Keyword Mapping 101 – How To Successfully Do Keyword Mapping

How To Successfully Do Keyword Mapping

A content strategy is crucial to a business’s success. A 2022 CMI Report stated that 77% of organizations have a content marketing strategy, but only 29% said their organization successful in content marketing. A proper plan for your website’s content may be the difference between a successful or ineffective content marketing strategy. Among all the different types of content strategy planning, Keyword Mapping is arguably one of the most effective forms of planning to perfectly lay out how you should tackle your upcoming content marketing effort. Now, let us dive into what keyword mapping is.

What Is Keyword Mapping? What Is It For?

Keyword Mapping is the process of mapping your target keywords to their intended web pages and then drawing out the relationship between all these keywords. A keyword map can be imagined as a hierarchical mind map that interlinks all your related keywords. Something like this: When done correctly, keyword mapping would help you to visualize the relationship of all your target keywords. From the image above, the direction of the content I’m writing would be a step-by-step educational page that teaches readers how to make blueberry pancakes, so interlinking those keywords would make sense. Now, why do we, the SEOs, do keyword mapping? While it differs between persons, in a typical scenario, it is to help us better visualize and plan three things:

• Website Structure
• Backlink Profile
• Content Silos

For this article, I will focus on keyword mapping to plan content silos which is one of the most effective ways to improve your site’s SEO.

Content silos are a method used in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that involves structuring the content of your website around keyword-based themes. Essentially, you are grouping related and relevant content into distinct categories.

Why is Keyword Mapping Important?

Keyword Mapping is one of the most fundamental concepts of SEO. Planning your content is the primary method to drive the success of your website/business and increase your organic traffic.

Here are some reasons why it is crucial to map out your keywords.

1. Have Your Content Crawled, Indexed, and Ranked Easier By Google

Mapping your keywords also means setting up a clear page hierarchy for your content. Google has stated the importance of having a clear conceptual page hierarchy. This helps Google understand your pages better, resulting in a more accurate and higher ranking on SERP.

2. Target The Right Keywords And Increase Organic Traffic

3. No More Keyword Cannibalization

4. Drive User Conversion By Internal Linking

• What is my target audience?
• How will I promote the content once it has been published?
• How will my audience find the content?
• What type of content do I plan to create?
• Where and when will I be publishing my content?
• How does my content interlink with each other?
• What are topics missing from my content?

Doing Keyword Mapping The Conventional (and BORING) Way Using Spreadsheets?

P.S.Doing Keyword Mapping the NORMAL way is not something I would recommend. Using rows and rows of spreadsheets makes you prone to errors, not to mention all the hassle. If you want to do Keyword Mapping the RIGHT way, click here.

Keyword Mapping is one of the most fundamental concepts of SEO. Planning your content is the primary method to drive the success of your website/business and increase your organic traffic.

Here are some reasons why it is crucial to map out your keywords.

Step 1: Find Your Keywords

To start your keyword research journey, you would need to first brainstorm seed keywords for the topics you want to focus on.

Once you have brainstormed your seed keywords, you would then want to expand on those seed keywords. Let’s take the keyword ‘buffalo wings’ for example. I would like to think of some keyword phrases related to that keyword. These phrases might include:

• What are buffalo wings?
• How do I make buffalo wings?
• Boneless
• Chicken
• Spicy
• Buffalo wild wings
• Oven baked buffalo wings
• Buffalo wings recipe
• And the list goes on!

This process helps you think of potential phrases customers might use to search for content related to your seed keyword.

If you are having trouble thinking of related terms for your seed keyword, you can use the SERPs to think of related search terms. Just scroll to the bottom of the SERP, and you’ll see some related search terms recommended by Google. Use these search terms to find more related search terms.

Step 2: Group Keywords Into Content Silos

After you have gathered your related keywords, you want to group them to form content silos. The question is, how should you group your keywords?

Similar Keywords And Keywords That Answer The Same Question

Search Intent

Step 3: Create Content Silos And Plan Your Website URL Structure

Map content silos into a hierarchy

Plan Your Content URL

When planning your content, you would also want to write down potential URLs for your content. This gives you an overview of your URLs to keep them readable, organized, and consistent throughout your website. Planning your URL structure is also essential in ensuring that your URL contains the right keywords and is structured in a best-optimized way for search engines. If you use a spreadsheet, allocate an extra column to write down potential URLs for your content pages.

Step 4: Create And Publish Your Content

Once you have mapped out your keywords into spreadsheets, you should start writing your content.

In your content silo, choose the keyword that you would most like to rank for and make that your primary keyword. One important thing is to ensure your primary keyword should be the main focus of the entire article. Other keywords that you are not targeting should merely be there to provide more context for your primary keyword.

Other factors you should consider when writing your content are the content target intent, content outline, the readability level of your content, the design of your website, and more. There are many more factors that you should consider, and you can find out by just looking through our guide.

How To Do Keyword Mapping With LSIGraph?

Step 1: Find Your Keywords

First, you must find keywords that will maximize your rankings and bring unstoppable traffic. I suggest you look at our guide on How to effectively conduct keyword research in 3 steps.

Metrics such as trends, search volume, Keyword Difficulty (KD), and Opportunity Score (OS) help you choose keywords with the highest potential to rank.

Type in your seed keyword, select your language and location, and you will have your keyword suggestions within seconds.

Step 2: Group Similar Keywords And Keywords With Similar Answers

Once you are done with your keyword research, the next step is to categorize/cluster your keywords into content silos.

Simply access your saved keywords in the Planner dashboard and group your keywords into content silos. Have all the metrics you need alongside your keywords during keyword mapping.

Similar Keywords And Keywords That Answer The Same Question

You should group similar keywords and keywords that answer the same question when grouping your keywords. Sometimes, it may be hard to group your keywords. LSIGraph’s topical cluster makes your job easier and helps you group your keywords by topics.

Search Intent

You should group similar intent keywords like ‘buffalo wild wings near me,’ ‘buffalo wings restaurant,’ etc. Grouping them into a single piece of content would help you streamline your content and target the right audience. Unsure of your keyword’s intent? LSIGraph has you covered.

Sort Keywords By Potential

Some keywords are easier to rank than others. You would want to organize keywords that have similar potential together. Metrics such as Opportunity Score lets you identify which keywords will give you the best potential return with the least effort.

Step 3: Create Content Silos And Plan Your Website URL Structure

Map content silos into a hierarchy

After sorting out your keywords, you will want to arrange your keywords into content silos to set up the structure of your website and plan potential pages/content. In the examples below, I mapped out a sub-category that shows a logical path between the main topic (buffalo wings) and the sub-topic (buffalo wings recipe) along with other sub-topics to create a content silo. With the Keyword Mapper, you can simply DRAG and DROP your saved keywords and map them into content silos. You can place them anywhere on the dashboard and link your keywords together with arrows to visualize how you want your content structure and website to look.

Step 4: Write, Optimize And Publish Your Content

After you have mapped your content, you would want to write out your content based on the outline in your Keyword Mapper.

With the Keyword Mapper, you can start writing your content immediately by clicking on the keywords in your content silo.

As site owners, writing content that ranks high and brings in high traffic is always the top priority. But if you don’t know how, we’ve got you covered. Read the tutorial on SEO writing to learn how you can rank top of SERP and bring in unstoppable traffic.

Additionally, LSIGraph’s Content Writer lets you target up to three keywords and provides optimization suggestions to ensure your content achieves a high ranking on SERP.

Keyword Mapping Best Practices

Now that you have mastered keyword mapping, I’m going to let you in on some best practices that you should implement in your keyword mapping to take it to the next level.

1. Use The Right Tools

Ideally, you should use keyword research tools when conducting your keyword research so that you can have access to metrics such as Keyword Difficulty, Search Volume, and Opportunity Score. As a last resort, you can use Google’s Keyword Planner tool to access metrics such as Monthly Search Volume and Competition, provided you have a Google Ads account.

2. Same Same But Different

Keywords that answer the same question may not always be similar in phrases. Take the above keywords, for example, ‘buffalo wings recipe’ and ‘how to make buffalo wings’ are very different, but they are grouped because they answer the same question.

There are numerous guidelines to follow when grouping keywords. However, the essential factor would be to group your keywords based on what you think is natural and best for your content.

3. Keep The Difficult Ones Closer

You should map content silos with higher Keyword Difficulty nearer to your homepage. Content silos with an overall lower Keyword Difficulty can be placed far away from the homepage and still bring you good traffic volumes. Conversely, content silos that have a higher Keyword Difficulty will require high-authority pages to have any use at all.

4. Know Thy Enemy

Before writing your content, it’s best to refer to top-ranking pages and find their readability level, content outline, intent, etc., using LSIGraph’s SERP analyzer. Identifying these data manually on Google is tedious and may be prone to errors, so I recommend using the SERP Analyzer feature to get the most accurate results.

However, if you skipped this step, the Content Writer’s suggestions help you optimize your content using top-ranking pages for your target keyword as a benchmark.

Keyword Mapping Never Ends!

After you have completed mapping out your keywords, it doesn’t mean that you can rest on your laurels. You should periodically check your keyword map and revisit this process.

Once you have identified your non-performing content, you should revisit your keyword map. Revisiting the keyword mapping process helps you explore topics/verticals that you haven’t targeted before or spot additional questions and sub-headings you can address that will improve your article and problem-solve for your readers.

Suppose you are having difficulty exploring verticals or spotting additional questions. You can always analyze the content of top SERP pages to identify gaps between you and the competition.

However, if you are pressed for time, you can always utilize the SERP analyzer in LSIGraph to instantly look into how top-ranking pages structure their content. Look into their content outline and popular questions to spot topic or sub-topic opportunities.

Manually looking at top-ranking pages, you may overlook content opportunities as they are buried in rows and rows of text. So why don’t you give LSIGraph’s SERP analyzer a spin?

Final Reminder

Mapping out your keywords is crucial for your website’s success. Mapping your keywords makes your content creation a much easier task. If you map out your keywords correctly, it ultimately helps you get high rankings, maximizes traffic, and creates a funnel to increase your site’s conversion.

While you can manually plan out your content in a spreadsheet, using LSIGraph’s Keyword Mapper lets you visualize your content silos and better strategize your content silo to maximize your reach.

Find keywords that increases your traffic by 68%!

LSIGraph provides vital keyword metrics that help you choose the right keywords Get Started

A Beginner’s Guide to Keyword Mapping

Are you auditing your website’s SEO optimization, launching a brand new site, or branching out into a new area of expertise? Keyword mapping could help you better position your website to rank well in the search engine results pages (SERPs). If you’re not sure what’s involved in keyword mapping and want to know more, we’ve got you covered.

In this post, we’re going to go over what keyword mapping is, plus some of the tools you can use to conduct your keyword research. Finally, we’ll take you through the steps of keyword mapping so you can get an idea of what the process might look like for you.

Table Of Contents

• 1 What is Keyword Mapping?
• 2 Why Should You Create A Keyword Map?
• 3 Keyword Mapping Tools
• 4 Step-By-Step Guide to Keyword Mapping
  • 4.1 1. Decide What Research Angle You Need to Take.
  • 4.2 2. Select the Best Keyword Mapping Tool for the Job.
  • 4.3 3. Enter Your Primary Key Phrase and Conduct a Search.
  • 4.4 4. Compile and Organize Your Related Keywords.
  • 4.5 5. Investigate Your Competition’s Keywords
  • 4.6 6. Organize Your Keyword Research Into a Visual Map

  What is Keyword Mapping?

  Keyword mapping is the practice of creating a “map” of relevant SEO keywords and key phrases for your website. You select your keywords based on SEO research, grouping them into relevant categories and clusters based on your site structure and content. In some cases, keyword mapping will align with your sitemap, whether you’re launching or redesigning your website. It also comes in handy when revamping your overall SEO strategy.

  

  Example keyword map from Semrush.com

  If you’re conducting an SEO audit of your website, then keyword mapping is a solid practice to add to your audit process. You want to not only gain clarity on where your website stands in terms of SEO; you also want to correct any problems you may find. Making sure all the pages on your website are optimized with the proper keywords will ultimately help more of your pages rank in the SERPs.

  Why Should You Create A Keyword Map?

  Website owners conduct keyword mapping for many different reasons. Here are some of the reasons why you might choose to go through the keyword mapping process for your website:

  • Your website SEO has never been properly optimized, and you’re working to correct the issue
  • You are launching a new website and want to make sure you optimize it properly from the beginning
  • You’re having your site redesigned and want to map your keywords as part of that process
  • You are auditing your website and need to correct issues with keyword cannibalization, duplicate content, and black hat SEO tactics
  • You’re working to establish your authority in the SERPs around a very specific set of topics
  • You need fresh ideas and angles for the topics you regularly post about
  • You’re focused on improving your link building and need plenty of fresh, SEO-optimized topics
  • You are expanding your online presence into a new area of expertise and want the SERPs to recognize your content for that
  • You’re working on building out a more robust backlink strategy

  Being an SEO expert isn’t required to successfully build a keyword mapping strategy. Luckily, there are a number of useful tools out there to help you get the job done.

  Keyword Mapping Tools

  To get started with keyword mapping, you’ll need a solid keyword research tool. There are many tools available that will give you information on related keywords, top competitors for a particular term, search intent, difficulty, and more. We’ve created a post that walks you through some of those available tools, and you can find that here.

  As you collect and organize your keywords, here are a few best practices to keep in mind:

  • Avoid Keyword Cannibalization: Don’t use the same overlapping keywords and phrases for more than one page. Instead, find creative ways to optimize your pages using the most relevant keywords.
  • Determine Search Intent: You’ll need to base the keywords you choose not only on what you want to be known for, but also on what your audience is searching for online. This is known as search intent. Essentially, search intent tells us what their underlying purpose is. Why are they searching for content like yours? What do they expect to get out of it? What do they want to learn? Some tools, such as SEMRush, actually predict general search intent for specific keyword sets.
  • Find Semantic and Natural Keywords: The way a keyword is phrased can affect how easy or difficult it is to naturally wrap it into a piece of content. Sticking to phrases that sound like they’d fit into the natural flow of a conversation can help you determine which ones should be included in the text.
  • Use Tags and Taxonomies to Your Advantage: If you’re using a tool such as WordPress, you can further optimize your post or page by adding Tags. Consider dropping related keywords into your Tags section rather than trying to force them all into the text, particularly if they are challenging to fit in. This also helps
  • Discover What You Don’t Already Have: Pay attention to potential gaps in your topics and keywords. It’s easy to miss opportunities. Consider some of the basics of your website’s topic. You might be missing some fundamentals that you take for granted.

  Step-By-Step Guide to Keyword Mapping

  Now, let’s take a look at what a successful keyword mapping process might look like.

  1. Decide What Research Angle You Need to Take.

  Before you begin, you’ll need a clear idea of what kind of keyword research you’ll need to conduct. Website owners optimize their sites for different reasons. Be sure to have a goal in mind before you get started.

  For example, if you’re keyword mapping a brand new website, the first thing you’ll need to do is take a look at your proposed sitemap. Then, do relevant keyword research based on the content that will appear on each page. This can take a considerable amount of time but pays off exponentially in the end.

  On the other hand, if you’re keyword mapping for existing content (such as blog content, a self-hosted course, or even a podcast), conduct your keyword research based on your expertise. This includes your niche, focus topics, and related keywords. Write down as many things as you can think of, and then take that list with you to step 2.

  2. Select the Best Keyword Mapping Tool for the Job.

  First, you’ll need to navigate to your keyword mapping tool of choice. You’ll need to have an idea of which topics and keywords you want to research before you begin. If you don’t have that yet, take a moment to make sure you’ve got what you need to conduct a successful search.

  For the purposes of this article, we’ll walk through some steps to successful keyword mapping using SEMRush. This is the tool I use most often to conduct keyword research, although there are a number of solid options out there like Moz and Ahrefs. These tools give you a set of related keywords that can greatly expand that initial list you made in step 1.

  3. Enter Your Primary Key Phrase and Conduct a Search.

  First, navigate to the SEMRush homepage. Enter your primary keyphrase and click “Search.” For this example, I used the phrase “best SEO tools.” Whether you navigate to Keyword Overview or just enter the keyword immediately, the same screen appears.

  

  Your results will populate on the main dashboard, where you can get an overview of how this keyword is performing online. Notice that its global search volume is 5.9k, and the difficulty is 84%. That means this particular keyword could be difficult to rank for. You’ll want to track these numbers as you compile the keywords you want to use.

  You will see that SEMRush has determined the overall search intent for this phrase, which is Commercial. This means that the users who are searching this term often want to know more about services or brands related to it. SEMRush also provides variations on your keyword, questions that contain your key phrase, and related keywords.

  

  Here’s how you can use these options in your keyword mapping efforts:

  • You can use a few keyword variations alongside one another on a single page or in a single blog post, so you’re covering more ground
  • Questions give you a variety of ways to position your keyword optimization, but they can also tell you more about how users are searching for your topic
  • It’s possible to use related keywords to determine content clusters or even related topics you can build out on your site

  Repeat this process for other keywords you want to use.

  4. Compile and Organize Your Related Keywords.

  Click into your Related Keywords list to see a list of keywords and phrases related to your key phrase. If you have a paid Pro plan, you can export these results into a spreadsheet. You can repeat the same action with your variations and questions. (The Export button is located to the upper right of your results list.)

  

  Once you’ve exported or compiled a list of your related keywords, you can organize them into “clusters.” For example, here are 4 things to keep in mind as you sort your keywords and determine how to cluster them together:

  1. On what specific pages the keywords appear (home page, about page, services, etc.)
  2. Cluster them together according to topics, such as the questions they ask or answer or the problem they solve
  3. Determine whether these keywords would work best as current or future blog post topics
  4. Which keywords could work as URL slugs on your site

  Experiment with general and specific keywords to get a solid mix of options. If you own a brick-and-mortar business, for instance, you could narrow your keyword search by including your physical location.

  You can repeat the keyword search process in order to make it more specific. For example, “best SEO tools” is a fairly broad search topic. If I wanted to narrow it down to a niche, I might want to search something like “best SEO tools for beginners” or “best free SEO tools.”

  5. Investigate Your Competition’s Keywords

  What sites are the top competitors for your keyword? If you scroll down your SEMRush dashboard, you can see a list of your top 10. This will give you an idea of which websites are leveraging your keywords.

  

  If you click the URL to one of your competitor sites, you’ll get a detailed breakdown of which keywords they’re ranking for — both organically and by search intent. You’ll be able to see their top subdomains, top pages, and their competitors, too.

  

  Pay attention to what keywords they’re ranking for. Incorporate some of these words, plus their variations, on your site.

  6. Organize Your Keyword Research Into a Visual Map

  Finally, it’s time to take your keywords and the information you’ve gathered over the course of the previous steps and combine them into an actual, visual keyword map. There are multiple ways you can do this, so pick a method that feels good and makes sense to you.

  A popular way is to create a color-coded spreadsheet that organizes your site’s keywords according to your site hierarchy, including the home page and categories/subdirectories:

  

  Example keyword map from Semrush.com

  There are a number of other ways to organize the information, though:

  • Include your keyword groupings on a visual of your sitemap itself
  • Create a mind map of your site structure and drop in your keyword groups
  • Group your keywords in a word processing document and label the directories and subdirectories so you know where they’re going to go

  The most important thing to keep in mind here is that you need to be able to visualize what the final keyword map is going to look like. Having a visual reference that’s easy to reference will help you not only keep your keywords organized; it will also help you keep things simple. If you decide to make changes to the groups you’ve created, you’ll be able to do so quickly and efficiently because you have already organized the information well.

  Also, be sure to keep your keyword map on hand so you can refer to it as you optimize your website. It may not be possible for larger sites, but when possible, try to keep your map down to one page if you can. That makes it easier to glance at while you’re working instead of having to thumb through page after page to find where something should live.

  Conclusion

  Search engine optimization is a lot more than simply installing an SEO plugin to your blog and calling it a day. Practices like keyword mapping can help you to effectively optimize your website as a whole. When executed strategically, it’s a holistic way to boost your site’s authority in the SERPs and help more users find your content.

  Have you practiced keyword mapping? What was the experience like?

  Article featured image by RoseRodionova / shutterstock.com

  https://lsigraph.com/keyword-mapping-101/

  https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/wordpress/a-beginners-guide-to-keyword-mapping