How to Use Keyword Mapping to Improve SEO – Guide
It’s hard to believe, but in 2019 there were 4.4 million blog posts published every day. As a business owner, that number can be overwhelming. How can you expect to stand out with so much published content? The answer is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When you do good SEO, your blog posts will appear on the first page for searches your ideal customers are doing. This will grab attention and draw an audience to your post. For your site’s SEO to be really effective, it’s not enough to just use the keywords you need to use strategically. That’s where keyword mapping comes in. Read on to learn more about what SEO keyword mapping is and How to use it to improve your SEO.
What is keyword mapping?
In its simplest form, keyword mapping is a framework for the keywords you choose to target that mirrors the structure of your site. Powered by research, the ultimate goals of the map are to help you figure out where to optimize, what content to create, and where you can add new pages to drive more traffic. Keyword mapping is one of the main on-page optimization processes, giving Google and other search engines the opportunity to analyze the relevance of each page and ultimately provide users with the information they are looking for. By avoiding this process, your strategy will be less structured and you will miss out on a number of keyword opportunities.
Start by using a query to identify a larger set of keywords.
Your goal in the first phase of research is to gather as many keywords as possible for which you want your site to appear. Think outside your current site structure and look beyond the keywords you currently rank for – specifically the ones your competitors are using for their SEO efforts. Given that it’s summer in South Florida, I’ll use “Delray Beach hotel” as our query example for this exercise. Using Semrush, enter the query into the search bar and click on the section that offers “related keywords” (see below). This particular query has over 780 related keywords, so for simplicity’s sake we’ll take a closer look at the top 50. Export these keywords to a spreadsheet (see below). The next step is to separate them and create something similar to keyword mapping.
Group keywords that answer the same question.
Once you have your set of keywords, the next thing you want to do is think about searcher intent, with the goal of grouping keywords that answer the same question. Start by duplicating your spreadsheet and going line by line to pair similar keywords. For example, when we take a closer look at the keywords generated from “Delray Beach hotel,” the first three phrases — “Delray Beach hotels,” “Delray Beach hotels,” and “Delray Beach hotels” — are very similar to our initial query. These would be the ideal terms for the homepage, so they should be grouped together. The next keyword is a specific hotel in the area, and after looking through the rest of the list, I noticed that there are several specific hotels that made it onto the list. I’ve grouped them in red (see below). To the final of this process, I had eight categories, including a miscellaneous group. All together they are creating the perfect keyword map driven by which I can create relevant content to drive more organic traffic.
Create potential URLs and range keywords accordingly.
Once you’ve organized your keywords, focus on using each set of keywords to help visualize your site’s structure and potential pages. Continuing with the hotel example, create subdirectories based on groups of three or more keywords (eg “oceanfront” or “beachfront”). This will help you create a logical path that is visitor and search friendly, improving your chances of ranking for those keywords (see below). Once complete, your model should look like this:
Finally, use buckets to create potential URLs and brainstorm content.
One of the best things about keyword mapping is that it makes you think about your pages in terms of themes, helping you distinguish between which ones. words would make great URLs and ones that should be saved for something like a blog post or a downloadable resource. For example, let’s take a closer look at the miscellaneous category, where “pet-friendly hotels Delray Beach fl” ended up (See below). Although it has a higher keyword difficulty rating, you shouldn’t discount the phrase completely. Instead of dedicating a subdirectory to it, use it as inspiration for a relevant blog post.
Final note
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