Making Sense of SEO Keyword Research with Mapping

My latest article at Practical Ecommerce, read it in full here.

 

Keyword research is essential to search engine optimization. It’s the window into the words that real searchers use to find products like the ones you sell. But at the end of the keyword research process — detailed in “Part 1: Keyword Research” — search marketers can be overwhelmed by the vast amount of data staring at them from their Excel spreadsheets. Keyword categorizing and mapping help move the optimization process from the research phase to the actual optimization phase.

Categorizing Keywords

During the keyword research process, patterns start to appear. Different types of keywords emerge that can be logically grouped into different categories that reflect the site’s business goals and core product offerings. For example, if my site sells subscriptions to online games for kids, my keyword research could be 12,000 phrases or more based on the research conducted in Google’s free Keyword Tool. But because each keyword is needs to be related to my core product offering, I can start to categorize them and delete the ones that aren’t directly relevant.

Let’s say that my site sells games. But it doesn’t sell just any games; it sells online games for kids. That’s three vital components to choosing keywords that are specifically targeted to my product offering: “types of games,” “online vs. offline,” and synonyms for the word “kids,” as listed in the spreadsheet, below.

See the diagrams and read more on how to categorize & map keywords »