You built your website with specific keywords in mind. Once you’re doing well for those keywords, what’s next? A new keyword campaign!
We’re thinking most about medical keywords here, but you’ll find that these steps work for just about any industry.
Can you ignore keywords once you rank?
The best way to rank for a keyword is to have the best possible page for that keyword. If you have the best page for “oculoplastic surgery” in your service area, you’re likely to show up when people search for that term. But don’t forget a few home truths:
- Different people see different things. Search results depend on rankings, of course, but also on the searchers’ geographic location, search history, and even social connections. Unless you always show at #1, you can probably still improve your results.
- Rankings can change. Maybe you are the only oculoplastic surgeon in town with a great page optimized for that keyword. Next week, a competitor publishes a great page on the subject on their website. They may be able to push your page below theirs. In fact, the most common reason for a drop in your rankings is some work on the part of your competitors.
- Searches can change. Right now, people often search for things like, “best eye doctor near me.” That wasn’t a top search strategy five years ago, and it might not be a top search strategy five months from now.
Most of the time, a strong ranking will hold steady, but you need to be aware of your rankings and make sure you keep supporting them.
Add a new keyword campaign
Generally speaking, you can add new keywords once you are established at Google for the set of keywords you started with. If you’re solid for “oculoplastic surgery,” to continue with our example, it makes sense to move on to “blepharoplasty.”
Track your keyword rankings with Google Search Console or other tools, and find the keywords for which you solidly rank on page 2. Moving these to page 1 rankings will be faster than choosing a term at random.
However, if you know that blepharoplasty is your most profitable procedure, you might want to rank for that keyword even if it takes longer.
Whichever keyword (or group of related keywords) you choose, concentrate on it and track your progress. Then move on to the next group. Adding 100 unrelated keywords to your spreadsheet isn’t a campaign — and it can be hard to measure success with that large a list.
Optimize existing content
Do you have a page for blepharoplasty on your website already? If so, use analytics to see how well it’s performing and optimize as needed.
Compare your page with those of your competitors and make sure that it is more complete and helpful than theirs.
Then use this page as the center of a new Content Cluster. That’s what we call a basic, cornerstone content page with several related pages linking to it.
Here we see the main keyword is “LM141,” a model number our hypothetical searcher cares about. If we’re working on “blepharoplasty,” we might create new pages with keywords and titles like these:
- droopy eyelids
- blepharoplasty costs
- eyelid surgery
- 5 Ways Blepharoplasty Can Improve Your Life
- blepharoplasty vs. fillers
Schedule new content
Create new posts or pages to round out your content cluster, link them up to your cornerstone content, and schedule them out. It’s more effective to add fresh content on a regular basis than to build half a dozen posts today and have nothing new for months into the future.
You might also want to do some linkbuilding as part of your campaign.
Track your progress on your keyword campaign. If you see progress, keep doing what you’re doing. If your rankings don’t improve within a couple of months, change your tactics till you find a strategy that works.
When you have a solid ranking, you’ve succeeded. Then it’s time to move on to a new keyword campaign!
Need some help? This is what we do for our clients, and we’ll be happy to do it for you, too. Contact us to discuss your needs.
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