A five-step framework for effective keyword targeting in 2020

30 second summary:

• Correct optimization is about comprehensive fundamentals, not the “secret tricks”.
• The most important basic tactic for doing the right thing is keyword targeting.
• First, you need to know where your customers are in the sales funnel.
• Then use the most relevant and valuable keywords that target customer intent.
• By associating the keywords with your content, you can always keep track of which page is targeting which searches.
• Aleh Barysevich’s Guide, Founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario, will help you with successful keyword targeting.

Sometimes we get carried away by details and let the big picture disappear from view. However, when it comes to SEO, the devil isn’t in the details or any other little-known keyword targeting and all of the research technique you’ve unearthed. Rather, it is about being strategic when working on your essentials.

And today we’re going to try to look at keyword targeting (the cornerstone of your keyword research) from a different angle. Make sure that all of your efforts are genuinely aligned with your business objectives and best adapt to the competitive landscape in which you operate.

Step 1. Determine the funnel stages

The idea of ​​funnel stages is not new to SEOs.

At any point in time, each of our potential customers is in a different “phase” of the buying process – from suspecting a problem (upper funnel) to searching for available solutions (middle funnel) to actually looking for a purchase (low funnel) .

However, when it comes to keyword targeting, we mainly use this concept to classify the keywords that we already need to better integrate them into our content plan and overall site structure.

What we often forget is that different business goals are better aligned with different funnel levels. And there are two questions that you should better ask yourself before diving into keyword research:

A. How are you going to monetize your SEO traffic?

Depending on the monetization model, you may be more interested in a broader or, on the contrary, narrower range of keywords.

• advertising – – Top funnel keywords
  If your primary target is eyeballs for your ads, you need the information keywords with the highest search volume.
• Affiliate marketing – – Keywords for the middle funnel
  Affiliate marketing is mainly about squeezing yourself into the customer journey during the investigation phase, just before customers decide to finally buy the product.
• E-commerce – – Low funnel keywords
  If you are targeting hundreds of different products, your keyword strategy will be dominated by low-intent keywords.

B. Are your budget and resources limited?

Targeting top funnel keywords requires more resources. You need to spread your efforts across multiple topics while getting lower conversions.

So if you have a sizable budget allocated, you may want to target the funnel top with your ecommerce website as well. However, since there are few or no resources available, it is better to focus on low-funnel transactional keywords.

Step 2. Create intent-based keyword groups

Intention-based targeting is also nothing new. In fact, it is important that content is displayed for appropriate queries.

The more Google talked about semantic search, the more SEOs discussed: How are keywords used now when Google is able to search beyond keywords for meaning and context?

Clearly, creating dozens of flat pages for separate keywords was no longer an option. Deleting keywords altogether and simply creating extremely detailed content also turned out to be touchless as both search engines and people still rely on keywords.

SEO-wise, it seems like the best approach When creating content, we’re talking about keywords with a specific search intent. In this way we give the user what he is really looking for and still deliver relevance signals for search engines.

Regardless of the methods you use to find your initial keyword list, your next step is to break them down into smaller groups based on your intent. For example:

keywords	intention
Buy rare records Buy Jazz Vinyl	Vinyl business research specialists
Buy vinyl cheap Best prices on used vinyl Vinyl for sale	Find places to buy vinyl cheaply
used vinyl stores Where to Buy Used Vinyl in San Diego	Get a list of the best vinyl stores
how to choose used vinyl how to study vinyl	Get tips on choosing vinyl
Clean vinyl records Is it okay to clean records with alcohol?	Get tips on cleaning vinyl

Step 3. Identify the real business potential

When analyzing business potential, we usually examine search volume and keyword difficulty to ensure that the keywords we choose have the potential to generate traffic.

However, upon closer inspection, especially when it comes to top funnel information keywords, not all traffic has the same business value and conversion opportunities.

It’s common sense, logic, and intuition. Based on these, I usually classify my keyword groups into “high”, “medium”, and “low” business value.

With the last category, as a rule, completely cut off from the campaign.

keywords	intention	Business value
Buy rare records Buy Jazz Vinyl	Vinyl business research specialists	High
Buy vinyl cheap Best prices on used vinyl Vinyl for sale	Find places to buy vinyl cheaply	High
used vinyl stores Where to Buy Used Vinyl in San Diego	Get a list of the best vinyl stores	High
how to choose used vinyl how to study vinyl	Get tips on choosing vinyl	center
Clean vinyl records Is it okay to clean records with alcohol?	Get tips on cleaning vinyl	Low

Step 4. Identify the best matching content types

If you look closely, you will surely find that Google SERPs are not formed randomly.

Did you see a correlation between the type of search results (e.g., a guide, news page, review) and the type of search query?

The thing is, some types of content seem to suit Google better for this or that particular search intent. And that only seems logical. When deciding which results to display on a SERP:

• For informative keywords, you would likely choose step-by-step guides, infographics, and explanatory videos.
• For transactional inquiries, prefer product pages, login pages, free consultations, etc .;
• When inquiring about research, they look for comparison pages, tables, and reviews.

However, as search queries are constantly being adjusted by RankBrain, just using common sense can lead to a misunderstanding.

So we’d need to check which page types actually rank for a particular group of keywords. This will help you identify the most popular content type on the SERPs for each of the intent groups on your list.

keywords	intention	Business value	Content type
Buy rare records Buy Jazz Vinyl	Vinyl business research specialists	High	Record store websites
Buy vinyl cheap Best prices on used vinyl Vinyl for sale	Find places to buy vinyl cheaply	High	Discount offers in online record stores
used vinyl stores Where to Buy Used Vinyl in San Diego	Get a list of the best vinyl stores	High	Lists
how to choose used vinyl how to study vinyl	Get tips on choosing vinyl	center	Instructions
Clean vinyl records Is it okay to clean records with alcohol?	Get tips on cleaning vinyl	Low	Instructions

Step 5. Assigning Keywords to Content

For a brand new website, keyword mapping is one of the most important things to check before getting started.

At this stage, you need to make sure that all of your valuable keywords are effectively distributed across the future website pages.

With a website that has been around for a long time, things are more complicated as some of your pages are likely to already have Google rankings. Any changes you make could result in either losing your current rankings, or pages cannibalizing each other’s keywords.

Before you decide on an ideal keyword map, you should therefore consider all current rankings that have already been achieved.

And finally

Next, optimize each of your pages for the keyword groups you selected. This process is certainly quite time consuming (and definitely worth a separate article).

Following this five step framework and being strategic and consistent from the start will ensure that the effort you put into content optimization really pays off.

Aleh Barysevich is the founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario.