Monthly Keyword List Assessment

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?

Monthly to every other month

How many keywords should I be tracking?

Minimum - 100, Maximum - 250. If you’re approaching 250 keywords, please have someone review your keyword list

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

Keep track of what’s important to the dealer and what they consistently have units for.

Is it worth tracking location-based keywords? (i.e. atvs for sale portland or)?

If it’s a primary location and there’s search volume, then absolutely.

Should I track this keyword?

If you plan on optimizing for them then yes

How many variations of a keyword should I track?

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!

The Keyword Module

When you click on a keyword you are tracking, in this case atv, and select “Similar Keywords” you’ll see variations of that keyword and your website’s average position.

Click the + button and select the group to place the keyword in and hit Apply.

* Note: this will only work if the keyword you select has search volume.

Organic Traffic Tab

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

This tool can provide great keyword suggestions, however, you do need to use caution as if you are not careful in your selection, you could end up tracking more keywords than you intended. This approach is best attempted if you find that the above options did not provide you with quite what you were looking for.

Found in the “Research” tab, this tool will look for keywords that could potentially be beneficial to track. Once the tool is finished finding new keywords it will create a new folder with the title: SEO Opportunities [year-month-day]

A few things to keep in mind when using this tool:

This tool is more useful a few months into an SEO campaign. You should still use the Keyword Planner to build your initial keyword list.
Depending on how many keywords you are currently tracking and what variations of keywords you are tracking this method has the potential to find anywhere between 1 and 1000+ keywords at a time. Use with caution and limit the number it searches for.
Once the research is complete the tool will automatically track any keywords found, so you’ll have to manually delete any you don’t want.

It is helpful to use the filter function in order to easily move keywords into groups and delete any you don’t want to track.

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:

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, hit up 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 you’re ranking well for this keyword, that’s FANTASTIC. You’ll definitely want to keep it and explain to your dealer why it’s a huge win. 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.

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