When it comes to SEO and Link Building, the selection but also structuring of your keywords is critical. The following article will just delve into some methods to help you structure your keywords and provide some tips to help you achieve greater success.
Keyword Strategy & Process
- Map Out A Clear Strategy
Firstly it is important to map out a clear strategy. To achieve success, it is important that you first identify, what is your main objective, which service or product are you trying to advertise or push, which audience are you targeting, what locations or countries are you locating, what are your goals and what keywords will achieve these factors. Mapping out a strategy will help you identify and structure keywords for your SEO or PPC campaigns.
2. Brainstorm Ideas
Once this process has been completed, you should then look to brainstorm and try to draw up a list of keyword ideas. This process involves a number of steps such as; Building up a large base of keywords, Refining the Selection, Eliminating irrelevant terms and Identifying major key terms, core terms and building clusters.
3. Major Terms – Singular Keyword
When it comes to keyword selection, it is important to first identify your major keyword terms you would like to target. Major terms are generally a generic one keyword terms. These terms should tend to reflect you main services/products or goals. For example if you are an epos provider, you may sell epos software, epos cash registers, epos equipment etc. Therefore, I would select the term epos to work off, as this is the major term that defines everything I sell. Once selected, I will then break this further up into core terms and phrases to build off, described in the next section.
4. Core Terms – Short Phrase – 2 to 3 Keyword Phrase
Once you have established your major terms, then look to establish Core terms based on these which include phrases and long tail terms usually around 2-3 words long. Also look to build clusters of terms usually ranging from 10-15 terms.
When drawing up your collection of Core Terms, it is also important to include the following;
Singular/Plural Terms – For example – accountant, accountants, audit, audits, auditing
Misspellings – Acountant,
Country based Spellings – Specialisation, Specialization
Stop Words – Words include at, the, to, in, by – example Accountants in Dublin
Localisation & Geo-Targeting – Words including countries, counties, locations, streets,
Brands and Products – Specific products you sell, id numbers, versions – BMW 5 Series
Associations & Semantic Equivalents – Accountancy, Accounting
By doing so you will be able to rank for these terms, your link building will be more natural and you are adding strength to your strategy.
So if I have selected Epos as my Major Term, I will then look to build 10-15 core terms, for example;
Epos provider
Epos supplier
Epos cash registers
Epos equipment
Epos software supplier
Epos equipment software
If you wish to target multiple keywords or you provide multiple services, for example if you are an accountant and provide a range of services such as taxation, liquidations, auditing and outsourcing, you may decide to select a major term for each service and target each major term and build core terms for each major term.
For example, if I provide auditing and taxation services and I want to target those keywords,I could build the following as core terms and build them around clusters.
Major Term: Auditing Tax Accountant
Auditing Service Tax Accountants Service
Auditing Company Tax Accountants Firm
Auditing Service Dublin Tax Accountants Company
Auditing Company Dublin Tax Accountants Service Dublin
Auditing Professional Service
Auditing Firm
5. Mapping Keywords To Pages
Another important element of the process is that once you have selected your main term and have built variants around this term that you look to target a specific page on your website. So for instance, if I am an accountant, and I have selected the term taxation, I will build a taxation page specifically to target and point all my links with the term Taxation and the associated terms established such as “Taxation Service”, “Taxation Company”, “Taxation Service Dublin” etc. toward.
Optimise the page accordingly for the term taxation and ensure the term taxation and some of its variants are in the Meta tags, and content. Where a lot of companies fall down, is that they just build links to all different pages and they have not thought out which keywords they want to rank for but also which pages they want to rank for.
6. Building Links For These Terms
Once you have selected your major keyword term and have selected 10-15 equivalent phrases, established a page, begin to build links to start ranking for your key term and mix up your anchor text with these various phrases. You will find that not only will you rank for each of the individual terms but also you will begin ranking for the singular term as well. By using this strategy, you are less likely to be overusing the same anchor texted links. You are adding variety and also it will look more natural and in turn, you are less likely to be penalised.
By having structured your keywords like this, you have built up a solid foundation around your major singular term. Where many companies faulter, is that they select one keyword they want to rank for and will build all there links to that one keyword. They don’t mix up there approach with variants, phrases and associated terms. As a result it looks un-natural and you are more likely to be penalised. Also, because you are focusing only on one anchor text link, you will not tend to rank well for variations or longer tail phrases.
Remember, once you have all your variations and longer tail terms based around the same major singular term, you are adding strength and structure to your link building strategy. So for instance, if you build an anchor texted link “epos systems supplier” and build one for “epos software provider”. You will begin to rank for each search term, but you will also find overtime that you will begin to have traction on the term “epos” because epos is the core term associated with each of these phrases.
By applying Keyword Structuring for a Link Building Strategy you will find that your marketing campaigns will generte greater success.
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