Grooming Your Keyword List
A good understanding of a website’s SEO opportunity, as well as its current performance and trend, depends on the list of tracked keywords. Therefore, it’s important to make sure we are tracking relevant keywords that define the target market of our dealers. Having a solid keyword list not only allows us to accurately report to dealers how their website is performing, but it also allows us to accurately select a proposed work focus for the coming month.
The number of keywords you’re tracking will depend on your dealership: How many units of inventory do they have? Which manufacturers or vehicle types are important to them? Are they getting a new brand or are they getting rid of a vehicle type?
Ideally, you should be tracking keywords with search volume for each major focus (vehicle type, category, manufacturer).
What factors should you keep in mind when selecting keywords to track?
- Relevance: Is it relevant to the client, products, or services provided?
- In-stock inventory: Does the dealer consistently have this vehicle type/manufacturer in stock? And there should generally be a correlation between # of units and # of keywords.
- Intent: Is it associated with user intent? (i.e. for sale, dealer near me, parts, rentals)
- Search Volume: Are people actively searching for the keyword?
FAQS
How often do I need to update my keyword list?
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- As many variations you plan on optimizing for
Adding Keywords
It’s important to add to and modify keyword lists as an SEO campaign grows and search engines take note of our work. Initial keyword lists primarily focus on individual terms related to a dealer’s inventory (i.e. travel trailers for sale). As a website becomes more relevant for those individual terms we can begin to find more semantic keyword variants that help us focus our optimization efforts on more broad topics (i.e. camper sales near me).
In SEO Monitor there are a few tools that can help uncover keywords that could be valuable to track. Keep in mind that one method is not better than the others and all can be used to find valuable keywords, so test them all out and see what works best for you!
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The Organic Traffic tab is useful to find keywords that have brought visitors to the website. Many will be brand related, but there are also valuable short-tail keywords worth tracking.
The Organic Traffic Tab becomes more valuable the longer the campaign has been running in Search Console. Looking at the Track column you can see keywords that are marked as Brand keywords (green flag), keywords you’re already tracking (grey folder), and keywords you aren’t tracking (orange cross). To begin tracking a keyword simply click the ‘+’ and select a group to add it to.
Typically, dealers will always rank well for their brand name so those keywords are not as valuable as others on the list.You’ll want to check the search volume of a keyword before you decide to track it.
You can learn more about the Organic Traffic tab here: http://seo.dealerspikewiki.wikispaces.net/Client%20Dashboard%20-%20Organic%20Traffic
- Automatic Keyword Research
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Here is a more in-depth guide for creating an inital keyword list and finding keywords outside of SEO Monitor: http://seo.dealerspikewiki.wikispaces.net/Creating+an+initial+Keyword+List
Performing a Keyword List Audit
- View as ungrouped variants By default, SEO Monitor groups similar keywords together such as “rv dealer texas” and “rv dealers in texas” which hides similar keywords. Switch to ‘view as ungrouped variants’ so you can see the full list of keywords you’re tracking.
- Total keywords and close variations If you’ve never noticed, the search bar tells you the total number of keywords as well as close variations.
- Change view order ascending/descending By clicking on the column category, you can change the view order of the keyword list which can make reviewing your keyword list much easier - Rank, Rank Change, Search Volume, etc.
- C - close variation, M - main keyword (only available in view as ungrouped variants)
Referring back to item #1, these letters describe the relationship between grouped keywords. In our example, we have 3 keywords: rv dealer texas, rv dealership texas, rv dealers in texas. ‘rv dealership texas’ is the main keyword which appears while the other two are hidden if the settings are ‘view as grouped variants’.
Deleting Keywords
Deleting keywords should be done in conjunction with adding them. As you add keywords that have search volume and have more relevance to your campaign, consider deleting keywords that fall under the categories below:
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Keep in mind, we still want to have a positive reporting experience for our dealerships so you don’t want to go and delete all long-tail keywords with 0 search volume. Keep some that have specific units or locations that the dealer wants and expects to see in the report, especially if they are ranking well.
Sorting Keywords & Selecting Your Next Focus
As you add keywords, you want to sort them into appropriate groups that will aid you in selecting next month’s focus.
Keywords can be placed into multiple groups, so creating more specific groups may help in narrowing down a focus.
Check out this guide for more detail on Grouping keywords: http://seo.dealerspikewiki.wikispaces.net/SEO+Monitor+Grouping+Keywords