Keyword Research – GAP Analysis

Keyword Research – GAP Analysis

When it comes to keyword research, there is not just one type wherein you target keywords for existing pages. Finding new keywords allows you to grab new opportunities in content marketing. That is what this entire module will talk about, keyword gap analysis.While there may be several keyword research tools out there, only the researching technique matters in the end.

Various professionals, such as bloggers, eCommerce store owners, marketing managers, digital agencies, and SEO consultants.

Keyword gap analysis has become an effective way of finding new keywords for content marketing. To build one of the most effective SEO campaigns, let us understand the why’s and how’s of keyword gap analysis.

Five Phases of SEO Campaign

Before we get into the depths of keyword gap analysis, let us take a few steps back. The previous modules explained the five phases of the SEO campaign.

The five phases is a process you need to tackle to build and execute a perfect SEO campaign. Most commonly known as The Blueprint, the five phases of an SEO campaign involve SEO analysis, keyword research, on-page optimization, and more.

 

• Learning – Starting with research, you lead the project by familiarizing yourself with the monthly reports and previous analysis.

• Improving – Through monthly reports, you work on your SEO campaign and refine it as much as possible. Ideate to plan improved campaigns.

• Building – Once you grasp all the pros and cons, utilize those ideas, and use the best resources within your reach to execute.

• Promoting – Now that your campaign is built, be ready to put it out in the world extensively.

• Evaluating – Finally, you evaluate your campaign reports at the end of every month, and continue the five phases again.

Understanding Keyword Gap Analysis

Using the right and relevant keywords is important to give a boost to your SEO strategies and your online visibility as a whole. You could lose a lot of traffic if you try to rank for keywords that are irrelevant to your industry or target market. Similarly, it is pointless to compete for terms people do not even look for.

Whether new or old in a business, you would want your competitors to outrun you through several SEO strategies. Keyword gap analysis is one such SEO strategy. This SEO strategy aims to find the keywords that rank best on SERPs and can generate the most traffic by comparing them to those of your competitors. In short, it’s a method of determining which keywords your rivals are ranking for, but you aren’t.

The goal of this analysis is to find untapped opportunities to improve a website’s search engine rankings by optimizing its content to target the keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but your website is not.

With the help of keyword gap analysis, you can easily find relevant and high-traffic keywords as well as discover new keyword options and keywords that are effective for the present website.

Why should you conduct a keyword gap analysis?

The main aim of SEO keyword research is to attract more and more users and customers to your business and website. You simply can’t draw any traffic, though. You should target extremely valuable, highly driven visitors to whom you can easily provide a solution to their problems.

By making use of keyword research analysis, you can easily find those keywords that will drive more visitors to your website. This also means you will be open to various possibilities to improve your SEO game. By figuring out the most ranking keywords, businesses can create content according to the keywords they have found or work on their existing ones to boost search engine rankings and visibility.

But if you think that keyword research gap analysis is important only for finding high-ranking keywords and SEO, you are mistaken! You can use this analysis for paid search campaigns as well. You can find what terms your competitors have paid for, which will help you build a strategy by integrating both natural and paid analysis to improve your strategy.

Using a few resources such as Ahrefs, you can look for keywords and perform a gap analysis. You can easily build a rank-worthy website to include these keywords with the help of content marketing.

(Source : Google Images)

How do you conduct a keyword gap analysis?

The process of conducting the keyword gap analysis is quite simple and barely takes any time. Let’s go through an overview before digging into the process of keyword gap analysis.

(Source : Google Images)

Using Google Sheets templates – With the help of Ahrefs, you can simply export data and paste it into readymade Google Sheets templates. Not only does this make your process less tedious, but it automatically pulls keyword gaps.

Adding pillars and clusters – Pillars are keywords that focus on a wider topic with high search volume, while clusters focus on specific keywords that are attainable. These help in cleaning out keywords depending on their relevance. Moreover, topic generation becomes simpler in doing so.

Creating topics for content marketing – Moving on, you use these keywords to help in content marketing and build an improved SEO campaign around it.

Run Keyword Gap Analysis

We saw an overview of conducting a keyword gap analysis. Let us dig deeper into the techniques of conducting a keyword gap analysis. Here we shall look at methods to export data, pull keywords, group keywords, and form a topic for content marketing in the end.

Setting up the file

In the first step, you will use a simple file that can pull keyword data exported from your Ahref research. This step will take you about five to fifteen minutes based on how many competitors’ data you pull into your file.The average is 3 to 5 competitors. However, you can go higher as per your preference. This will fully depend on how in-depth you want to conduct the analysis.

Here are the steps to setting up your file for keyword gap analysis.

• Look at the template – Your template should generally have a few sheets within the document already, such as client keywords (KWS) and competitors. Select competitors that have related content to your clients, which will lead to finding relevant keywords.

• Download your keywords – You can simply do this with the help of Ahrefs. Once you go to the Ahrefs website, input your client’s website name. Once you do this, go ahead and select ‘Organic Keywords’ on the displayed page.

In doing so, you will be asked for quick export, full export, or custom. These are basically the number of keywords you wish to gather. Quick reports provide the first 1,000 rows, and full export does more than 1,000 rows. At the same time, custom allows you to select a number of your choice.The pop up also gives you CSV format options, wherein Microsoft Excel is recommended for this template. When you click start to export, you shall download the document. Further, you open the excel sheet to select the entire content and copy it into your Google Sheets template. This should be copied in the ‘clients KWS’ sheets.

  • Ways to find competitors’ keywords – There are several ways to go through with this step. You can start by asking your clients about it. However, most times, their information turns out to be inaccurate. This is because they are not always aware of who their exact competitors are.

With your expertise in the field, you can find out your clients’ keywords with ease. While you could opt for the questionnaire method, it is not recommended because the clients will provide a wide range of competitors. Remember that your analysis is based on finding gaps and new opportunities for clients. You can simply avoid this method and save yourself a lot of time finding irrelevant keywords.

(Source : https://ahrefs.com/blog/competitive-analysis/)

Start by referring to Ahrefs, which provides a list of top ten competitors for your client. You can click on the websites of your competitors linked by Ahrefs. Besides taking out keywords, you can just go through competitors’ blogs to see the type of content they are stirring up.

Moreover, try to shortlist these competitors based on content and brand similarities. This will easily eliminate keywords that are of no use to you, and further, give you a detailed idea of what your direct competitors are doing.

• Download competitors’ keywords – Now that you have shortlisted competitors, you can carry out the same process that you did to download clients’ keywords. This is a refresher, go to Ahrefs, input the competitors’ website URL, select ‘Organic Keywords,’ and export.

(Source : Google Images)

This is an optional sub-step wherein you filter out the unnecessary keywords. This includes positioning of the keywords that are ranked at 15 and above, or you can custom select the positioning. We fully recommend this step of deleting to weed out content and save your time.

All you have to do is copy and paste this data into your Google Sheets competitors’ templates one-by-one.

• Authorize keyword research – Once you are done with exporting the relevant keyword data, you can edit the Google Sheets tags to client’s and competitors’ respective names. To further run the file, you click on ‘Blueprint KW Research’ at the top of the panel, which will snapshot the keywords.

The authorization process is quite easy to get through. All you have to do is select your linked Google Account and permit the app. In case the pop-up states that ‘This app isn’t verified,’ do not panic.

The quick fix to rectify the pop-up situation is to select advanced settings and further click to open the Blueprint KW Research. You are now set to run the file!

• Script running – Once you give your file some time to run, you can come back later to see your file completely tabulated. You will have a list of keywords, keyword difficulty, monthly search volumes, best ranks, ranking competitors, and more tabs.

And, you have set your file!

Cleaning the data

With the help of your newly set file, you can now move on to the next step of building an SEO campaign. Your file currently is full of thousands of keywords, which is why this step is extremely crucial. Not only does it make your work easy, but it also gives you more time to focus on relevant keywords later.

During this step, you will get rid of unimportant data such as misspelled keywords, duplicated, low volume search, and irrelevant keywords.

• Eliminate tabs – The first step to cleaning the data is to declutter your space, which is the Google Sheets template. You can delete all the tabs for competitors except your keyword overview tab and the master tab. You can also go ahead and hide the approval column since it will not be needed anymore.

• Filter columns – This particular step will help to tabulate your numerical keywords in order. Filter the column monthly search volumes to fall in descending order. Further, eliminate those search volumes that are lower than ten or so. Your client needs help with ranking, and low ranked words do not contribute as much.

• Skim through – Head to the keywords column to weed out some topics’ potential of wasting time. This could get tedious, but manual browsing is vital to receive accurate results. Take your time and get rid of those with special characters, misspelled words, and irrelevant content keywords.

• Grouping keywords – Now that you have a polished and neat excel sheet full of relevant data, get ready to assign the keywords into groups, pillars, and clusters. Grouping keywords is an essential step to help with crisp content creation. You are taking your first step into generating good content ideas for your client. Since grouping keywords is a crucial step, make sure you are giving it enough time of about one to three hours.

• Focus on the top ranks – Your first step can start by focusing on the top-ranking keywords since these hold greater importance. If your competitors have managed to rank higher with the help of these keywords, so can your client.

• New tab – Grouping keywords is all about creating pillars and clusters. These are the columns you want to fill out. Make a new tab called settings which will involve all your pillars and clusters. During the second step, which is browsing the keywords, you must have got an idea of what keywords fall into which category.

Some general pillars could be SEO, social media, paid media, email marketing, content marketing, etc. Moving on, you go back to your master sheet for data validation. Data validation will open a simple pop-up box for you to edit its settings

Now only does this reduce your typing work, but it creates options for every box in the pillar column. All you have to do is click on the triangle, and it will drop down your pillar options. In fact, you can later add more pillars if you want to.

• Cluster grouping – Once you create your drop-down pillars, you have to input clusters. Even though you have to input clusters manually, there is a simpler way to go about it. Once you see the first keyword, filter the Google Sheets with that keyword. Doing this will help to cover topics at one go easily and help in grouping the clusters together.

Your clusters could include examples, page designs, email marketing, logos, etc. that will help you to generate topics easily. Keep filtering with keywords until you fill your clusters column specifically. Try to stick to less amount of clusters as much as possible.

• Journey column – There is yet another column that you have to create. However, it is quite simple. The journey refers to your clients’ customer base and their behavior phase. These include the five marketing phases, that is attention, awareness, discover, consider, and customer.

With the help of your clusters column, you can estimate at what stage your target audience will be viewing your campaign. No matter what the campaign or post is, you only need to have an approximation set in your mind. The journey column requires you to be strategic, so we suggest that you put your best marketing mind forward.

• Eliminate more keywords – You can also clear out more keywords if you feel it is needed. For instance, if your client has stopped indulging in page designs, you can filter with keywords for those with page designs and delete them all. While they may be good ideas, they are not relevant to your client and their products.

• Repeat the steps – You may have gone through these steps, but as you continue the process, you will realize that a lot of keywords were missed. You need to stay extra alert for the grouping steps because the work is manual and essential.

Reporting and next steps

With your file set, cleaned, and grouped, it is time for you to report to your client. The completed technical SEO audit needs to be presented to your client perfectly, for which we shall use the presentation deck. Since your file has several complex terms and processes to grasp in one take, your presentation should be able to break it down. Visualization through your presentation can make your client understand your content marketing campaign better.

• What is included in the document – Like every presentation, you should also include a good cover slide and index slide. This is important because it will give your client what to expect in the upcoming slides. Make sure to be as brief and direct in your content slide.

• What was your process – Your client might not be very fluent with content marketing terms and processes, so explain it to him. Moreover, it will only increase your credibility and transparency, enabling the client to trust you.

Start by explaining how you started with the five phases of an SEO campaign, then move on to explaining keyword research and your methods. Inform them of which competitors were scraped during the process. Let the client know that there were some irrelevant keywords, while some with high volume searches.

Further, explain the terms pillar and cluster to help your client understand where the content creation will be based.

• What did you find out – Now that your client is keeping up with the terms, make sure to end the presentation with the results of the keyword gap analysis? Include keyword pivot tables from your keywords overview tab from the Google Sheets template.

Further, explain the ranks and the monthly search volumes for the keywords displayed on the slide. This helps them to visualize and get some clarity rather than looking at keywords.

• What to do next – By now, your client must be eager to be a part of the content creation process. At this stage, throw some ideas around to give them an idea of what can be expected.

Moreover, break down the process of building a content strategy that includes target audience, funnel targeting, topic lists, content type targeting, etc. Schedule a date for content approval, wherein you will present your outlines and drafts for content creation.

Content Audit Email Template

(Source : Google Images/ Example: Content Audit Template)

Besides providing you with The Blueprint Template and presentation deck, there is yet another offer. The module also offers a content audit email template to impress your clients more.

The email template is basically a simple draft to let your clients know that you have finished the keyword research analysis and are ready to present it. You can also attach links into the draft for your client so that they can go through the Sheets and analysis themselves.

The template also summarizes a list of things that will be included in your content creation strategies. Some space is provided for you to schedule a presentation date.

To sum up

You can finally take a big sigh of relief and give yourself a pat on the back. You have tackled one of the most tedious and vital steps of your SEO campaign. But do not worry because your hard work will pay off in the later steps. With the help of The Blueprint Template, presentation deck, and email template, you can fully expect to woo your clients.

Not only are these effective to impress your clients, but they also benefit in the next stages of your SEO campaign planning. Make sure to go through these step-by-step to achieve fine results. There are several tools out there to help you conduct a keyword gap analysis. However, they are not recommended. Even when you use SEO tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush, you still have to go through your files manually and weed out unnecessary data.

While many of these steps are not that essential, they prove to be quite effective. Besides helping you come up with accurate content ideas, you will also be able to add more value to your work. In fact, you might just end up extending your contract lengths by doing a detailed and thorough job. We know that this means more money, but the coolest part of it is able to create the best SEO campaign.

The next steps are one of the most interesting ones since you have to get your creative juice flowing. We can move on to the next steps of content creation and strategy to help your clients build one of the top-ranked SEO campaigns.

Take a look at some of our SEO testimonials from past clients and industry leaders, and consider adding some social signals into the mix to price things up a bit.

Keyword research For Existing Pages

Keyword research is one of the most important services an SEO agency provides. As an agency that deals in enhancing a company’s online performance and website quality, you know how crucial keyword research is. No authority SEO content is complete without great KW research.

If you are just starting as a news agency, you might not have the experience your older competitors have. However, this does not mean that your agency has to suffer just because you are new.

There are many ways to optimize your client’s website just by using keywords. The process is generally carried out in two steps that are very important for you to follow. Once you ace this strategy, your keyword research operations will become exponentially easier.

You already know that you will need to come up with keyword research for two main pages. Your client will expect you to optimize his existing pages first and then proceed to optimize new ones too.

You must be efficient in both these processes so that there is no leaf left unturned in the optimization procedure.

Continue reading to find out more about how keyword research is carried out by agencies. You can also learn how you can enhance the efficiency of your operation too.

The two major phases of keyword research

Keyword research for existing pages and new pages comes under the second phase of our campaign plan. This phase is all about improving your website’s performance and SEO. Keyword research is an important part of this phase, and it is carried out in two steps.

For existing pages

The first step includes keyword research for existing pages. These pages already have content on them. They are commonly known as low hanging fruit pages and are very easy to tackle. All you need to do is fine-tune this pre-existing content and create something that is more relevant to the page.

You can write the same content with newer keywords and improve the performance on that page. By doing this, you will quickly generate more traffic to your client’s webpages in a limited amount of time.

This is one of the quickest ways to generate traffic. Moreover, it gives you an upper hand over your competitors as you build a good relationship with your client. This will also give you more time to create a relevant strategy for your client’s other needs.

For new pages

The second stage of keyword research is for new pages. For these pages, you will need to put in extra effort and come up with content strategies that will benefit your client. You need to do ample research on keywords and their performance on search engines.

You can create landing pages, blogs, etc. with useful keywords to generate more traffic on your client’s website. You create new pages with better content strategies in this stage after you are done enhancing the existing pages.

In a way, you supplement your client’s work with new pages that will generate more traffic to their website.

Use the template

This template can help you find the right keywords for your client’s webpages. You need to first look at keywords that are generally used by your client’s competitors. After this, you need to check their corresponding page on searches.

For instance, if a particular keyword fares well as a blog on your competitor’s website, you should use it for a blog too. Take the top three search results for each keyword and compile them to create a very specific keyword template.

(Source : Google Images)

You can use it for anything you want. However, be sure you update it frequently so that there is no outdated information on it.

How to identify main or secondary keywords on existing pages?

Sometimes, the keywords you curate are already used by your client on their websites. However, improper usage of keywords will result in low traffic and degraded website performance.

Once you have your main keywords in place, you need to recheck them to see if they are the right fit for your client’s website. You can put it through various online tools like Ahrefs to see if it is what you want.

(Source : https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer)

You can get help from outside or do it all by yourself too. The bottom line of this operation should be that you are focused on the topical content of the webpage. Make sure the keyword optimization done is relevant to what is on the page.

You can always hire expert contractors to do this for you. However, if you are a new agency and are trying to save up on capital, you will have to do it on your own.

Compile the webpage URLs that you are going to be assessing. You must mention their main keywords alongside them so you can keep a check. However, be sure to run the webpage by Ahrefs after that.

It is possible that the page content is completely irrelevant to its main keyword. This will reduce relevant traffic to the webpage. It is very easy to tackle this type of problem too. All you need to do is look for better keyword ranking.

For instance, if the webpage is about tobacco addiction, your main keyword should be either tobacco or addiction centric. You cannot have a keyword with a high-ranking that has no relation to the webpage content.

So, you need to find a relevant high ranking keyword for the page and use it as your main keyword. Additionally, you will also need to search for subsidiary keywords that can be used along with your main keyword.

You can stray away a little bit and find keywords that you think will connect well with the webpage content. For instance, cigarettes, nicotine, and cancer could be relevant to tobacco addiction indirectly. So, you can use them as secondary keywords too.

These secondary keywords will help you find better content for the page. You will have more relevant content that people online will want to read. This will boost your website traffic and rankings very easily.

Keywords for new pages

The second tactic is for new pages or pages that do not have any keywords on them already. These pages require a little more time and effort than the existing pages. However, if you are working for an eCommerce company, writing content for them will be exponentially easier.

On the other hand, if you are working for a local business or a lead generation business, it is not as easy. This is because these platforms have indefinite opportunities to create landing pages and webpages that will be relevant to their corporation.

You should start by assessing their home page. What is it about? What kind of content is on it? Whether they are using the right keywords for it or not. This will give you a jumpstart on the project, and you will know exactly what the website is lacking.

You can start by going through the website’s home page and its title. The first step is as easy as putting it through google search. However, if the title is not descriptive enough, you are unlikely to find relevant webpages with keywords in the search.

Then you can search for what the company does on google. This manual process is tedious, but it is important if your client does not have an optimized webpage. In this search result, you will find landing pages of your client’s competitors.

You can continue looking for keywords in the same manner. Search for relevant titles and go through the results to find something you can use. Use online tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush to find keywords that you can use to optimize these webpages.

Then, you can alter the content on these pages or create a new webpage overall to enhance the website’s performance.

What is keyword intent?

An important part of keyword research is understanding what the customers are looking for. This is also known as search intent. It is the intention with which a customer runs a google search. It is your job to find out what this is about and what they are looking for.

Understanding customer’s intent will help you find better keywords for landing pages and webpages. This intent is mapped out in 5 stages. These stages will help you understand the various phases a customer search goes through. Moreover, this journey eventually leads back to the classic keyword funnel that is known for generating leads.

The client searches are done in 3 basic query stages. These stages include.

1. Informational

In this stage, the client is looking for basic information on the product. He wants to know what this product is about. These keywords generally have a ‘what,’ ‘how,’ ‘where,’ ‘when’ head. This is just the beginning of the process, and the client probably has no intention of buying anything as of yet.

2. Investigative

In this type of query, the customer is digging deeper into the product. He now knows what the product is all about. So, naturally, he will want to see where he can find the best products and compare them online. The main keyword heads for such queries generally include words like ‘best.’

3. Transactional

This is the final stage your customer reaches. In the transactional phase, he is looking to buy these products. He wants to know where he can get them online. The customer will also look for competition at this stage. The head of the main keyword will include words like ‘buy,’ ‘visit,’ ‘call,’ etc. This way, you can create different webpages that cater to your client’s every need.

You can include blogs, landing pages, webpages, etc. depending on the stages your customer is at. This way, your client’s website will be equipped with providing content and relevant information to their customers every step of the way.

Now you can create a single funnel model to better understand lead generation. There are five stages to this funnel, and they are very easy to understand and implement. These five stages include.

·        Attention

This is the general content customers want to see. It could include blog posts and informational content that can be seen on social media and other social platforms too.

·        Awareness

This stage is all about creating awareness among the customers. You need to talk about your client’s products and give out relevant information on their services to generate leads that are actually interested.

·        Discover

At this stage, customers, who are genuinely interested in services that you provide will come across your website. Until now, they were focused on learning about your services are reading about products that are available in the market in general. However, now they know you are a service provider they can approach.

·        Consideration

This is a crucial stage. Here is where all the leads are converted to clients. These customers already know about the kind of services you provide. They now want to know whether you are worth their time.

·        Customer

This is the bottom stage of the funnel, where not a lot of SEO is required. The leads are now your customers and use your products and services with loyalty.

This is one area where many webmasters fall short, so a good competitive analysis here can help you gain an advantage.

How to add supporting data in your content

Your client is not just looking for a list of keywords in their data anymore. They need details for what they can rank for in these files too. You can provide them this information by giving them the nature of the searches and checking what their competition does online.

The process you can follow is.

1.     Take the top three results of all the keywords

You can use a keyword and put it through a simple google search. Then take the first three results that show up and add them to your files. This shows the kind of content that has the highest ranking on Google for a given keyword

2.     Check the number of links you get with each result

This type of result is important for your client because it tells them the kind of competition they are facing. They want to know about the density of top results for this keyword

3.     Understand the link velocity

Link velocity is basically the number of new links added to the search results on a monthly basis. This helps your client estimate how fast their page needs to grow in order to compete with new webpages.

4.     Understand the content type that comes up

There are chances that a particular keyword will show you google search results in the form of YouTube videos too. So, it is important for you to add these important details in the data for your client to understand.

You can use Ahrefs to get this basic information on keywords. This platform will give you all the quality assessment details that you will need for these keywords. The most important thing you need to do is understand what this page about then creates a database of all the information you collect.

How to present this data to your clients

You cannot send your highly detailed database just as it is to your clients. You may understand these figures, but executives in different companies will not. You need to simplify this process and tone the information down to a level your clients can easily understand.

The best way to let your client know what you are talking about is using an opportunity score system. This is essentially a template that takes all the information from your database and creates a scoring system that is easy to understand for your clients.

It is a highly visualized way of representing information so that your client does not have to wrack his head over digits that mean nothing to him.

Use the website metrics

(Source : Google Images)

This is where you list out the opportunities for a client. You need to show the client where you will optimize keywords and enhance traffic and present it as an opportunity to do better.

You can also show them what the domain authority is like and where their website’s interests lie. All these can be presented as opportunities, which makes it easier for your client to understand.

Show them what you will do

Now that you have mentioned where all they can improve, you need to show them what you will do. They already know their weak spots and where their website lacks. You can now show them that you have a strategy to help them overcome these issues on their platform.

Create a presentation

You can create a keyword research presentation to send to your client. This is very convenient, and you can also create a template that you can use for different clients too. This presentation should include.

1. Introduction

What you did and how you did it. You can send your client a website quality audit and show them the tests you ran on their website to come up with issues that they are facing.

You can list these problems down in the presentation in the following slides and explain them. Chances are your client is unaware of the technical terms that you use. So, take your time and try to be thorough with the explanation.

2. Analysis of the results

You can now talk about what you saw and the verdict you came up with. This way, you can give them final results of the issues they are facing.

3. Solutions

Mention how you plan on tackling the aforementioned problems in the next few slides. This will make it easier for your clients to navigate through and understand the presentation.

In the end, you can send them a simplified version of your spreadsheet that includes all the information. Along with that, you can send them a detailed presentation to help them understand your plan of action too.

In conclusion

Keyword research is one of the most important jobs you will have to do as an SEO agency. These keywords hold a lot of importance in generating traffic and improving a website’s performance. Moreover, having the right strategy for different platforms is also very important. Go ahead and spend a good amount of time over keyword research to make your client’s website performance better than it ever was.

Good keyword research is the launchpad, and our niche edits and the rest of our links and services will perform better when you have a solid foundation on your site.

FAQ

How to do a keyword gap analysis?

Keyword gap analysis can be done by yourself, or you can hire a professional. Identifying your competitors and making a list is a good place to start the analysis. These can be websites or companies that are primarily competing with you in the same sector and have significant organic traffic.

Move ahead and choose a tool that is easily available online and will give you accurate results when you perform this analysis. You can use tools that are user-friendly and simple to use, even for beginners, like Ahrefs and SEMrush.

Using the tool you’ve chosen, create a list of the keywords that your website is now ranking for.

Once you have a list of keywords in front of you, analyze the results to find the areas where your keywords will be most valuable. Look for keywords that are relevant to your industry, frequently used by your target market, highly searched for but not too competitive, and that may be effortlessly placed between existing material or used to build new content.

Do a page-level study now, where you can enter the specific URL of the competing business and see what you lack. When you get the results, you can identify any missing keywords and strategically add them to your website so that it appears natural.

Then research the type of content that is bringing in more customers and attempt to improve it. These can be blogs, videos, or any other kind of content that your audience will find useful.

Finally, keep an eye on how the fresh content is performing and note any changes to your traffic and search engine rankings.

What is competitive keyword analysis?

A competitive keyword analysis is a process that businesses use to figure out the keywords their competitors are ranking highly for. The objective is to use that data to produce content that beats them in search against their competitors.

Keyword Research

Why is gap analysis important?

The main aim of gap analysis is to help businesses in finding any gaps and problems they have to deal with. Businesses can more easily determine and measure the gaps through this study, benefiting them in the long run in making any necessary changes.

How is keyword research useful for your website?

Keyword research is essential in helping businesses find which keywords are the ones that will best attract the targeted audience. Additionally, it will give you important information about the searches that individuals who are part of your target market are typing into search engines. In the long run, this will allow you to develop a content strategy by enabling you to gather actual search phrases.

How to do keyword research for SEO?

There are a few simple steps you should follow to conduct keyword research.

Step 1: Start by making a list of some of the essential topics according to what you are aware of in your company. You may select up to 10 topics that you believe are significant and for which you can later choose specific keywords.

Step 2: After you have decided on the topic you want to work on, you should now identify keywords that fall under those topics. It’s important to select keywords that are relevant to the topic and market segment of your business if you want to rank well on search engines.

Step 3: The next step is to check how intent influences keyword research. Enter the keyword in a search box of the search engine and observe the kinds of results that show to determine how a user’s intent is reflected in the keyword. These results will show what kind of content Google is closely linked to and if the meaning of the keyword is the same as what you intent to use in your content.

Step 4: This is the step where you need to do keyword research. Following the previous step, research the related search terms that show up when you search for the related terms. When you type the keywords on Google, you will also be shown a related search which you can take into account.

Step 5: To get more accurate results, you can make use of several tools available online, such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Google Keyword Planner, to help you with the process of keyword research.

 

Last Updated on December 13, 2023 by Gaby
How To Leverage Target Pages

How To Leverage Target Pages

Target pages

Choosing target pages comes in the second phase of an SEO campaign. After the learning phase, in the improving stage, we select target pages.

The improving stage is crucial because we gather knowledge from website quality audits, technical SEO audits, and proper keyword research for existing web pages. If you have completed all the steps up until now, then selecting target pages will be a fairly easy task.

What are the target pages?

We use target pages because many websites have a lot of webpages, and these can get tough to track. Moreover, among these extensive webpages, most of them are irrelevant to SEO. Another reason why we use target pages is to simplify the process of improving each segment of the website. Focusing on the target pages makes our job for SEO much easier.

We can improve the web traffic on such target pages as they are ‘low hanging fruit’ pages. By working on such segments of the website, you can deliver faster and noticeable results.

By choosing ‘focus’ or target pages, we are essentially creating a progress sheet that will record all the data from these focus pages. Selecting target pages is a simple process that will take into account the information collected from the website quality audit and keyword research. We choose target pages to map out the most important web pages on a website.

The progress tracking sheet will make it clear to the client what pages we are focusing on during the life of the SEO campaign.

Why do we need Target pages?

Let’s see some of the important reasons why we need to target pages in an SEO campaign.

Priority

We calculate the priority of the page based on a lot of factors like the opportunity of a page. In general, we like to focus on ‘low hanging fruit’ pages. The reason is that these pages are by now ranking for the main keywords. Then the effort in terms of putting links and keywords is also to be considered. Webpages that have a good existing structure of links and keywords will be ranking higher in priority. When we are assigning priority to the pages, we also see the value of the keywords to the company.

Section

Sectioning the website is important for you as an SEO specialist. Sometimes the budget of the client and the scope of SEO are very limited. In such cases, pouring in all the efforts at once is not feasible. The length of the SEO campaign also determines the number of sections that you will be doing. You cannot optimize all the pages at once, so segmenting these webpages comes in handy.

If you’re looking to extend the life of the campaign, then sectioning is a great method. Segmenting the webpages gives you more ease to operate and focus on different parts of the campaign like link building, keyword research, etc. You can duplicate the project plan and work on different sections of the webpages for a couple of months. Sectioning will maintain the quality of the work and the number of hours that you’re putting in.

Baselining

We benchmark where target keywords are at the beginning of the campaign and give us a definitive list of keywords to track. We will be recording the target pages across factors like current main keywords and their ranking. These keywords will be tracked as the SEO campaign progresses and will show how they are improving.

Link planning

Target pages are very useful in building an effective link building plan. By using the data collected, we can determine how many links we’ll need to acquire for each target page in the campaign. This will help us to rank the page higher!

Understanding the template of target pages

If you see the screenshot below, you’ll see the spreadsheet columns that you need to include. The columns and headings are very important as this sheet will be tracking your progress throughout the SEO campaign.

(Source : Google Images)

Let’s go through the nitty-gritty of the template for target pages. The first column is the priority, the priority is listed out in an ascending order where 1 is the highest priority.  Then comes the sections of the target pages. As we discussed earlier, this column is very important. Make sure you map out the sections in order of the priority. After that comes the URL, then the main keyword of the target page.

The volume column tracks the number of keywords, including the main and the secondary keywords. The next column has the ranking of only the main keyword. After that comes the journey column, which has the data that we got from the keyword research.

See also: Keyword research through gap analysis & keyword research for existing pages.

(Source : Google Images)

Then comes the referring domains to that website and the domain authority of the page, which we will need for comparison purposes. After this, we have the top 3 results of the keyword research in terms of average referring domains, average domain authority, and average monthly velocity for the main keyword.

Then the next columns are suggested RD, DA, and velocity. These are just additions and modifications to the average values form the previous columns. We build such columns so that it gives us a framework to work on. Moreover, this data is beneficial in designing a link building strategy.

Designing a link building plan depends on what is the scope of your SEO campaign and what the client wants. This serves as a research tool for you to track your progress! The spreadsheet is pretty simple and easy to understand. It’s very straightforward and needs the data to be updated manually. Most of the information is based on previous audits and keyword research.

So now that we’re done seeing the basics of the file, you can just send the same through to the client. Next, we can even put these in a keyword ranking tracker so that we can keep updating the progress. The results of the tracker are important for the monthly reports that you send out to the client.

How to set up the target pages file?

After you have initially set up the template from the keyword research file, it’s time to make sections. Sectioning, setting priority, and putting the suggested velocity of the page are the next steps in setting up your target pages.

Now setting priority is a very difficult task. With so many factors to consider, it gets confusing to choose which ones to give importance to. As a rule of thumb, look at the lead generation target pages first. In any SEO campaign, we first look at the lead generation pages and then the blog posts. Blog posts are next in priority as they also have a lot of referring domains to it.

The homepage is the first on priority for improvements in terms of referring domains for the main keyword.

Low Hanging Fruit Method

Then after that, what we suggest is go for the ‘low hanging fruit’ method to set priority. In this method, we will be choosing web pages that already have a decent ranking in the range of 6-20.

The reason why we choose web pages that are ranking in the range 6-20 is because these webpages are on the verge of gaining web traffic. We need to compare with the keyword volume to judge the opportunity of the page. Most of the organic traffic comes not only from the homepage but also from the top 3 positions.

So, we find these pages that google already likes and make them rank much better. Getting pages from a lower ranking to the top will take a lot of time. However, it’s easier to pull a page to the top because it already has a good ranking. Little adjustments, like link building, on-page changes, and analysis like meta titles and description. This will make our job a whole lot easier if we put these webpages higher on priority.

Comparing Against Keyword Metrics

Another method for setting up the target pages is comparing the pages against the metrics that are already on the sheet. In this method, we are looking at the keywords and the opportunity to rank the score to make the priority list. All these scores and metrics help us decide the priority score of certain keywords and URLs.

There’s no right method to do this. While many people prefer to outsource such work, it is preferred to have someone do this in-house. Putting the work on priority is not just for the client’s understanding, but also to decide how we are distributing the efforts over the life of the SEO campaign.

(Source : Google Images)

The template is just a framework that suggests the best way to go about making a target pages checklist. We are using the already present data to make decisions regarding the priority and the sectioning of the pages.

There is no fixed format to section the URLs; it all depends on the size of the client and the scope of the campaign and the competitiveness of the keyword.

The target pages file is a great way to show the client what the goals and next steps have to be in the SEO campaign. It is also beneficial to increase the budget/scope of the project with the improvements that you are suggesting.

Next steps

Now that you have set up the target pages file let’s outline the next steps that you should be considering for your SEO campaign.

• Pushing into the improvement stage of the campaign

Using the site sections to alter the project plan and set the next stage of the campaign into action (on the page). This way, you can deliver more and show them the progress that you want to implement.

• This is a living file, it should be updated

As you add more content to the site, we want to track them as target pages. Whether it is a new landing page or a new blog post, you want to make sure to update it on the sheet. As the campaign grows, tracking the changes is most important. The new webpages will need links, tracking, and reporting to show growth over time.

• These pages should be reported on

Reporting on the keyword progress of these pages every month in the Data Studio monthly SEO report. In this report, the most important pages are the target pages file and the target keywords report.

How optimizing target pages increases Lead generation?

Once you’ve completed your initial analysis of your website’s webpages, you need to prioritize those pages and optimize them to function as target pages so you can increase lead generation. So how do you do that? Simply adhere to the advice we’ve provided below:

Check which webpages are your target pages

The first step in optimizing your target pages is to know which pages exactly are your target pages. You can find this out easily through the web page’s SERP position. You can use Ahrefs’ tracking tool to find out how your websites are performing online and how they rank on search engines like Google for particular keywords. Instead of aiming for lower ranking pages on page 15 or more, try to rank for pages that are on pages 5-7. There are more chances that your targeted page will be more visible, resulting in more traffic and a better position, if you go for higher-ranked pages.

Generating leads

Lead generation pages and content

Your target pages should be those that generate leads and have high-quality content. Many people believe blogs are one of the most significant parts of lead generation. However, when looked carefully, blogs typically have little importance, only assist with internal linking and focused keywords, and aren’t effective as a lead generation web page.

Focus on the home page

When you are looking for webpages on your website that you can prioritize, your website’s home page acts as one of the target pages. The fact that your home page is at the highest level on the silo list will give it authority when Google runs its algorithm over your website. This gets us to the idea that when trying to optimise target sites for lead generation, the home page should be given the most attention.

There are some best practices that you can employ to make sure your home page looks good, ranks higher on SERP, visually appealing and converts more visitors to leads.

• You should state the value proposition of your website clearly at the very beginning of the page so the visitors know what you are providing them. This can include your products and services, what makes you better than your competitors, and why visitors should trust and purchase from your website.

• Your website’s home page should be simple for visitors to navigate and understand, and it should be well-organized. You can use bullet points, large fonts, and information that are relevant to their search. Include in-depth information according to the needs of your target audience but make it simple to read and understand.

• Make sure your home page is built correctly using the appropriate font and color combinations. It should have an appealing design layout and engaging media. Additionally, it is always a good idea to incorporate subliminal psychology when designing your homepage because colors have a significant influence on the brain and how we process any information.

• Free stuff is always a favorite! Therefore, the best strategy for your visitors to become leads is to provide them with something for free and highlight it on your site. Depending on your niche, you might give a BOGO deal, a free guide, a free consultation, or even a free product.

• To help build the trust of your visitors and potential clients, make sure you add a section on your home page of testimonials. Include a few customer testimonials that are positive to increase credibility and trust among visitors and increase sales.

• Less is always more, and that goes for your homepage as well. You want to design a homepage that can be read from top to bottom in under a minute because many people don’t want to spend more time looking for the correct page. When creating your homepage, it is always best to stick to the least number of pages. Up to 3 pages long are more than enough to include the details about your products and services.

To Sum Up

The target pages file and the reporting represent a smooth flow of the keywords and their progress. It gives proper backing to the conclusions and the suggested changes that you are requesting. These files are a great way to show the client how much effort you’re putting in and what are the steps that you have taken.

Once you’ve setup your target pages, you can point some of our powerful niche edits to help send them to the top of the SERPs.

FAQ

How to leverage target pages for SEO?

Target pages are important for SEO, and to leverage them, you need to section the SEO initiative by targeting to optimize just a single target page at a time to make it less costly for your client. The clients can monitor the growth of their pages easily by concentrating on one page at a time. You should establish page authority which is usually called a silo structure where you need to prioritize working on the most important page followed by the next less important page.

Target pages serve as a website’s core, and by adding articles under every group in a silo structure, you can rank other pillars. This improves website organization and raises your SERP ranking. Finally, focus on target pages that will be helpful in your link-building strategies. You can carry out an analysis to figure out what number of internal links and backlinks can provide your target pages the ranking boost they need.

Why are target pages important for SEO?

Target pages are important for SEO as these are the pages that will draw additional traffic to your website and help you rank for the best and the most relevant keywords. Additionally, your website will produce results faster if these pages are optimized for SEO.

Tageting Pages

How on page SEO is used to optimize target pages?

Target pages can be optimized using a variety of on-page SEO elements. First, compare the primary, secondary, and related keywords and make changes to them wherever necessary. Work on the syntax and readability of the on-page information to improve it. Include CTA to provide more easy navigation to your visitors. Create links between your target page so people can access those other pages from your target page. Make sure your target page has an engaging meta title and meta description. Finally, make use of schema tags to generate good results.

What is the difference between a target page and landing page?

A targeted page is a page of a website that has been designed for a particular keyword and has a more related keyword. These pages are typically SEO-optimized and built to rank highly for specific keywords associated with that subject. The landing page, on the other hand, is all about conversion rather than focusing on SEO. Its primary objective is to turn visitors into customers. By opening a link in an email, webpage, or advertisement, users can access landing pages which eventually leads to more traffic.

 

A ServiceNow wizard by trade, Gaby quit her 9-5 to pursue the world of search marketing. As a Customer Success Manager at SERPninja, she makes sure your projects get the attention they deserve. She is a certified Google Campaign Manager, HubSpot Inbound Marketing Expert and a SEMrush Expert – it is safe to say she knows exactly what she is talking about. She swears by  “The 5 Hour Work Week” but ends up working 80 hours a week to make sure your SEO is handled right.

 

Last Updated on April 20, 2023 by Gaby