We have already covered topics on how to generate quality content and how you need to focus on both keywords and topic relevancy. Now, we are going to explore the ins and outs of keyword targeting strategies. Basically, the article is here to show you how to organize your keyword targeted pages, how to improve them and increase the overall traffic on your website.
Keyword Table
The most efficient way to track your keyword progress and have a clear overview of the situation is by creating a keyword table. You can use Microsoft’s Excel to do this, or even a regular Word document; it’s all up to you.
The first column should be “Keyword”, and here you’ll list out all the keywords you are ranking for. The next column should be “URL”, and here you’ll list out all of the pages on your site that have the keyword in their name, so if you don’t have a URL with a particular keyword name you might want to create one.
The third column is “Volume”, where you will write down the strength or number of searches for a corresponding keyword. On the forth, you can add a column called “Content grade” and see how your content is rated. The next one should be “Speed”, which is the loading speed of the page. Next is the “Engagement: column, to track the engagement on a particular page.
All of these features can be monitored or assessed using tools like Keyword planner; you can also use the Moz toolkit, or Screaming Frog. or Searchmetrics, etc.
Moving on, you’ll need a column that tracks internal links and one that tracks external links to a particular page. Then, create one for Page Authority, one of Desktop Rank and one for Mobile Rank, and the last on for Organic Visits. It should resemble the column in the picture bellow.
A few more columns you can consider are Anchor Text, ranking difficulty, CTR (click through rate) opportunity, KW potential, and Importance.
How to use this map
Alright; so, you have created a table! Now what?
Well, it’s easy; you can now monitor these important fields and see which column needs the most improvement, or which ones you can improve easily, etc. Here are some creative ways on how you can use it.
Identify keywords that have no content – as we’ve talked about earlier, if you don’t have a URL page for a keyword you want to rank for, it means you need to create content for that particular keyword. This should be your top priority.
Identify on-page improvement potential – basically, you will see on which aspects of the page you are underperforming. Maybe you have lower organic clicks, or a lower mobile rank, so you need to optimize for mobile users, and you’ll increase organic visits, as well. You might also lack authority because not many external links lead to your page; so, you’d want to improve that or to enhance the quality of the content so that the page becomes more reliable and more linkable, so to speak.
Identify content without intentional targeting – this can happen if the keyword is too vague, like for example “games”. You might want to be more specific in this area, and give additional information about what you are doing. Maybe you are developing video games, or creating board games, maybe you only sell games, etc.
In order to mitigate the bounce rate, and draw your target audience, you might need to be more specific with your keywords. Also, if the loading speed of the page is slow, it needs to be better optimized, or maybe you should contact your web host to see if everything is alright, etc.
Identify lacking links – you have columns for both external and internal links, so if a page lacks authority, but has a good user experience, you might want to see if a page can be featured on an another blog, or on another site; maybe add some new pictures that can be featured, etc.
Prioritize your tasks – lastly, you’ll get to see where immediate attention is needed, which pages are in dire need of improvement in order to increase your ranking.
So, there you have it, a good way to organize and track the progress of your keyword strategy. You can add or avoid some of the mentioned columns, but make sure to try it out.
The author is highly qualified and writes blog posts weekly.
