As a construction business owner, you must be painfully aware that many people search for your brand’s services and cannot find you. This is such a serious problem for any business owner looking to improve SEO results and even needing help knowing where to start.
Perhaps you might be missing something at the start of your SEO campaign. It can be keyword mapping. To put it simply, keyword mapping is a strategy that aligns all the keywords that your prospective construction clients are using with the pages on your website while making a blueprint for adding new pages to attract more traffic continuously.
In this blog post, we will explore keyword mapping. Learn why you should perform it, the best practices and steps you can easily implement, the best tools, and more.
What is Keyword Mapping?
Keyword mapping is the practice of creating a “map” of SEO keywords and keyword phrases relevant to your website. This process involves selecting the right keywords based on your SEO research and grouping them into categories and clusters based on your website’s structure and content.
In many instances, keyword mapping can be aligned with your sitemap, especially when launching a website or redesigning it. In addition, keyword mapping comes in handy when revamping your entire SEO strategy.
But Why You Must Perform Keyword Mapping?
As a website owner, you will conduct keyword mapping for various reasons. Also, the fact that 94.74% of keywords get 10 monthly searchers of fewer makes it even clearer. Here are some other solid reasons why you may choose to go through the process of keyword mapping for your website:
- You may be launching a new site and want to ensure it is well-optimized from the start.
- Your website’s SEO is not properly optimized, but you are working to correct the issues.
- You are having your website redesigned and want to map out the relevant keywords as part of the process.
- You are working to establish a strong authority in the SERPs within a specific set of topics
- You are auditing your construction website and have to rectify issues with duplicate content, keyword cannibalization, and black-hat SEO tactics.
- You are focusing on enhancing your link-building.
- · You need different angles and fresh ideas for the topics you want to post regularly.
- You are elevating your brand awareness and online presence and want the SERPs to recognize your content.
- You might be working on creating a robust backlink strategy.
Best Practices for Keyword Mapping
Keyword mapping is so simple that you can fully understand the process. Here are some of the best keyword mapping practices you can integrate into your SEO strategy.
1. Identify your relevant keywords
The first thing you must do is to determine the main keywords you want to rank for in every page of your website. These keywords should answer a particular query. This main keyword can then be used to look for a larger set of keywords.
With the use of right keyword research tool, you can easily identify all the words and phrases you will be mapping to your construction website. As you do all of these, remember to check out the keywords used by your closest competitors.
2. Group your keywords
Once you have finally compiled your list of keywords, it is time to begin organizing them. Start by categorizing words into buckets. The goal is to create a group of words that answer the same query. Pick one of these as your primary keyword while using the other keywords as secondary ones.
These buckets can help you determine the structure of your website and create a clear path for your visitors and search engine spiders to follow.
3. Map your keywords
We are already in the part where you must build your keyword map. You can simply begin by logically outlining your website’s hierarchy. Also, using spreadsheets can make the listing much easier and faster. With spreadsheets, you can back up all your information, and the data will be easier to edit, move around, and filter when necessary.
For your keyword map, the spreadsheet must contain the following:
- Keyword theme name (referring to the primary keywords)
- Main and secondary keywords
- Keyword difficulty
- Keyword research volume
- Competitors
- Word count
- Search intent
- Extra columns for additional customized content
4. Research competing content
The entire keyword mapping process is a great opportunity to dig deeper into your competitor’s SEO. Knowing how your closest competitors are currently performing will give you more data to work with, making your keyword map successful and actionable.
There are plenty of competitor research tools you can use to gain valuable insights into how your competitors are performing on search engines. We have compiled a list of these tools below. Check it out.
5. Keep working on your keyword map
Lie every single thing that is part of SEO; keyword mapping has no end. It will always be a continuous process. You should always monitor your keyword map on a regular basis. Once a month is good. As your construction business grows, you will need to refer to this document to ensure no gaps and other issues.
The many emerging trends and ongoing changes in your industry, technology, and customer behavior can significantly impact the relevancy of your keywords. So, make sure you are always keeping an eye on this.
How to Make Keyword Mapping More Actionable?
We discussed some of the best practices you can follow for your keyword mapping above. Here, we will dive into other proven ways to make it more effective and successful. We will divide the process into three actionable steps: on-page, content creation, and link-building.
- On-page optimization: Before creating new content using additional keywords, you must optimize your existing pages. For instance, if you find keywords in any existing content, integrate them into the page and update meta descriptions, titles, and header tags.
If you discover any on-page optimization problems during the keyword mapping process, such as multiple pages targeting the same keywords, missing title tags, or unoptimized images, address these issues immediately. Doing so will help you proceed to content creation with ease.
- Content creation: In this stage, review your content roadmap and schedule future content production. This stage is the point where you will assign the keywords you have already mapped directly to your content pages. Also, consider the content of your close competitors, as it helps you brainstorm for your content pieces. Consider some factors, like the word count your content needs to be competitive, the pillar pages it must link to, the priorities assigned for it, and, of course, what keywords fit best.
- Internal Linking: When you conduct keyword mapping, you will create a map of internal links. This map will make it easier for you to see the connection of all your relevant pages in one topic cluster, including pillar pages and secondary pages across your website. This way, all your internal links will be neatly organized and create a seamless flow of traffic for your visitors.
- Link-building efforts: If one of your goals is to rank for queries with a higher keyword difficulty, you should focus more on your link-building efforts. This is when your page has the potential to drive conversions and can reach a specific business goal of yours. Work with an SEO partner to build a healthy link velocity and increase backlinks to your critical pages.
If you are looking for the best SEO agency partner, ConstructionMarketing.io is the right one! We can help you with all your SEO efforts and will work to improve your website’s ranking and visibility in SERPs. No matter your construction marketing needs, we will provide high-quality SEO solutions!
Keywords Mapping Tools to Get Started
What tools can you use to plan your keyword structure? Our experts selected three keyword mapping tools that any beginner can use to help them get started with keyword research and organization:
- Ahrefs: You can use Ahrefs to look for group keywords and parent topics together. If you find a subject you want to cover and write about, you may enter the top page’s URL and see what keywords they specifically use.
- Keywords everywhere: This online tool merges with your browser and tracks keyword metrics across various pages. Additionally, using Keywords Everywhere allows you to see other keywords people are searching for.
- SEMRush: This is an excellent tool for finding related topics that rank best in search results. You can simply enter a keyword, and the results will appear. There are associated options by search volume and difficulty.
Create an Actionable Keyword Map with ConstructionMarketing.io
Keywords act as a bridge between your website and your target audience, so a robust keyword strategy is vital to attract organic traffic. However, building a comprehensive keyword hierarchy takes effort, energy, and time, especially without experience.
If you want to simplify this complex process, we can help!
We are ConstructionMarketing.io, a full-service digital marketing company that never wants you to risk targeting the wrong set of keywords. Our keyword research solutions focus on long-tail keywords with high conversion rates for a successful SEO strategy.
We use the best tools in the market and conduct extensive competition research, which will help you scale up your SEO efforts, as we have done for our past clients.
Here is a complete list of our digital marketing services: