Keyword Research

This is going to be a step-by-step guide to building a keyword list and optimization plan using GSC, Keyword Planner, and SEO Monitor:

Keyword Selection

1. Build a “Seed List”

   1. Using Keyword Planner, plug in the website and location to generate a keyword seed list

      1. Export the list to Sheets

      2. Filter out all terms where the search volume is less than 20 searches/month

      3. Look for non-relevant keywords to remove from the list from a cursory view

      4. Look for tanking keywords - keywords with an 80% volume dropoff YoY

   2. Using GSC, navigate to the “Search Results”/”Performance” tab, depending on which version of GSC you’re served

      1. Export to Sheets

      2. Filter queries to show only terms that rank on the first page and then sort by impressions

   3. Marry the lists and edit with extreme prejudice

      1. Remove keywords that don't relate to the target end-user's search intent - “Boats” for example is too general and could go a million different ways, whereas “Boats For Sale” is a much better term if we’re looking to sell boats.

      2. Take another look at search volume and eliminate keywords that aren’t worth it and won’t fit into a larger collective group later

   4. Set up an account in SEOMonitor

      1. Let it scan your site to generate an initial keyword list - This will give you a list of high-opportunity keywords

      2. Create the automated groups as part of the setup

      3. Create a new group for the import data

      4. Import the keywords from the lists from GSC and Keyword Planner

   5. Grab branded terms

      1. As part of the keyword selection process, you will also need to include some of the terms and brands that the dealer cares about, regardless of if there is sufficient search volume to justify tracking

      2. This is dealer servicing but will end up in reporting and clients want to know you’re looking at the things they truly care about

      3. Look for brands in areas including the navigation, catalog search parameters, and footer menus, cross-referencing with client knowledge

2. Start the grouping process

   1. Start by using the search filter and entering base keywords - (i.e. boat, tire, ATV, alignment) to get initial groupings that include the base keyword and close variations

   2. Based on your findings, define a smart folder to grab all keywords that fit each category.

      1. Some may be less obvious such as “wheel alignments” and “wheel alignment coupons”. While they could be grouped together, it might make more sense to group them into a service page and a page with actual coupons listed.

   3. As an additional step, adding a label for the grouping will help for sorting and further analysis later.

   4. Complete the same steps for all major “content buckets” - A good way to determine the buckets is to take a look at the site structure, nav items, top pages, and customer info.

   5. That should be more than enough keywords, and many of them will be high quality while some will need to be trimmed based on the additional stats provided by SEOMonitor.

3. Clean up groups and look for stragglers

   1. Now that you have several groups for each topic, you might want to look into nesting some groups into folders. An example would be “brake repair”, “wheel alignments”, and “oil changes” which could all be grouped under Auto Repair. You can also label the top-level groups for better aggregate analysis.

   2. Next look through the “Ungrouped” folder for keywords that are not labeled and put them into appropriate groups, create new groups if necessary, and add labels.

Mapping Keywords to Landing Pages

The next step is mapping each keyword group to a defined landing page where you’d want the traffic for those terms to end up. This will help deduce issues with keyword cannibalization, and canonical issues, as well as, guide the flow of work to the appropriate pages.

1. Assign desired landing pages to terms based on grouping

   1. If keywords are grouped properly you should be able to tie them all together to one page on the site.

   2. Ideally, you want one page per topic.

2. Create sub-groups

   1. If a page doesn’t make sense for all terms in a group, you should consider breaking them into a sub-group.

Build a Content Optimization Plan

Time to tie everything into an action plan with trackable performance variables. Changes should be evaluated on an ongoing basis with the final “pass/fail” evaluation after 6 months.

Initial Work Priority List (6-Month Plan)

1. Create Work Month Folders in SEOMonitor

   1. Create groups for each month in the upcoming plan. (May 2022, June 2022, etc.)

   2. Add all month groups to a master “Current Work” folder.

   3. You will add the keywords to the group associated with the month the work will be completed.

   4. You will also want to add a “Current Work” label to all target keywords to assist with sorting.

2. Check the “Seasonal Keywords” folder

   1. The “Seasonal Keywords” have massive spikes in traffic at certain reoccurring points in the year. (“Snow Tires” and “Winter Tire Changeover” are perfect examples).

   2. Assuming there is enough associated opportunity, you should plan to have the work completed 6 months before the forecasted volume peak.

3. Get quick wins (Low Difficulty, High Opportunity)

   1. After evaluating the time-sensitive keyword opportunities, we will want to look for high-value, low-difficulty keywords to grow the organic traffic quickly.

   2. These can be found in the “Keyword Opportunities > Low Difficulty” folder

      1. Start at the top and find the corresponding group/desired landing page and make a list of pages in order with their keyword pairings. If the landing page doesn’t exist, specify the page title

      2. For each pairing and in order of priority determined by the “Opportunity Score”, place them into the proposed work for the month - one to two content pieces per package details.

      3. Add a “Current Work” label to all selected keywords

   3. If you run out of topics from the low difficulty folder, swap to the “High Opportunity” folder

      1. Sort out all keywords that have already been selected - Filter by label

      2. Complete the same steps as above for developing the work plan.

4. Lowest-Priority (High Volume Competitive Keywords)

   1. If you still need more content to fill out the 6-month plan, you can look at the keywords with the highest search volume and see what the competition looks like and whether or not we can compete/ create greater value around the keyword than the top rankers.

5. Reevaluate on the 6-month mark

   1. After the work has had time to cook for 6 months, it’s time to take another look at the performance to see if our efforts were effective.

   2. I propose we plug the current work folder in as the objective keyword list for the next 12 months. At the 6-month mark, we can measure the success of the campaign against the goal set by the system.

Set up an Objective

You will need to set up an objective in SEO monitor to track the progress on an ongoing basis.

Keyword List Maintenace (Monthly)

Now that the list is built and work has started, you will need to regularly edit, clean up, and expand your keyword lists, groups, and priorities.

1. A good place to start is in the smart folder labeled “Usage Optimization”

   1. First, we should clean out all the terms that have zero search volume. If no one is searching for the term, it’s a waste of time and resources to optimize for it.

   2. Also, remove any misspelled terms that Google would redirect to other more accurate terms. These will skew data.

2. Next look for opportunities to expand what we’re tracking - Look for groups with few tracked keywords (less than 10).

   1. Look at the keywords we’re tracking and then expand the competition section. Look at the keywords the competitors are using for that topic and look for high-volume terms to add to our list.

   2. Additionally, we can look for long-tail search terms in the “people also ask” section of Google or use “AnswerThePublic” to generate questions about a certain topic.

   3. Make sure to add them to the correct tracking group.

3. Look for new content “buckets”

   1. Always do a manual check of the site to determine if the client has had any service changes that would affect our keyword groups.

      1. Examples: Client no longer offers wheel alignments, they got a new wheel alignment machine, started selling a new brand, a location has closed, etc.

   2. Add new groups with keyword research using the same initial process to generate the associated keywords.

   3. Remove groups that are no longer relevant.

4. Consider removing issue keywords

   1. From the “All Keywords” list, use the caution sign toggle to show issue tags.

   2. For each, use the filter button to take a look:

      1. For cannibalization issues, consider consolidating content to one page.

         1. To identify the pages that are affecting one another, you can filter that term in Search Console and show the “landing pages” tab to see pages being served for each term.

         2. You can also use search operators to limit results to your site only and a particular keyword. (site:yourURL.com + “Keyword“)

      2. For keywords without a relevant page, ask yourself “should this be included in a group?” and if the answer is yes, you will likely want to find a way to work it into the content of the relevant landing page. If the answer is no, delete it.

         1. This is the same process for “Irrelevant Keywords”

      3. For terms that include the brand of another company and your client doesn’t sell the product or have some sort of relationship, delete it.

5. Pick new work for the content plan

   1. Based on the new keywords you have available are there any new opportunities to go after in the content optimization plan?

Additional Tools:

Extract People also search phrases in Google - Chrome Web Store

Free Domain Authority Checker by Moz: Get Website DA & PA Metrics

Search listening tool for market, customer & content research - AnswerThePublic

Google Trends

Main Page - But really tho