How To Build a Keyword Matrix [and Why You Need One]

How To Build a Keyword Matrix [and Why You Need One]
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If built and used properly a keyword matrix can increase your rankings and your keyword spread
exponentially.
Keyword matrices have traditionally been used for paid search, but also have far reaching
implications for organic search; essentially using other factors of influence to help qualify and
quantify your opportunities.
So, What is a Keyword Matrix?
Unlike the virtual world built by the Wachowski brothers, the idea is relatively simple, a matrix is a
2-dimensional table that enables you to cross reference two aspects, and analyze opportunities - with
the potential to slice and layer additional information on top for deeper analysis.
When applied to keywords, it gives you 2 axises from which to gauge different qualitative heuristics.
Michael Martinez discusses passive versus active keyword matrices, putting the emphasis on
purpose; a passive matrix records keyword data that other websites are using, where as an active
matrix is used as a design template for your website and content.
I am going to be taking a different approach to defining and building keyword matrices for organic
search.
I want to look at search intent versus search volume and search volume versus SERP
competitiveness. These 2 scenarios are very interesting because the first is an inverse relationship,
and the latter is linear.
Here's a look at the relationship between search volume vs. user intent:

Query complexity tends to also have an inverse relationship with search volume; as complexity
decreases (from long-tail to head), search volume tends to increase.
In the graph above you can see how search volume steadily decreases as intent increases (thus the
inverse relationship), and again, it is usually the case that the query length (and complexity)
increase in relation to intent.
Now look at the relationship between search volume and SERP competitiveness:
Not surprisingly the higher the search volume, the more competitive the SERP. Now let's overlay
intent segments over the search volume versus search intent correlation graph:

Looking at this further - this starts to lay out what your matrix will look like.
With the implications
between hummingbird and moving entirely to secure search, a focus on intent at the content level is
critical.
We are definitely seeing a move away from the big volumes offered traditionally by "head terms,"
into an era where the long-tail is even more important, as Google serves up more personalized
results. This means that a simple result for 'insurance' will no longer be shown, and instead the
results will be more relevant to something such as 'cheap car insurance quotes for a 33 year old
male'.
- Simon Penson, Founder of Zazzle Media
Many SEO's are already gleaning intent from their keyword research:
Keyword research is excellent for understanding user intent, which is one of the main pillars of my
content strategies. I focus on crafting content that will meet customer expectations in hopes of
creating a better overall experience.

- Gisele Navarro, Head of Outreach at NeoMam
One major issue is that getting your head wrapped around intent can be difficult at first
I think initially, understanding keyword intent can be difficult for some people. Once you get past
that, I think the challenging part becomes getting the right level of granularity for the topic of a
page, and how diverse your set of keywords are to include on a page can be tricky for people.
- Geoff Kenyon, SEO Consultant at Distilled
And this is precisely how using keyword matrices can be beneficial; they help categorize your target
terms by providing a visual cue to brainstorm and prioritize.
The hardest thing I deal with is how to balance both keyword strategy UX when you're trying to cut
up your products categorize them in different ways. i.e. some issues that will come up that are
purely judgement calls:
Trying to label subcategories as highly searched keywords, but those subs aren't necessarily the
best way to cut them up from a user perspective (they wouldn't mine down to the products they want
that way; i.e. too specific or non-inclusive of what they're looking for)
Trying to create a category for Product Characteristic A, and one for Product Characteristic B
(because they're both big keywords), but a product could possibly have both characteristics, which
could confuse the user at the point of entry (even if you have some products in both categories,
which would be one possible solution)
This is more research oriented, but not knowing enough about your product's terminology that could
give insight into what keywords people are searching to find your products, as well as variations off
of that (keyword planner doesn't give the best related keyword suggestions IMO).
So really what keyword strategy (and research) comes down to for ecommerce sites is A) knowing
some general SEO rules of thumb (i.e. an optimal URL structure, what to do when you come across
situation X, etc.) B) knowing your products inside out (this is essential and spells doom for anyone
who tries to find shortcuts!).
- Jon Cooper, Owner of Point Blank SEO
Why You Need To Be Using Keyword Matrices
To Jon's point above, you need to take into consideration how keywords are going to shape your
content, and how your content needs to be formed to support your user's intent, both in getting
searchers to your site and to help them navigate while they're there.
Think of this scenario:
Your manage an eCommerce website that sells high-end camera's and camera equipment.
Two visitors come into your site using the search term "SLR camera accessories," they both
searched Google using the same body term with commercial intent.
They are both looking for the exact same product, a Noktor 50mm lens, but here's where it gets

interesting, and where alignment between keywords and your content becomes critical to conversion
- one visitors click's into the category "SLR Accessories," while the other clicks into "SLR Lens."
Do they both find the Noktor 50mm lens they're looking for?
It depends on if you have listed the product in all of the intent-based locations where it's relevant.
The separation is between product versus function, one user is looking for a product specific
attribute, a lens, where the other is looking for a functional attribute, an accessory.
Keyword research is one of the first places to find consumer pain points - by nature, they are looking
for answers to their questions. So, it's a great place to do research. But finding the keyword is not
enough - you must also do a competitive analysis to determine whether or not your solution can be
the best, or the cost-benefit may not be worth it.
For example, we built a marketing checklist and did comparative research: are there any other
checklists out there? Do they compare to our proposed solution? What competitive advantages do
they have? After determining we could create by far the best solution (not a requirement), we moved
forward in building it.
- Ross Hudgens, Founder of Siege Media
In the scenario above it's not as much about the pain points as it is how different brains approach
solving the same problem, and how content needs to be structured as a path toward a solution,
regardless of which path is taken.
How SEO's Currently Approach Keywords
The idea of using a keyword matrix is far from new at this point, but it really isn't talked about
much on the interwebs.
I wanted to get a sense of how important keywords were to some SEO's when it came to producing
content - as a litmus test for how much impact a strategic tool like a keyword matrix might have on
their efforts.
Ross puts it beautifully:
Simply because a keyword exists and it could send you relevant traffic, does not mean you should
build that page. Your competitors may simply be better positioned to rank for those keywords, both
today and in the future. The second part is semantic touch / IA / UX combination.
It's hard to mix the usability / information architecture / SEO needs in a neat and non-obtrusive way,
and that's something that takes a lot of experience to get right / blend delicately.
How important is aligning keyword research with your content production efforts?
Understanding the possible intent of the searcher for each keyword we're targeting allows us to
have a better approach and purpose for the overall content.
- Jason Acidre, Owner of Kaiser The Sage

In a recent article by Peep Laja, he said:
SEO is going to get increasingly harder. If you're still doing SEO by optimizing for keywords, you
should know: it's not 2008 anymore. Things have changed! Google understands context, natural
language, intent.
And he is completely right.
Expanding on head terms and focusing on traffic is not how you are going to win the SERP's as we
move into the world of 100% not provided and complete geo-personalized results.
But getting intent right is hard, and making sure you are developing the right content to support the
right intent, at the right phase in the conversion funnel is even harder. But using research, analysis,
and a dash of creativity gets the ball rolling...
Coming from an SEO background I've always felt that keyword research is one of the best sources
for content development. Before Google stole our keyword data, leveraging your existing analytics
could show popular topics that were performing well, but were under serviced.
For example, a marketing company may find articles around "Facebook Advertising" were
generating 25% of their leads, but only made up 3% of their content. It's a good indicator of topics
you could possibly flesh out and create more content around. Of course the other great use of
keyword data is using tools like UberSuggest, Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, Google
Suggest, etc to build out a content plan around topics that are relevant to the personas you are
targeting.
I've ran several workshops for teams of editors in big media companies and showing them how
simple it is to get content ideas using tools like this really changed the way they approached their
editorial meetings. I've always been a big fan of owning a topic. If we are talking about keyword
lists, then in my mind that's a owning something like "best red widgets" as the core keyword, but it
will have a bunch of secondary keywords hanging off it "best red widgets 2013?.
In these cases you are trying to create a relevant content campaign that has multiple pieces in
different formats all focused around that central topic. If you split your campaign like this, interlink
those pieces and have a solid plan to distribute links across the different pieces, it gives Google a
better reason to rank your content. You can obviously just go for one stand out piece if targeting a
big keyword.
- Kieran Flanagan, Marketing Director at Hubspot
How to Build a Keyword Matrix
Initial keyword research is the first step toward building an informative keyword matrix.
So fire up keyword snatcher (or whatever keyword mining tool you fancy), drop in your head term
(just one), and send it off to the races. The Excel file is designed to handle *any* keyword data, as it
uses a natural language macro to look for signaling words (that you can manage in the key) to tag
searcher intent.
Export to CSV Filter out illegal characters cut into lists of 10,000 keywords Save CSV.

Upload into Google Keyword Planner Get Ideas Export to CSV.
Use keyword combiner to join all of your individual research files.
Open in Excel Sort descending by search volume Add a column for intent Add a column for "Best"
Save.
Here's where you should be at:
Tagging For Intent
Tagging for search intent is critical, this is where effective prioritization starts to really come into
focus. Here is how I approach tagging for the 4 top-level buckets of user intent:
Informational - a specific question where the results are the information the searcher is looking for,
may contain phrases such as: info, more information, details, features, benefits, etc.
Navigational - contains the name of the brand, product, service, or a person at the organization.
Commercial Investigation - easiest to identify and least ambiguous, these queries contain specific
parameters for researching a purchase, such as sizes, colors, versus, best, price, pricing, etc.
Transactional -indicative of shopping behavior further down the conversion funnel, at this point the
searcher knows what they want - so look for terms like buy, purchase, sale, coupon, discount, or
locations.
To make this easier on you, I've built an Excel macro that, with a bit of keyword specific tweaking,
automates much of this process for you. You can watch a quick video of it in action here >
And in case you want to use the macro, here is the VB code you will need:
Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
Dim KeyCells As Range
' The variable KeyCells contains the cells that will
' cause an alert when they are changed.
Set KeyCells = Range("B3:B5", "H2")
If Not Application.Intersect(KeyCells, Range(Target.Address)) _
Is Nothing Then

Calc_Intent
End If
End Sub
Sub Calc_Intent()
Dim first As Integer
first = 7
Dim last As Integer
last = Range("H2").Value
Dim noIntent As String
noIntent = Range("I2").Value
Dim keyword As String
Dim found As Boolean
Dim InformationalArray() As String
InformationalArray = Split(Range("B3"), ",")
Dim InformationalValue As String
InformationalValue = Range("A3").Value
Dim CommercialArray() As String
CommercialArray = Split(Range("B4"), ",")
Dim CommercialValue As String
CommercialValue = Range("A4").Value
Dim TransactionalArray() As String
TransactionalArray = Split(Range("B5"), ",")
Dim TransactionalValue As String
TransactionalValue = Range("A5").Value
' IF InStr(
Dim InputDataRange As Variant

InputDataRange = Range("A" + CStr(first) + ":A" + CStr(last)).Value
Dim OutputDataRange As Variant
OutputDataRange = Range("C" + CStr(first) + ":C" + CStr(last)).Value
Dim Irow As Long
For Irow = 1 To ((last - first) + 1)
found = False
keyword = InputDataRange(Irow, 1)
For Each term In TransactionalArray
If Not found Then
If (InStr(keyword, Trim(term)) 0) Then
OutputDataRange(Irow, 1) = TransactionalValue
found = True
End If
End If
Next term
If Not found Then
For Each term In CommercialArray
If Not found Then
OutputDataRange(Irow, 1) = CommercialValue
found = True
End If
End If
Next term
End If
If Not found Then

For Each term In InformationalArray
If Not found Then
OutputDataRange(Irow, 1) = InformationalValue
found = True
End If
End If
Next term
End If
If Not found Then
OutputDataRange(Irow, 1) = noIntent
End If
Next Irow
Range("C" + CStr(first) + ":C" + CStr(last)).Value = OutputDataRange
MsgBox "Search Intent Updated."
End Sub
Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
Dim KeyCells As Range
' The variable KeyCells contains the cells that will
' cause an alert when they are changed.
Set KeyCells = Range("B3:B5", "H2")
If Not Application.Intersect(KeyCells, Range(Target.Address)) _
Is Nothing Then
Dim first As Integer
first = 7
Dim last As Integer

last = Range("H2").Value
Dim noIntent As String
noIntent = Range("I2").Value
Dim keyword As String
Dim found As Boolean
Dim InformationalArray() As String
InformationalArray = Split(Range("B3"), ",")
Dim InformationalValue As String
InformationalValue = Range("A3").Value
Dim CommercialArray() As String
CommercialArray = Split(Range("B4"), ",")
Dim CommercialValue As String
CommercialValue = Range("A4").Value
Dim TransactionalArray() As String
TransactionalArray = Split(Range("B5"), ",")
Dim TransactionalValue As String
TransactionalValue = Range("A5").Value
' IF InStr(
Dim InputDataRange As Variant
InputDataRange = Range("A" + CStr(first) + ":A" + CStr(last)).Value
Dim OutputDataRange As Variant
OutputDataRange = Range("C" + CStr(first) + ":C" + CStr(last)).Value
Dim Irow As Long
For Irow = 1 To ((last - first) + 1)
found = False
keyword = InputDataRange(Irow, 1)

For Each term In TransactionalArray
If Not found Then
OutputDataRange(Irow, 1) = TransactionalValue
found = True
End If
End If
Next term
If Not found Then
For Each term In CommercialArray
If Not found Then
OutputDataRange(Irow, 1) = CommercialValue
found = True
End If
End If
Next term
End If
If Not found Then
For Each term In InformationalArray
If Not found Then
OutputDataRange(Irow, 1) = InformationalValue
found = True
End If
End If

Next term
End If
If Not found Then
OutputDataRange(Irow, 1) = noIntent
End If
Next Irow
Range("C" + CStr(first) + ":C" + CStr(last)).Value = OutputDataRange
MsgBox "Search Intent Updated."
Don't Feel Like Learning Visual Basic?
Well, you probably should if you're doing much enterprise SEO, buuut, I'll help you out.
If you don't feel like going through the time and pain of getting that snippet working, instead of
wrestling with someone at Fiverr, you can grab a copy of the actual file I used (complete with all my
sample data) for just $5.
Grab a Copy of Search Intent Template for $5
Tagging For Best
Here's the human component that is still needed to really analyze keyword opportunities for
maximum impact and potential.
I call it my "best" column, and it is my process for manually reviewing and tagging the keywords that
I believe are the priority targets for the campaign - and it is exactly as easy as it sounds.
Once I have gotten my Excel file laid out to my liking, I sort by type of intent and filter for keywords
with a minimum monthly search volume of 1,000 or more.
Now based on the specific goals of the campaign, I tag my top priorities - the best keywords. This
helps focus on a top tier of say 20 to 50 (at most) keywords.

I then run each keyword through SEMRush to look at the competitive landscape of that SERP.
And here's what I'm paying attention to:
The Related Keywords Report
This report gives me an immediate sense of the commercial interest and general competitive
landscape of this SERP (as well as offers some fantastic contextual suggestions for queries closely
related to mine).
Which Websites Are in Top Organic Results
This is a quick and dirty tactic to get a sense of the SEO competitiveness of the term without having
to actually inspect the SERP (and also without having to worry about personalization, localization,
and all the other signaling algo's that may affect what you see).
To get this data just use the default 'Overview' view on SEMrush, and scroll down:

Laying Out Your Matrix
Though I have seen people do this in Excel, I prefer the ability to quickly wipe away, move, change
my mind, and finalize my concepts much like a figure artist with a sketchpad. For that reason I
recommend a sketchpad or ideally a whiteboard.
I'm going to stick with my earlier example of building out keyword intelligence visuals for SLR
accessories since there are a lot of terms and a lot of potential variations for each stage in the intent
funnel.
Once you've finished tagging all your keywords for best and intent, there's one additional caveat that
I like to add, occasionally, which I call content type. And this is exactly what it sounds like, it's a
human element that provides some context around what might be the best path for creating content
around that keyword - and while there's a lot of options, I tend to focus on blog posts, aggregate
pages, and evergreen pages.
Here's a quick look at what this might look like (click to enlarge):
In the above view I have sorted the intent column by Average search volume Search intent for
commercial investigation Best.

Next we move onto the keyword column to separate which keywords should be targets for organic
versus PPC, because all keyword opportunities are not created equal. These are based on a few
heuristics but really come down to average bid price versus AdWords competition on the PPC side,
and search volume versus organic competition on the SEO side.
Here's a peak at this list tagged for targets:
Making Cents of The Data
Now you have a enough data to start making informed decisions regarding your keyword targeting
and timing. Using a keyword matrix gives you the ability to quickly refer back to a set of data (as
long as you keep it up to date!) to drive your editorial calendar, your on-page content, when and
which pieces warrant video, and any other opportunities for keyword optimization.
Happy hunting.
Tagged as: keyword matrix, keyword opportunity, keyword research
http://www.seonick.net/keyword-matrix/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=keywo
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How To Build a Keyword Matrix [and Why You Need One]

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