Basic SEO Guide: Keyword Strategy Development
I’ve created a basic SEO keyword strategy development guide. The guide will help beginners learn basic SEO to allow entrepreneurs, small business owners, and even marketing teams with limited resources to begin to bring meaningful traffic from Google search that converts.
Download the guide, which is in the form of a slide deck, to understand these steps.
Fill out the form below to access the guide.
An animated gif displays several slides.
Slide 1
The title slide.
Slide 2
A clear definition is provided for SEO. This slide also indicates that the focus of this guide will be on Content SEO. The guide will let you glean many basic SEO techniques since you’ll be able to master Content SEO.
Slide 3
It’s important that we understand what Content SEO is. Content SEO involves the development of a keyword strategy to govern the creation of content that helps web pages rank higher in search engines.
Slide 4
To get started, understanding these foundational terms is your first step to learn basic SEO effectively.
Keyword = a word or phrase typed into a search engine. “How to boil an egg” would count as one keyword.
Short-tail keyword = 1 to 3 words with broad coverage of a topic where search intent is not clear due to this broadness.
A long-tail keyword = specific with lower search volume and more clearly signals search intent.
Slide 5
There are three broad phases of the content SEO process:
Selecting and organizing keywords
Assignment of keywords to content type
Content development
Slide 6
Let’s break down the first phase of “Selecting and organizing keywords” into three steps
Select Hub Keywords
Select Spoke Keywords
Vet and Refine Spoke Keywords
The third step of “Vetting and refining keywords” will be the most robust and important step. Good news - my slide show links you to a free tool in Google Drive for organizing your work.
Slide 7
In order to help you understand the Selecting and Organizing Keywords phase, slide 8 invites you to consider a hypothetical. Imagine Frank Wiley LLC offers Salesforce managed services as an official Salesforce partner. A company would hire a Salesforce partner to access engineering services to customize their Salesforce experience.
Slide 8
With this in mind, slide 8 will show you a visual with two hub keywords and several spoke keywords that fit under each hub. The slides that follow will break down the process.
Slide 9
As you consider criteria shown in this slide for selecting hub keywords, you’ll notice that hubs are all short-tail keywords, all of which convey authority, they each have high search volume, and they invite long-tail keywords that are transactional. These are essential basic SEO tips for your hub keyword selection.
Slide 10
Continuing the hypothetical, slide 10 asks you to imagine a founder of a startup enters “salesforce partner” into Google search and the first result is Frank Wiley LLC! Being the first search result for this short-tail keyword would convey some serious authority to the startup founder. And the keyword also invites transactional long-tail spokes as shown beneath the terms shown in the visual. Take note of the “Philly area Salesforce partner” spoke keyword shown.
Slide 11
So what about seeing the search volume for hub keywords? You can use any free tool to assess the search volume of your selected keywords like Google Keyword Planner. The guide includes a QR code that directly links you to Google Keyword Planner. Please note search volume is covered in greater detail during the “vetting and refining spoke keywords” step within the guide. Slide 12 concludes hub keyword selection and the hypothetical solidifies using keywords “Salesforce partner” and “Salesforce administration.”
Slide 12
Step two of the “selecting and organizing keywords” phase involves selecting your initial spoke keywords. Slide 13 displays criteria for selecting spoke keywords. This step in your journey to learn basic SEO is rather straightforward and even a bit fun! We’ll work with the spoke keyword “Salesforce integration partner.”
Slide 13
Slide 13 ushers us quickly into step 3 where we must “vet and refine spoke keywords.” During this robust step of the process, we need to define the search intent of our spoke keywords. We're also going to determine and label the transactionality of the selected spoke words keywords, evaluate search volume since spoke keywords need enough search volume to warrant content creation around them. Lastly, this slide will teach you how to consider your competition.
Slide 14 and 15
On Slide 14, a visual of my free tool conveys what defining search intent and labeling transactionality entails. For search intent, you’re making a best guess of the user’s intention based on a list I've provided for you. In addition, my free tool also lets you determine and label transactionality based on the search intent option you've selected. You'll love using this tool for all of your basic SEO needs so be sure to save it!
Slide 16
Slide 16 describes using the free tool to also evaluate and log search volume. While spoke keywords will have lower search volume than hub keywords due to their specific nature, the reason we check search volume is because you still need real users who are searching for terms you target as part of your keyword strategy. Google Keyword Planner is a great free resource for identifying search volume of a keyword, and I've provided a QR code linking you to the relevant page within the Google Keyword planner.
Slide 17
On slide 17 I'll help you consider the competition. You want to make choices of spoke keywords that will be attainable to rank highly based on the scores for competition and difficulty found in common SEO programs. Other critical basic SEO tips, such as confirming your website does not yet rank for the keywords you’re selecting, are displayed on the slide. A QR code link to SEO Moz is provided on the slide. Moz has some free features to find difficulty scores and to determine the terms your site already ranks for.
Slide 18
This vetting and refining process is the most robust. It's truly a lot of information to track. That's why I've created a free tool to guide you in making your selections. Scan the QR code on this slide to use my free tool for vetting and refining spoke keywords.
Slide 19 to end
In the final slides, learn how to use my free tool to continually Vet and Refine your initial spoke keywords. You’ll be able to get to a final keyword strategy by completing the steps in this slide. Phase 2 and Phase 3 will be covered in a later blog post which will explain basic SEO content writing.
