Search engine optimization runs intrinsically based on keywords. A lot goes into getting to the right set of keywords that work best for a website or a webpage. Keyword mapping is an important term in this context. Let us see what keyword mapping is all about and how it is important to leverage the power of this art to optimize the page for searches online.
What is keyword mapping?
Before we understand what keyword mapping is all about, let us first understand two important terms – search intent and keyword phrase. Search intent is the reason behind an online search and keyword phrase consists of the words or sentence that is used for conducting the search. Keyword mapping is about the steps that are involved in the allocation of certain targeted keywords to a page. This set of targeted keywords form a cluster of keywords – it consists of the main or the focus or the primary keyword; and the supporting or the secondary keywords.
The process of keyword mapping is done to ensure that the page meets the search intent. This means that when a user enters a keyword phrase, the page or site that meets the search intent optimally, as per the algorithm guidelines of Google, will get a credible rank vis-à-vis a site or a page where the keyword phrase or the search intent averagely meets the keyword cluster used on the page/site.
Is keyword mapping important?
Keyword mapping remains one of the most used and critical ways for on-page optimization. When this aspect of your site is done properly, search engines can analyze and evaluate the relevance of the site/page vis-à-vis the information that the user wants and rank the site/page high.
In order to leverage keyword mapping to its fullest potential, site owners along with their SEO Services must understand and indulge in keyword research and the mapping process at the onset itself.
Remember, if you do not consciously undertake keyword mapping, you are going to lose out on several opportunities to get credible leads from search engines and convert the leads into customers.
Keyword mapping is essential because it helps your site to be structured and optimized maximally to meet the search intent of different online users. By ensuring correct keyword mapping, you inform the search engines of the ranking that you desire for each page on your site against the targeted keywords.
How to leverage keyword mapping for SEO success?
- Optimize on keyword research
Your research should be open-ended to get as many keywords as possible for each page. Look into your competitor’s site, stretch beyond the keywords that your site currently uses, and use advanced tools online to gather relevant keywords against a Keyword Overview. Your research will give you hundreds of keywords – you might want to start with the top few keywords. Typically, these keywords are exported to a spreadsheet, sort out based on search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, and number of URLs.
Next, you need to pair the keywords and make a group or a cluster of these keywords. What happens at the end of this exercise is that you have different groups or categories of keywords based on which different content can be created. When you study each category or group of keywords, you will realize that you can create
subdirectories of each group which will help make your content even more structured, thereby enhancing the chances of better rank for the page.
At the end of it all, what you will essentially have is a different set of themes centered on which content creation can be done.
- Keyword research is a continuous process and so is keyword mapping. It is dynamic and should be maintained that way for optimal results.
- How competitors are doing keyword mapping? When you do your keyword research, you need to go into analyzing how your competitors are playing with keyword clusters. For example, if more than one competitor has different pages addressed to the utilization of different keyword sets, it would make sense for you too to do so.
- Use SEO tools like Ahrefs to stop Keyword Cannibalization – you have a cluster of keywords but you need to know how to use them optimally and avoid cannibalization; then you need to use an SEO tool like Ahrefs. The tool has a parameter called ‘Traffic Share by Pages’. When you enter a set of target keywords in the Keyword Explorer on this tool, you will find how this set of keywords produce results on the same page. When you use different combinations of these keywords, the result can help you optimize your site/page too.
You can check the result of a combination of keywords without using any tool too – use the Incognito mode on the browser to compare the results produced from varied keyword variations.
