Drawing up your SEO keywords - Getting your Search Engine Optimization going from scratch

By this point, you should understand the Importance of Keywords in your Search Engine Optimization initiatives.

So next let's look at drawing them up.

Discovering your keywords

1. Brainstorm your best bets

• google autocomplete

• wikipedia

2. Ask others

• clients

• customers

• random samples

• target segments / buyer personas

3. Use keyword tools

• Google Keyword Planner

• Bing Keyword Research Tool

• SEMRush (Paid)

• Google Trends

4. Check site searches

5. Search social media

6. Examine competitors

7. Site Relevance

8. Search Activity

9. Conversion Potential

10. Competitiveness

11. Audience targeting

12. Return on Investment

Evaluating your keywords

Rule of thumb: A website can only target 1 keyword for each page. Which means that the content and pages you have, the more keywords you get to include to match yourself with target users.

Refine the list in Step 1 based on these factors which you can draw out in an excel grid:

1. Keywords

2. Search Volume

3. Competitiveness (in SERP)

• 100,000 = Easy

• 100K - 1M = Relatively Easy

• 1M - 10M = Moderately Competitive

• 10M - 100M = Competitive

• >100M = Extremely Competitive

4. Competitiveness based on number of Indexed Pages / Search Results. Take the total number of pages as displayed on the SERP

5. Assign Subject Level of Relevancy

• Rank low - mid - high based on your understanding of the business based on relevancy to the keywords to your best assessment

6. Compare Domain Authority and Page Authority using Moz Toolbar

7. Relevancy

8. Stage of the Buying Circle (STOBC) - AIDA Model

• Assign your AIDA STOBC

9. CalculateKeyword Efficiency Index (KEI)

• KEI = Number of Pages Index in Google Results (A) / Number of Monthly Keyword Searches (B)

• KEI is a good starting point to look at competition. But do not take this as a reliable indication of quality of competition. KEI prioritizes keywords with a lot of demand (search volume) but little supply (indexed pages). The assumption made when KEI is calculated is that there must be some good opportunity to drive a large sum of traffic if there is a lot of volume with little competition. A keyword can come back with a high KEI even though it is irrelevant to your business, so ensure to follow the steps and include the Relevancy and Stage Buying Cycle Evaluation steps.

Other Useful tools

• Google Search Console

• MOZ Open Site Explorer

• Browser Plugins