Laying My Content Architecture Foundation

In my last post I began looking at potential keywords that I could create resources for. I split the keyword phrases into 2 lists: content for those who may be searching for consulting services and those who may be looking for training in SEO. I’ve made a lot of assumptions to this point and the only data I’ve used to make decisions was Google Autcomplete. Not a bad start, but in order to work smarter I need more data.

I’m going to use Google Adwords to test the keywords I’ve chosen based on Google Autocomplete and Ubersuggest results. By using the lowest bid I can test how likely my chosen keyword is to result in a conversion without spending a lot of money.

How to Set Up Google Adwords [VIDEO]

I chose [seo consultant responsibilities] as my target phrase so I’ll place a bid for this term in Adwords at the lowest amount. I won’t start the campaign until I’ve created my destination page. I used the Google Adwords keyword tool to see what the volume and competition numbers look like. As expected both are low, which to me indicates that I don’t need a full page specifically about seo consultant responsibilities in order to get some organic visibility. In fact, it might be overkill and building new pages for every keyword is likely to cause a Panda problem. Instead I can create a page about this keyword’s potential parent theme, seo consultant.

Using Adwords Competition to Determine Content Hierarchy

I’m not a fan of keyword density or other metrics that get too specific about how many times you need to have a keyword on a page. Instead I let the competition tell me where my keyword needs to appear at least once on the page.

Low competition: I can probably add the keyword as a heading and as a part of a paragraph, along with related terms.

Medium competition: I’ll probably need to include this term in the title and within content on the page.

High competition: I’ll definitely need a strong page, with the keyword in the title, in a heading and it will likely need supporting long-tail pages unless the page becomes extremely popular.

Creating the Page

My content about seo consultant responsibilities needs to be written for human visitors, not for Google. I know that I need the keyword on the page, but its placement and its usage need to be natural. Based on competition, I’ll be adding a section around this keyword as support for a more competitive term, such as seo consultant.

For my URL structure I want to show Google and other visitors how the pages fit together. I prefer the /category/post name/ architecture to the tld/post name format. Using Yoast’s SEO plugin and the permalink settings you can achieve this structure easily.

First, click on the permalink settings in the Yoast plugin and select the options shown below.

Next, click Settings > Permalinks and use the custom URL structure /%category%/%postname%/

Campaign Update

My new marketing campaign is about 3 weeks old so it’s time for a progress report. Google Webmaster Tools shows that the content on my website is starting to impact the SERPs by appearing for 26 search queries.

There isn’t anything too exciting in Google Analytics, but I am happy to see some “popular” keywords appearing on the radar.

Social traffic is currently the highest source with organic search coming in second. I expect this to shift in the next few weeks as new content gets indexed.

What do you think about the graphs below? What other information would you like to see?

I’ll provide the results of my Adwords test next. Thanks for reading!