Define your goals and describe your target audience to ensure keyword targeting aligns with business objectives and customer needs.

→ Action: Write down your business goals and create 2–3 audience personas.

Generate 10–20 seed keywords based on your products, services, and customer language.

→ Action: Create a list of short keywords your customers would search for. Pro Tip: use Ai to help with brainstorming.

Use Google Keyword Planner to expand your list with related and long-tail keywords.

→ Action: Enter seed keywords into Keyword Planner and export results.

Analyse keyword variations and performance with tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush.

→ Action: Run keyword reports and export volume, difficulty, and CPC data.

Research competitors to see which keywords drive their traffic.

→ Action: Identify top 3–5 competitors and collect their ranking terms.

Review search volume, difficulty, CPC, and trends to target the right opportunities.

→ Action: Shortlist the best keywords by balancing volume and difficulty from Keyword tools.

Tag keywords with Informational, Navigational, or Transactional intent to map to funnel stages.

→ Action: Assign an intent label to each keyword.

Manually search for each keyword to see which companies rank.

→ Action: Google your keywords and note the top-ranking sites.

Make a list of competitors for each keyword to track who dominates your niche.

→ Action: Build a competitor vs. keyword table.

Export competitor top keywords and sort them by highest traffic.

→ Action: Use Site Explorer in Ahrefs to download data.

Look for keywords competitors rank for that you don’t.

→ Action: Run a keyword gap report and list missing terms.

Identify whether competitors use blogs, product pages, or videos.

→ Action: Categorize competitor pages by content format.

Use gaps to inform your content strategy.

→ Action: Add missing high-value keywords into your roadmap.

Organize terms into clusters by topic relevance and intent.

→ Action: Use a clustering tool or group manually. i.e. Running shoes and training shoes

Choose one main page to represent each cluster broadly.

→ Action: Create or assign a pillar page per cluster.

Plan supporting pages that link to the pillar page.

→ Action: Draft 2–4 supporting articles per cluster.

Build internal links between pillar and cluster pages.

→ Action: Link supporting content back to the pillar.

Target clusters with higher search volumes for traffic gains.

→ Action: Flag keywords with biggest volume.

Focus on low–medium difficulty clusters for quick wins.

→ Action: Select low–medium difficulty clusters first.

Ensure clusters align with business goals and audience needs.

→ Action: Score clusters by relevance and select top clusters.

Check SERPs for features like snippets, videos, FAQs.

→ Action: Note which SERP features appear for your top keywords.

Discover keyword ideas, search volume, and forecasts.

→ **Action:** Sign up for Google Ads and run a keyword discovery report.

Gain insights into keywords, backlinks, and competitors.

→ **Action:** Run Keyword Explorer and Site Explorer reports.

Research keywords and generate clusters.

→ **Action:** Run the Keyword Magic Tool and export clusters.