Prioritize keywords is essential so that the efforts we are developing are compensated with an improvement in our online visibility.
If you are not familiar with doing keyword analysis, Prioritize keywords is an element that can be disconcerting.
We have already seen how to do a keyword study step by step.
When you are starting to do keyword searches, there comes the point where you see an excel full of rows with words, and it can be very difficult for you to decide how to select the ones that can benefit your project the most.
We have also seen some aspects to take into account when choosing keywords.
Although it sheds some light on making a good selection of keywords, I also believe that the process still needs to be clarified. That is why we will see how to prioritize the choice of keywords in this post.
What does it mean to prioritize keywords?
Prioritizing keywords means deciding which terms we will address in our SEO project. To Prioritize keywords, we must make decisions based on something. That is a series of criteria that involves considering the keywords that the tools give us and we are already positioning. In addition to other factors that we already saw in this post
How to prioritize keywords in our keyword selection
We already know our offer of products and services, and we have the tools from which we will obtain the data of those keywords. We must determine the steps to prioritize selecting keywords for our online project.
To prioritize keywords, we must keep in mind only the objects we pursue. Keeping our goal in mind helps us identify the words and queries that we should prioritize in our keyword selection to maximize our visibility in the SERPs.
Once we have a list with all the relevant terms related to our activity, we must also know the specific needs of the content that we are going to develop to position ourselves by those terms: content, structure, additional content such as infographics or videos, the popularity of the page.
We have to keep in mind that there are two ways to improve our visibility:
- Surpassing the positioning of our competitors.
- Leveraging other SERP features: rich snippets, image positioning, videos, maps.
It is important to remember that the search result sheet adapts based on the user’s search intention, generating new positioning opportunities.
#1 Find relevant keywords in your data
It will always be easier for you to position yourself for your content. Or what is the same: enhancing those keywords you are setting improves your positioning.
To find keywords for which we already position ourselves, we use Google Search Console and SEO tools to analyze keywords we prefer.
We’re also going to use those SEO tools to extract the keywords our competitors are ranking for.
How to get relevant keywords from Google Search Console
To get relevant keywords from Google Search Console, we have to access Search Console and go into the performance reports.
We will see the two best-known graphs of Google Search Console in the performance reports.
To find the terms for which we are already positioned, we can also use the new functionality of the Google Search console.
With the new functionality, we can establish filters to check the positioning based on words, pages, country, and devices very useful for making decisions when determining our SEO campaigns.
#2 Segment the keywords obtained by categories
You can start to simplify the big excel you are generating is to set the categories or lines of business that you reference.
For example, I have two main and generic categories in SEO: SEO and marketing. However, when I carry out my keyword studies, in addition to putting that main category, I add others: the search intention (informative, transactional, commercial research) and the location where I want to work on it (page or post)
It is an easy way to keep everything identified and the terms grouped; in this way, it will be easier for us to prioritize keywords of our keyword research.
If location is important in our service, we must also improve local SEO. it is useful to include classification in our Excel with the city and the neighborhood.
#3 Improve semantics with related and specific terms
Does he understand, or does he try? In any case, the feeling is the same: The more enriched the text we are working on, the more keywords we use, we will better understand our content, and we will position ourselves for more terms related to or consistent with the services we offer.
#4 Eliminate irrelevant or duplicate keywords
At this point, you will have a fairly extensive list full of keywords related to your business. We must stay only with those relevant to your product or service.
Sometimes we focus on keywords that are somehow related to what we are offering but don’t fit with the core of our business.
Eliminating those non-relevant terms, no matter how attractive they may be, can save us time by avoiding analyzing something that will not help us position in the market.
As you may have guessed, the best way to determine the relevant terms is there is nothing better than knowing our business model, and, in case you don’t know, my favorite tool to define my business model is the 9 blocks of the canvas model.
How to make a canvas step by step
When it comes to misspelled words or their variants with or without a preposition, I can only tell you what I’ve already told you: Google doesn’t ask questions, Google understands, and thanks to that understanding, it will know what you mean even if you spell it wrong. Only then can we know this:
However, we must take synonyms into account because they improve the semantics of our website. It is the case of using, for example, SEO, web positioning, and SEO positioning... all these terms refer to the same thing, and despite being different terms, they do not require the creation of specific pages. In these cases, we will have to see which is the most used term to balance those keywords consistently on the page that we want to position.
#5 Get criteria to prioritize keywords
When prioritizing keywords, we must consider a series of criteria to help us. These prioritization criteria are:
- search volume
- Trend
- seasonality
- current positioning
What we are going to do to know these criteria is to take the list that we have created so far and import it into an SEO tool (the one we like the most); in this way, it will give us that data, and we will be able to eliminate those that do not have search volume.
We have already screened our list of keywords; now, we will see which keywords we include in our SEO strategy.
How to prioritize keywords in an SEO strategy
The pillar on which web positioning strategies are based is a good selection of keywords.
For this selection to be well made, we must prioritize the keywords that best suit the objectives of our web project.
At this point, we will have a large number of keywords:
- Organized by search volume
- Categorized by search intent
- The location where that keyword will go
Now we have to find a balance between those three criteria.
We prioritize the keywords for which we already position
Our first element to prioritize keywords is those terms in our keyword research that correspond to existing content.
Content that has already been created will be easier to rank at the top of the search enginethan content that has not yet been written.
We establish our SEO conversion funnel
We must also prioritize the keywords that help improve the SEO positioning of the different phases that a user goes through during the decision process before purchasing the various categories or lines of business.
Considering our positioning, the difficulty of positioning a keyword, and its search volume, we will be able to estimate when we will reach the first positions.
How long will it take for the position? It depends
And it is not that SEO consultants love that word, but a recently created website, which has no history, is not the same as a website that has been active for some time and is already positioned by terms (with more or less success).
Although it is not a rule and it depends on many factors, generically, we could say that:
- If the keyword has a medium difficulty and I already position that word on page 5 or more, we can achieve a good (ceteris paribus) in the medium term.
- If the keyword has medium difficulty but is not among the ones I have positioned, we can achieve good positions for a long time.
- If the keyword has low ranking difficulty and I already rank for it, I will get a good position in the SERPs in the short term.
Conclusions on how to prioritize keywords
Prioritizing keywords is not a thing that Yoast does.
There are no shortcuts; it is a task that requires a good knowledge of the business and to be meticulous in the analysis and interpretation of our data and that offered by the tools.
If you want to have a good position, I always advise keeping your services in mind. You can write about whatever you wish to leave it for when you have already positioned yourself for your strategic terms.
What do you want to have visits or sales? The siren songs talking about issues that can bring us traffic can make us lose focus and make our company take paths that will cost us to correct.
Being clear about the business and prioritizing our keyword analysis will be easier for us, and with that, we will have 80% of our SEO strategy done.
How do you prioritize keywords?