am and I need some sleep.

And I want keyword niche data for hundreds of different keyword niches so I can compare their results for visits, response and Google rank.

It will take many days to prepare that report.

Once done it will be a static record. It will show no trends over time. It won't update tomorrow, next week or next month.

Which brings us quite nicely to the quick way to keep a record of your target keywords' target pages and all that useful data.

Enter Wordtracker Strategizer …

Keyword mapping with Strategizer

Below is a Wordtracker Strategizer report.

Strategizer imports your site's exact keyword (aka single keyword) reports and converts them into keyword niche reports.

Yep, that tedious job we just did is done automatically in a few minutes.

And it's updated every day. Here's an example report below:

 This is more like it. This is the easy life …

For your target keyword niches, along with your Target URL, you can now see:

•  Visits and response data. With trend graphs.
•  Niche Size from Google. How big is each niche? Ie, how many searches are made with these keywords.
•  Market share %s. What % of a niche's searches come to your site?
•  Opportunity graphs. Visually compare the size of different niches with the amount of those searches that come to your site. And see the difference – your opportunity!
•  Trends in use of these keywords. Shown in graphs from Google Insights.
•  Google Ranks. Updated once a week.
•  Changes in Google Rank since last week or since any benchmark date you configure.
•  Best Google Rank. Since records began.
•  Competitors' Google Rank. Up to four of them.

You can add and edit each target keyword niche's Target URL by clicking on its Target URL field as shown below:

As a professional SEO for 10 years I've had to do this work the slow, tedious, hard way. During that time I've dreamed of a tool like Strategizer and planned its design for years.

Now Wordtracker have let me build Strategizer and I've got my time and my life back and it feels like I'm cheating.

You can become an SEO cheat too with a free 7-day trial Strategizer.

(You'll have to register for a monthly subscription when you take out the trial. But if you don't want that just cancel and you will pay nothing.)

During your trial, if you have any questions about how to use Strategizer then you can ask me.

Here's that link again for a free trial of Strategizer. Or click on the big orange button below.

Author: Mark Nunney
Wordtracker Academy
Twitter G+ Linkedin

PS, I almost forgot to tell you about Intelligent Automatic SEO ... for any target keyword niche, Strategizer will use your site's data to give you a bespoke list of recommended SEO actions to take. Talk about SEO for cheats.

(Prices shown exclude VAT where applicable.)

 

 

 

blog comments powered by Disqus