In part one, we looked at how to do basic keyword research. Now let’s take the keywords you found and make them a part of your marketing strategy.
Step One – Organize
Organize your keywords into groups. For example, Insurance Companies generally have four main types of insurance: Business, Personal, Health, and Life. Personal Insurance has multiple subcategories: Home Owners, Renters, Auto, and Toys. And, within those subcategories, you may have a number of keyword phrases that are all related.
Step Two – Marketing Strategy
A Marketing Calendar
There are a ton of marketing calendars and how-to strategies online, but we want to share the marketing calendar that is working for us. (We’ve shared it in View Only mode so you can easily download it as an Excel doc.) Here’s a quick overview of what you’re looking at:
Pink section: The umbrella strategy
- On line 6, add in the trends in your business.
- We’ll come back to line 7 because that is where we’ll start outlining the groups of keywords we have.
Orange section: Promos
- What promotions do you run throughout the year?
Light and Dark blue sections: Owned media
- This is content that you have full control over.
- Fill in lines 15-17 if you have a newsletter, or send your promotions out via email.
- Lines 19 and 21 – this is where we’ll put our focus as we add the details to our keyword groups.
Purple and Green sections: Shared and Paid media
- These groupings outline everything that you share on social media and cover the paid advertising that you do.
Organize your groups into strategy
Going back to our example of an insurance company. There are 4 main categories of products offered, which can fit perfectly into the 4 quarters of the year. If you were organizing their keywords, when does it make the most sense to talk about Personal Insurance?
IF more people are thinking about the types of insurance that fall inside Personal Insurance in Q2, then on line 7 of the Marketing Calendar we shared, you would go to the Q2 section and enter “Personal” for April, May, and June.
Now, we’ll assume that you do have an email that you send out bi-monthly. And, within Personal Insurance we have 3 main groupings: Home Owners, Renters, and Auto (including Toys).
Go to line 16 of the Marketing Calendar, and for April enter: Home Owners; May enter: Renters; and June enter: Auto / Toys (you have 2 emails going out, so you’ll focus on each of the topics separately). You now have the main topics that you’ll write on for those three months. And, for April and May, you can focus on a different aspect of Home Owners and Renters Insurance for each of your 2 emails that go out.
Next – Website content. For this, we’ll focus on lines 19 and 21 of the Marketing Calendar. Fill in the same general topic detail that you did for the email on line 16. But, make sure you reference your spreadsheet that has more detail on the keyword phrases for each of those categories.
You can carry the same concept into your Shared and Paid media. This guarantees that you are on message with every aspect of your marketing at any given time throughout the year. You’ll want to add more details on separate tabs of exactly what was sent out and what the results were.
Step 3 – Making your strategy work
Once you’re done planning, it is time for the rubber to hit the road. And, when it comes to your website, that is where you want to put the full focus on the keywords that are related to your topic for the month.
With our example, Home Owners Insurance is our topic for April. That means that during the month of April, you’ll be doing a close review of how the page(s) on your site that talks about Home Owners Insurance are doing.
- First, check Google Analytics and see how people are interacting with that page. Is the bounce rate high? Are people exiting the site from that page?
- Second, review the content on the page. Make sure you have at least 200 words of content, and that it comfortably includes the keyword phrases you have for Home Owners Insurance.
You’ll also want to write a “blog” post related to Home Owners Insurance. If you write weekly, then you have 4 posts to write. Think of the 4 biggest questions you get asked all the time. Then write a post for each of them. And, for each of those posts, make sure you use one of the keyword phrases from your list.
This strategy does two things. First, you’re strengthening the pages you currently have on the site that talk about your products/services. Second, you’re creating fresh and relevant content around those keywords which will boost your overall visibility as Google indexes those pages.
Your Online Partner… for Success
If you find this all a bit overwhelming, we can help! Keyword research is right up our alley, and we can partner with you to get a Marketing Calendar rolling for you. Reach out, we’re here to help. Turning the geek into English and taking care of you online!
