Everyone talks about keywords, but this part of SEO is more than just a trend. This ever-evolving facet of digital marketing produces tangible results for brands with an online presence. After all, 68% of all online experiences start with a search engine, so you might as well consider places like Google your gateway to conversions.
Here are 5 steps to finding new, profitable SEO keywords that put you above the competition.
1. Keyword Analysis
You may have an existing content marketing plan, but if it’s delivering conversions the way it should, then you’ll need to start with a keyword analysis. SEMrush Keyword Manager is a great tool for analyzing the keywords you currently have in place.
In particular, you’ll want to analyze the following:
- Shared keywords: These are keywords you share with your competitors. Knowing this helps you determine where you rank in comparison to your opponents. It’s like comparing apples to apples (or peaches to peaches, for you stone fruit lovers out there).
- Missing keywords: Determine what keywords you don’t have that your competitors are ranking for. These are the missing keywords that you should consider implementing into a future content marketing plan (which we touch on in step 5).
- Weak keywords: If you focus on certain keywords but don’t rank very well for them — and your competition does — these count as weak keywords.
- Strong keywords: What keywords are performing well for you? These are your strong keywords.
So what do you do with this analysis? If you’re missing keywords, you need to add them to your roster for content creation. You can refresh any content that contains weak keywords, and continue boosting content with strong keywords.
2. Strategic Ranking
Based on your keyword analysis, you want to rank them based on their macro and micro conversion potential. What’s this mean?
Well, keywords are not one-and-the-same. By separating them based on category, you’re further clarifying where and how to use each one.
Micro conversions are smaller conversions that can ultimately lead to full leads. Broadly, we’re looking at navigation, interaction and engagement on the web. For example, this could be an email capture, video view or survey completion.
Macro conversions are the main conversions on a website. Broadly, we’re looking at revenue, lead acquisition and vetted enquiry. For example, this could be a product purchase, software download or event registration.
3. Sitemap Organization
Visualization is super helpful in the SEO keyword-finding process. That’s why building a sitemap — and organizing it based on topic and website section — is so important.
If you have an e-commerce site that sells shoes, make a tree of the broad types of shoes you sell (such as sneakers, formal wear and sandals). Then, break that down even further until you’ve covered all the nuances of your offerings.
Where do your keywords fit in? You’re using them to optimize your business, so it only makes sense to structure your content strategy based on the topics and sections of your website. This will also help optimize internal linking and intra-website travel.
4. Review Ranking Content
There’s no better route to success than seeing what the greats are doing (even if they are your competition). Review content that’s actually ranking on Google for your keywords and find out what makes them so special.
Here are a few factors you should look into when researching the competition:
- User intent: These days, user intent might as well be everything in SEO.
- How competitive the keyword is: You can view keyword competitiveness on SEMrush, and number of results on Google.
- Search volume: This one’s pretty self explanatory.
- Estimated micro or macro conversions: You want to estimate this based on your own conversion rate. Here are a couple of formulas you can use:
Total traffic for keywords X Total click-through rate = Website traffic
and
Website traffic X Micro/macro conversion rate for a similar page = Total conversions
5. Create Your Rollout Plan
Without this last step, steps one through four are futile. Strategy helps build a content marketing plan, but it’s the content rollout itself that delivers results.
In the end, you’ll want to plan for the month (or months) ahead. That way, you know what you’re going to do based on your capabilities for creating content within your content budget. Use your new, profitable keywords as the backbone, but don’t skimp out on quality content made by well-versed creators. The two have a symbiotic relationship, and you can’t have one without the other.
Share This Keyword Data with Your Execs
Maybe you’re looking to get more authority within your company’s content marketing department. Or perhaps you’re hoping to justify increasing — or maintaining — your content budget, especially within a pandemic. Not everyone comprehends the value of SEO right off the bat, but we can all learn. Keep this valuable data on SEO and keywords in hand during your next meeting with the executives for a more assertive standpoint.
- BrightEdge Research tells us that more than half of all website traffic stems from organic searches.
- Backlinks have a strong history of boosting a website’s organic traffic. They’re also one of Google’s top ranking factors (in addition to things like keywords and page speed).
- Getting the top spot on a Google SERP is highly competitive, and for good reason. The average CTR for the first result is 31.7%.
Get started with your 5-step process for new, profitable keywords by hopping on that keyword analysis! Your rollout plan will be here before you know it.
