Keyword mapping refers to finding keywords that will drive customers to your site or product. This kind of keyword research usually happens before starting a new project. First, you’ll want to determine your target audience, where they’re located, and what keywords will bring them into your brand. Then, once you’ve figured those things out, you’ll get started.
Keywords are important because they allow Google to rank websites based on the words contained within them. By mapping keywords, you can ensure that those you want to target appear at the top of the page.
The keyword mapping tool allows you to enter multiple keywords (one per line) and map them to pages on your site that contain similar terms. This lets Google know which pages are relevant to each term.
Mapping the keywords to specific pages makes it easier for Google to identify what pages should be displayed on its SERP.
What Is Keyword Mapping?
SEO professionals use keyword maps to understand how users search online. This helps them create a better search engine optimization strategy to rank higher.
Keyword mapping helps you understand how search engines see web pages. Keywords include words people type into search boxes to get information or products. A website may use many different kinds of keywords.
These keywords give searchers a sense of what to expect when they go online. A search engine looks at each word on a page and decides if that page is relevant to the search term. Search engines do this process quickly because billions of searches are made every day.
Using keyword mapping lets you figure out what search terms relate to the target keywords you want to rank high on. You don’t have to know a lot regarding SEO to use keyword mapping effectively. But, you should know enough to determine whether a keyword map will work for your business.
Keyword mapping is often described as one of the most important aspects of an SEO strategy. Google gives preference to pages that utilize keywords strategically over those that don’t – pages that use them effectively rank higher than others that do not. Make sure your website does not appear to ignore this process by using long strings of text or irrelevant content.
Why Is Keyword Mapping Important?
Targeting keywords means pairing your target keywords to specific pages of your site. Keyword mapping is one of the most effective SEO tools for optimizing your site. It would help if you used this technique when creating new content on your website. This technique helps you target specific keywords with your articles and other types of content. Here are the benefits of keyword mapping:
For Organization
Keyword mapping is an important part of content creation. First, you need to ensure that you are using keywords relevant to your site. This allows you to be more targeted when writing content for your site.
To Prevent Duplication
Keyword mapping helps you create a focused strategy for your SEO efforts. This helps prevent duplicate content by organizing keywords into groups. Organizing keywords can also help prevent competition for the same position on search engine results pages.
To Spot Content Marketing Issues
A ton of content is good for business, but if we’re talking about writing quality, it varies on the type of content you’re seeking. For example, when you write an article for your blog or article marketing site, you want to focus on providing useful information to readers. You also want your articles to get shared by readers and social media users. This means that you need to be engaging and ensure that your readers feel satisfied after reading your post.
With a keyword map, you’ll be able to quickly identify any keywords that aren’t covered by any of your other keywords. This can also help you determine if those words belong to a new topic or an existing one.
Goals Become Easier to Convey
Whether hiring an outside copywriter or using your in-house team, a keyword map can help make content expectations easier to convey. For example, already having the main topic, primary keyword, and secondary keywords ahead make your draft more focused on the same tone & structure you’re looking for.
How to Perform Keyword Mapping
This guide should help you understand how to get started with keyword mapping for your SEO strategy. You can use it as an orientation or start working on specific areas, depending on your experience level.
Do Keyword Search Query
Keyword mapping begins when you conduct thorough keyword research to find all of the keywords you already rank on and new ones you’d like to rank for.
Build a Target Keyword List
You’ll uncover both head and long-tail keyword opportunities that your audience might use when searching online. It’s possible to rank for hundreds or even thousands of keywords, but it’s unlikely that you’ll be successful without doing some keyword research first.
Keywords and locations help determine how many people are searching for what. Mapping these results to the most relevant pages allows your business to be found by those interested in your services.
Why You Need to Identify ShortTail Keywords from LongTail Keywords
Short-tail keywords are harder to rank than long-tail keywords. If you’re selling women’s athletic shoes, then focusing on the term “athletic shoes” might be better than focusing on “shoes.”
Many people use broad keywords because they think those keywords work well. However, when you say “broad,” what it mean is “not specific” or “overused.” So, it makes sense that these types of keyword searches are harder to rank for.
Furthermore, some people try to be too clever by including some of their long-tail keyword misspellings. This approach doesn’t always work out since Google’s algorithm seems to penalize them. Using these broad keywords may help your site score higher on the SERP, but this isn’t something you should do without some serious research and testing.
SEO should be focused on more specific search terms and phrases with fewer competitors. This means focusing on keywords with less competition. Optimizing these search query terms and phrases could help your website rank higher in search results.
Assign the Keywords to Which Page to Rank
Keyword mapping helps you identify what keywords your competitors are ranking for and how you can use those keywords to improve your website. You can also use the keyword mapping process to see if any of your current content is missing a piece of information. For example, if you’re trying to rank for a keyword but your site doesn’t contain an answer to the question being asked, that may be why you aren’t ranking well. You can use keyword mapping to determine if anything is lacking in your content ideas.
The idea of keyword mapping is to assign keywords to individual web pages. This allows us to create more focused content around specific topics. For example, if you’re targeting the word ‘keyword,’ you should write about exactly what it means when you use it in your SEO campaign.
There are always groups of similar keywords such as positions, plurals, and variants that map to the same page. So you won’t need to search for every keyword combination.
The first step to assigning the relevant keywords is to figure out what your audience needs to know about their product or service. It would help if you were thinking about how people will use your relevant content before you write it.
Head keywords should be mapped to relevant pages, while You should use long-tail keywords to describe those pages.
Prepare Your Keyword Mapping Document
To help keep things organized and have an optimized on-page SEO document for your client, you’ll need to prepare a keyword mapping strategy. This can be referred to as an on-page optimization plan or an SEO change document.
A keyword mapping document is normally an Excel spreadsheet where each row contains a keyword. In addition, each cell contains a key phrase related to that keyword. As an example, if you want to optimize your keyword “gift baskets,” then under the keyword “Gift Baskets” you write the key phrases “basket,” “gifts,” etc. This spreadsheet helps you identify what words or keyphrases need to be included within the content of your web pages.
While the mapping process is just assigning keywords into a mapped keyword column, this process creates the foundation to create your recommendations pages for each page.
Keyword Mapping Best Practices
There are many ways to map keywords. You should choose the method that makes sense for your business.
Know the Common Mistakes
There are three common mistakes people make when mapping out keyword strategies:
- It’s important to understand what types of products or services a website offers before deciding how much effort should go into targeting specific keywords.
- It’s possible to waste time by focusing too much on certain keywords without considering other aspects of the product.
- If you use data from third-party sources, validate them first.
Take Time Researching Your Keywords
People who use Google frequently tend to click on the first few organic search results. To target these users, you need to ensure your website ranks for those keywords. Your site should rank high for those terms because it shows that you know what you’re talking about. Start with a broad keyword selection to identify a large group of potential keywords.
Narrow Your Options
You’re going to get lots of irrelevant keywords and phrases that aren’t going to help you. So please don’t waste time on them. Keyword difficulty is defined as how difficult it is to rank highly for a particular keyword in search engines.
Search volume is defined as the number of people searching for your keywords. To get more organic traffic from Google, you want to pick keywords with a high monthly search volume but low keyword difficulties.
Group Related Keywords Semantically
After you’ve created your keyword list, your next task is to group similar terms. You can also group these keywords by location. If you’re serving multiple locations or countries, you can organize your content into categories that target distinct geographic regions.
Your topic is the first thing you must base your keyword groups on. You want to sort your keywords into groups of synonyms and then create pages that focus on each group.
Be Ready with Your Content Roadmap
After you’ve finished the final step, you should have a couple of different categories of keywords or groupings of similar words and keyword phrases that relate to each other. It’s now time to create an optimized piece of content for your site.
Each group should choose one main keyword or phrase for their content, write a blog post that uses that key phrase or phrase, and include relevant keywords in the title, body copy, and meta description.
After creating your first round of content, you can then create some of your secondary keywords into primary ones. You can also create additional content hubs and subpages that make sense from the top-level down.
Always Keep Track of Your Results and Replicate Them
As with everything digital marketing-related, you can’t know what works unless you watch your results. Review your content and rankings either once per month or quarter. What strategies have been the most successful and haven’t quite hit the mark?
Adjust your keyword strategy when necessary, and leverage the approaches producing the best results now. Unfortunately, website optimization and keyword search are significant time investments.
To be sure, you need to monitor your results, but you should not wait until they have run their course before making any changes. Instead, review your content regularly, and then adjust your strategies accordingly.
Difference between New Website Keyword Mapping and a Redesign Keyword Mapping
There are minor differences between mapping the keywords for a new site and mapping them for a redesigned one. Usually, if you’re doing a redesign, you’ll have a list of keywords that you’ve already identified that you can use for your focus keyword research.
When creating a new website, you’ll need to use the updated URLs for the new site. To prepare a redirect document, be sure to use the final destination URLs of the old site.
A site redesign may mean creating new pages for additional keywords, which means adding them to the sitemap. These keywords must be marked as “new.”
When mapping the keywords to the new pages, keep in mind which ones already rank well on your keyword list. It may not be worth it to try and rank the new pages if they don’t fit well with the current content.
How to Avoid Keyword Cannibalization
You can use the Incognito mode of your browser when you want to see how your site looks without being tracked by third parties. The search results page shows you the most relevant information about your website. If there are many similar results, you can map the keywords to the same page.
Keyword cannibalization occurs when a page or site contains more than one keyword. The keywords you’re thinking about targeting should be unique to the page/site. You want to avoid including too many different keywords on a single page.
Your page should be considered a competitor if it shares the same keywords with other pages. Keyword cannibalization may happen if you start sharing a very long list of keywords with other pages. This could result in the loss of traffic or conversion rate.
Keyword mapping mitigates this risk by spreading your keywords evenly throughout your pages – ensuring that your content spends more time outperforming its rivals and less time battling against itself.
Keyword mapping spreads out your keywords so you don’t end up competing with yourself. That means your content performs well when people search for those words.