Monthly Keyword List Maintenance

Purpose

This SOP is ONLY for clients that are in the 3+ month of their SEO campaign.

Keyword rankings can fluctuate depending on a number of factors. It’s important to the health of the SEO campaign to monitor and maintain our clients' keyword lists to ensure we’re tracking the most valuable, relevant, and up-to-date keywords in those lists.

As such, every month, SEO reps need to assess and evaluate each of their clients' keyword lists in SEOmonitor to determine if there are any necessary updates to make. This means adding new keywords or removing old ones in order to target high-impact keywords.

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?

Finding 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 SEOmonitor, 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!

SEOmonitor Traffic Tab

SEOmonitor has the Traffic tab which 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.

First click on the Traffic tab.
Then you can select the filter based on what keyword types you wish to view. Non-Brand keywords will offer relevant keywords based on dealership inventory and services, whereas Brand offers keywords with the dealership’s name.
Any keywords in the list that are marked with a gray check means you are already tracking this keyword in your list.

SEOmonitor Keyword Vault

This feature is not available yet. More information about this will be posted as soon as the feature is ready.

Under the Research tab, the option for Keyword Vault will be available. Select Keyword Vault and you’ll be taken to a screen that has 3 different options. Select the Get Keyword Suggestions option to be offered a list of keyword suggestions that are related to the current list you have.

Keyword Planner

Find new keywords by entering into Keyword Planner and finding high-value keywords based in the dealership’s region.

Enter your secondary SEO Chrome profile for either Dealer Spike or ARI.
Select the Keyword Planner tab in the bookmark.
You’ll then be presented with a list of accounts from which you can find and select the specific client, or find an inactive account, designated by the red X.
From there, you’ll be given 3 options to select. Click on the Discover New Keywords.
Enter several keywords (i.e., if you wanted to find keywords for “travel trailers,” enter “travel trailers for sale,” “travel trailer dealer,” etc.) for which you wish to find variants for. This helps refine the search to provide only the most relevant keywords to your query. When you have entered in your keywords, select Get Results.
Once you reach the screen with the keyword list, select the location tab at the top of the page that says United States. This is the default search radius, but you will need to apply your client’s primary target location to get only the most relevant keywords to the dealership.
Once your location is selected, the keyword list will refresh and you will be presented with the most relevant keywords to your client. Examine each keyword carefully to find candidates that have search volume, low competition, and are relevant to the keyword group you wish to expand on.
Record the most valuable keywords, based on your determination, in order to add into SEOmonitor.

Adding Keywords

You can add any new keywords you have found by following these steps:

Enter into SEOmonitor and find your client’s profile.
In the bottom left corner of the window, there is a black plus icon you must click.
Select the Add Keywords option to add the new keywords you’ve found.

A side window will appear where you can paste your list of new keywords.
Select the group you wish to add your new keywords to by clicking on the Select Groups option below the list of keywords you just pasted.
Once the group is selected and the keywords you want to add have all been included, select Track at the bottom of the side window.

Your new keywords will not be automatically processed once you select Track. there will be a processing period for SEOmonitor to collect the current data on the keywords you’ve added.

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:

There are a few instances when you may consider deleting a keyword:

The dealer no longer carries the related vehicle type or manufacturer.
The keyword rank has been 99+ for several months in a row and should be replaced.
The keyword is long-tail with a search volume of 0.
Misspellings and close variations of your keywords.

Now that we know how to view all hidden variations of keywords, it’s time to start removing some of them. The first step should be changing the date range you have set. The default is the past 30 days, but you may want to change to the past 90 days or an even longer date range. This way the rank change can be a more accurate reflection since we don’t expect keywords to change all that much in a 30 day period. And also keep in mind that our monthly reports are set to the past 90 days.

For close variations of keywords, it’s easiest to compare them side by side. Looking at the current rank and rank change would be the recommended approach. If one variation is ranking worse than the others, you can remove it or look into why it might be ranking worse. If you have two close variations of keywords that are ranking similarly and are struggling with which you should remove, reach out to your Team Lead.

Examples:

“rv dealers” and “rv dealerships”
“rvs for sale” and “rv for sale”

If a keyword has been 99+ for several months, you’ll want to evaluate why it’s been ranking poorly before you decide to delete it.

If it’s a high search volume phrase that has been 99+, perhaps there is a performance issue we can address. Maybe there are keyword cannibalization issues that are preventing this keyword rank from improving. Maybe a relevant landing page hasn’t been created yet. Do some of your own research and even reach out to a senior rep or team lead for advice before deleting these keywords.

Example: tracking “atvs” as a keyword. If “atvs” is ranking well. that’s a win for the SEO campaign. You’ll definitely want to keep it and explain to your dealer why that’s a significant accomplishment. If you’re not ranking well, but you have other variations such as “atvs for sale”, “atv dealer”, “atvs portland”, you may want to remove “atvs” since it’s so broad and competitive.

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.

FAQS

Here are some questions that may arise during the keyword list maintenance process:

How often do I need to update my keyword list?

Monthly to every other month. By doing so, you can stay on top of keyword trends and track only the most up-to-date and relevant keywords to utilize in the SEO campaign.

How many keywords should I be tracking?

Minimum - 100, Maximum - 250. However, the TOTAL search volume for the entire keyword list should be at least 1,500. This should be considered when pruning your keyword list to be within the 100-250 range.

My client has a TON of different types of inventory. Do we need to add keywords for everything?

Examine the dealership’s priorities and what inventory types or manufacturers they value more. Also consider inventory sizes of each product; what do they carry more of/have in stock more consistently? Add keywords based on those factors and avoid

Is it worth tracking location-based keywords? (i.e. "atvs for sale in los angeles)?

For primary target locations. If population size is sufficient, this includes hometowns, neighboring cities, and client-requested locations. Locations that the client considers as their target audience or where the majority of their customers come from should be included in the keywords you add into the keyword list.

Should I track this particular keyword?

If it’s relevant to the dealership, has search volume, and you plan to incorporate the keyword into the content on the website then yes.

How many variations of a keyword should I track?

There can be a multitude of keyword variants that exist for particular keyword groups (i.e., ATVs, four wheelers, quads). Use Keyword Planner to research keyword variants to determine how many of them have search volume in the dealership’s target location. Use any/all that are popular in your keyword list and optimization plan.

Which keywords should I remove?

For keywords that are consistently in the bottom ranking (i.e., appear nowhere near the front page of search results) and show no signs of improvement, despite repeated attempts to optimize for the keyword, then it should be removed. Additionally, if a client removed a product line from their inventory permanently, any related keywords should be removed from the keyword list.

How many new keywords should I add every month?

You don’t necessarily need to add new keywords every month. Keyword list maintenance requires you to evaluate your list every month to identify any areas of improvement and make any necessary adjustments. This means you can add or remove keywords based on your findings.

If the current list performing well and your keywords consist of your client’s top priorities, target locations, and consider user intent, you do not need to expand or reduce your list.

This SOP is a work in progress. If you notice anything that is out of date, could be more clear or could be more efficient please update the SOP or add a comment to start a conversation.