A Detailed Guide To Keyword Mapping
- Shailendra Kadulkar
- 28 August, 2024
Keywords are the soul of an SEO campaign. They help your target audience find you on the internet and visit specific web pages. Using the right keywords for the right pages will help you rank high on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
At Movinnza, we focus on seamless keyword mapping to give our clients the reach they deserve. Effective keyword mapping increases the footfall on your website, leading to more conversions. It also puts your website “on the map” (pun intended!) and makes it more visible to your target audience.
In this guide, we will understand the basics of keyword mapping, its process, and how it helps us in catering to our clients’ requirements.
Let us start with the most fundamental question: what is keyword mapping?
Keyword mapping is the process of targeting specific keywords to different web pages. It is all about gathering the most suitable keywords, putting them into the right groups, and mapping them to the right pages.
A website has different pages. Each of these pages is dedicated to a specific service or topic in general. Keyword mapping in SEO assigns the best target keywords to your website pages. This ensures that your audience lands on the right page after searching for the right keywords.
Here are a few important reasons why you should incorporate keyword mapping in SEO:
Ignoring keyword mapping may lead to gaps in your keyword research. You may miss out on important keywords that are ideal for specific web pages. Keyword mapping lets you identify these gaps and fill them with suitable keywords.
Multiple organizations may offer services that are similar to yours. They may also use the same keywords as you to optimize their websites. When Google crawls through all websites, it finds it difficult to identify the best website to rank high. Such circumstances may hamper your search engine rankings despite using the right keywords.
With keyword mapping, you reduce the chances of keyword cannibalization. This is because it allows you to choose a range of different keywords for different web pages. You may also want to create a web page based on the keyword(s) you target. This allows you to stay as close to your audience’s search intent as possible.
Web pages with better internal linking are ranked high on search engines. Keyword mapping allows you to use keywords that help visitors navigate different pages of your website. This improves their browsing experience, reduces bounce rates, and increases conversion chances.
Now that we know what the benefit of keyword mapping is, let us go through its process. While different SEO agencies follow different steps, this is the most common and effective process of conducting keyword intent mapping:
Start by creating a list of all possible target keywords. These are the words or phrases your target audience is most likely to use while making online searches. This sets the base for your keyword mapping process. The keywords you gather at this stage will facilitate suitable allocation.
If needed, you can always use tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, Google Keyword Planner, and more to create an ideal list of keywords for your website. Dedicated keyword mapping tools simplify your team’s work and increase its productivity.
Once you find relevant keywords for your website, group them according to the web pages they are best suited for. Segregate these keywords according to search intent, search volume, and keyword difficulty.
The best way to go about this step is to create topic clusters. As the name suggests, a topic cluster contains a main page dealing with an overarching topic and its sub-pages. This will make your search intent clearer and help you assign your target keywords to the most appropriate pages.
Once you have a list of keywords for different web pages (or URLs), you can conceptualize your site’s content. Come up with engaging ideas that are not used by your competitors. Be as unique and interactive as possible without moving away from the search intent.
The more unique your content is, the more chances it has to rank high on the SERPs.
Keyword mapping is not a “one-and-done” activity. Do it regularly to keep your website and its web pages relevant. Keep an eye on the keywords with more search volume and relevance. If needed, replace them in specific web pages from time to time.
Organizations often believe that SEO keyword mapping is only needed while creating new web pages. That is definitely not the case.
Keyword research is an important component of keyword mapping. Different individuals and organizations operating in different sectors need a variety of keywords to optimize their websites.
Here are a few examples of primary and LSI target keywords associated with specific domains. While primary keywords are directly associated with your content and search intent, LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords include words or phrases associated with your primary keywords.
The examples used here are for service providers operating in Pune:
Primary Keyword: “local SEO services in Pune”
LSI Keywords: “Local SEO Pune,” “Pune map optimization,” “local keyword targeting Pune”
Primary Keyword: “eCommerce website development company in Pune”
LSI Keywords: “eCommerce website development company,” “eCommerce web development services in Pune”
Primary Keyword: “website development company in Pune”
LSI Keywords: “web development services Pune,” “website developers Pune”
Primary Keyword: “digital marketing company in Pune”
LSI Keywords: “digital marketing agency Pune,” “best digital marketing company in Pune,”
Primary Keyword: “social media marketing company in Pune”
LSI Keyword: “social media marketing in Pune,” “social media marketing agencies in Pune”
At Movinnza, we practice what we preach! Along with helping our clients rank their websites high on the SERPs, we also run SEO campaigns for our own website and web pages.
Following our keyword mapping strategies, we gathered a bunch of target keywords for our company and grouped them according to the different pages on our official website. Efficient keyword mapping helped us grow our business and maintain high SERP rankings.
Here are the two major challenges we faced while working on the website of Movinnza:
Digital marketing is a vast domain with a plethora of different players in the market. This increases the risk of keyword cannibalization and getting overshadowed by competitors offering similar services.
At the same time, the Google algorithm keeps changing, making it difficult for any website to retain its position on its search results without its team constantly being on its toes.
Here are a few important practices we followed to tackle the challenges that came our way and optimize our website for search engines:
Thanks to ethical SEO practices and effective keyword mapping, Movinnza achieved significant growth over the last two years.
Here is our company’s status for 2022-23:
This is the growth we achieved in 2023-24 so far:
Keyword mapping enhances your SEO practices by reducing keyword cannibalization, facilitating gap analysis, and encouraging quality content creation. It also creates room for external and internal link-building activities.
If you want to go ahead by yourself, you can simply make Google searches with words and phrases related to your website. See the strength, difficulty, and volume of these words to finalize them. For better results, you can always turn to automated tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, and more.
A primary keyword is the main word or phrase that will help your website rank on search engine results pages. LSI keywords are the words and phrases that are related to your primary keyword and match your audience’s search intent.
Some of the most popular keyword mapping tools you can use are Semrush, Google Keyword Planner tool, and Ahrefs. Select the tool that best meets your campaign’s requirements.
Once you gather all your target keywords, see which keywords match specific web pages the most. For example, if you provide web development services, map the keyword “mobile app development services” to the web page that talks about mobile app development.
Yes, keyword mappings should be updated regularly. This depends on your SEO campaign and your official website. Ideally, it is best to wait until your site attains higher rankings on the SERPs before assessing your keywords again.
Keyword mapping determines the kind of content you need for specific web pages. The keywords you map will give you an overarching theme and idea for the content to be put on specific pages.
Yes, keyword mapping allows you to link your web pages internally. This allows visitors to navigate through your website seamlessly, improving their user experience.
The biggest mistake you can commit during keyword mapping is choosing keywords that are irrelevant to your website or specific web pages. This will hamper your audience’s search intent and prevent your site from getting high search engine rankings.
The process of keyword mapping remains more or less the same, irrespective of the industry you operate in. The only difference lies in the keywords your team will choose for your website. Always ensure that you pick keywords that are in tune with your industry and services.
Keyword mapping can be combined with almost all SEO strategies for better results. For example, effective mapping of keywords facilitates quality link-building. It also allows internal linking to improve user experience. Moreover, keyword mapping sets a base for creating quality content for your web pages.
Once you create and publish content after mapping suitable keywords, you can quantify the performance of your web pages using tools like Semrush and Ahrefs. These tools will help you assess your pages’ performance after mapping specific keywords. If your website and its pages climb the search engine ladder after keyword mapping, your SEO campaign is a success. If not, you may need to rework your strategy and look for better target keywords.
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