Before you can map out or implement an effective keyword strategy for your brand or refresh your existing strategy, you need to know how your site is faring in SERPs. A keyword audit reveals where your web pages rank for targeted terms and uncovers missed opportunities that may be preventing your company’s growth.
I’ll guide you through the process of auditing your keywords and finding the most impactful ones for your business. You’ll learn essential steps such as setting goals, analyzing competitors, and reviewing your traffic and conversions. At the end of the keyword audit, you’ll have a clear plan of how to move forward and rank for queries that bring profitable traffic to your site.
What Is a Keyword Audit?
A keyword audit is an in-depth review of the search terms your website is targeting and/or ranking for, with the goal of improving your brand’s visibility for key search queries. It involves three main components:
- Assessing your current performance.
- Discovering valuable keywords you should integrate into your website.
- Refining your keyword list so you’re focusing on the search terms that are most relevant for your business.
Keyword audits are a type of search engine optimization (SEO) audit — you can run different types of audits to ensure all aspects of your strategy support your goals.
Why Keyword Audits Are Essential
Keywords are the foundation of your SEO efforts, guiding potential customers to your website. But search trends and competitor tactics are always evolving, so you should monitor your keywords for effectiveness. Are they connecting you to audiences who are looking for your services and products? Is the traffic they’re generating relevant and likely to convert? Has traffic changed over time? What keywords are you missing?
Keyword audits assess your search performance and zero in on opportunities to improve. This ensures you’re continually driving toward your goals by:
- Building a list of keywords you rank for to get an overview of your keyword strategy.
- Analyzing the competition to discover keyword gaps and where you’re falling behind.
- Identifying new opportunities, such as long-tail keywords, to expand your reach.
- Making sure your keyword strategy is relevant and evolving with user preferences.
- Assessing keywords for traffic and conversions to focus resources on the most promising search terms.
- Ensuring your SEO efforts are efficient and generating the best return for your brand.
What Should Be Included in a Keyword Audit?
A comprehensive keyword audit:
- Aligns SEO with business strategy. By assessing your current keyword performance against your business goals, you ensure your SEO efforts directly contribute to your strategic objectives.
- Optimizes Resource Allocation: Understanding which keywords drive the most valuable traffic allows you to focus your resources on high-impact areas, improving your SEO ROI.
- Identifies strategic gaps. Analyzing competitor keywords reveals opportunities to expand your market reach and differentiate your offering.
- Adapts to market changes. Regular audits help you stay ahead of shifting search trends and user behaviors, keeping your strategy current and effective.
- Improves content strategy. Keyword insights guide your content creation efforts, ensuring you’re producing material that resonates with your target audience and supports your SEO goals.
- Enhances user experience. By focusing on keywords that truly matter to your audience, you improve the relevance of your site content, leading to better user satisfaction and engagement.
- Supports data-driven decision-making. Keyword audits provide concrete data to inform your overall digital marketing strategy, from PPC campaigns to social media content.
Your SEO strategy isn’t just about ranking for more keywords – it’s about ranking for the right keywords that drive meaningful business results.
How To Run a Keyword Audit
Below, I’ve put together a blueprint for your own keyword audit process. You can adapt this checklist whether you’re just implementing SEO for a new website or want to achieve better results for your current efforts.
1. Nail Down Your Business Goals
The first step of a keyword audit is to clarify your short- and long-term business objectives. The keywords you target should propel your brand toward desired outcomes. For example, if your goal is to improve market share in a new city, you’ll need to target geo-specific keywords. Similarly, if your goal is to improve sales of a particular product, your keyword choices should pivot around audience pain points and the solutions you offer.
Once your sights are set on specific targets, it’s easier to select the right keywords and KPIs to track your progress.
2. Check Your Current Keyword Rankings
Next, find out where your web pages appear when users perform search queries. Keyword rankings tell you which search terms you rank for and where you’re positioned, reflecting your brand’s visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Use this initial assessment as a benchmark of how well your SEO strategies are working. Then, aim to expand the number of keywords you rank for and improve their search positions over time.
The easiest way to check keyword rankings is with a keyword monitoring tool. For example, Google Search Console’s Performance Report shows you the top 1,000 queries for your site. Paid rank trackers such as Moz, Semrush, and Ahrefs make it easy to monitor specific keyword performances in SERPs.
3. Inspect Traffic and Conversion Data
By understanding the potential of different keywords, you can allocate resources to the ones most likely to contribute to your business growth. Similarly, if certain keywords aren’t sending relevant traffic to your site, consider culling them to focus on more promising search terms.
Dig a little deeper into your keyword performance to look at metrics such as search volume, traffic, click-through rate, and conversions. Determine if you’re bringing in clicks from users who will take desired actions on your website, such as signing up for newsletters, requesting quotes, or making purchases.
4. Analyze Competitor Keywords
A competitive analysis tells you what keywords your rivals are ranking for that are missing from your strategy. When you fill in these keyword gaps, you can expand your audience and nab some of your competitor’s market share. For example, you might find competing florists rank for “wrist corsages,” a search term your flower shop hasn’t targeted. You might even get a step ahead and find related long-tail keywords your competitors don’t rank for, such as “wrist corsage for prom” or “wrist corsage for graduation.”
To perform an analysis, identify your key competitors and enter their domains into an SEO tool such as Semrush’s Keyword Gap. Look for keyword opportunities that are relevant to your business and target audience.
5. Conduct a PPC Audit
Keywords fuel pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, so if you run paid ads, include a PPC audit as part of your overall keyword audit. Ad metrics such as impressions, click-through rate, and cost-per-click will point you toward the search terms that are performing best for your target audience. Strengthen your PPC campaign by removing irrelevant search terms and exploring keyword gaps you discovered in the previous steps.
Your PPC data is also a great place to find high-converting keywords for your organic search marketing efforts. These are typically keywords used further along the buyer journey that motivate visitors to perform an action and support your ROI.
6. Brainstorm New Keyword Ideas
Every keyword you target is an opportunity to gain visibility and reach users with different search intents, so let’s broaden your list to make more of an online impact.
I like to identify a handful of high-level, core keywords and then find related subtopics. Grouping keywords this way streamlines the process and makes keyword ideation easier. You can then delve into keywords related to your services, product features, and audience needs.
Here are more ways to brainstorm keywords:
- Leverage SEO and AI platforms. Keyword research tools quickly generate semantically related or long-tail keywords. AI tools such as ChatGPT can also spark ideas.
- Turn to search engines. Enter your core keywords into Google and look at the “People also ask” and “People also search for” sections for suggestions.
- Use the autocomplete feature in search engines. Take advantage of predictive text in Google, Amazon, and other platforms to find related searches. For example, if you start typing “women’s cycling shorts,” you’ll see suggestions for shorts that are padded, have pockets, or are for long distances.
- Go to the source. Find out what your audience is asking on Reddit, Quora, and social networks. Survey your customer service teams for questions they often receive to gain insight into trends.
7. Conduct New SEO Keyword Research
Your list of potential keywords will grow longer as you brainstorm, but don’t worry — you won’t target all of them at once. With some in-depth keyword research, you can identify the most profitable search terms for your business and focus on ranking for them.
Analyze your keywords in terms of:
- Relevance to your business and audience.
- Ranking difficulty.
- Monthly search volume.
- Potential traffic and conversions.
Look for keywords that are closely related to your business, have reasonable search volumes, and are relevant further along the buyer journey. Some keywords have high search volumes and deliver significant traffic but can be tough to rank for if your site doesn’t have enough authority. You can still plan content around these terms. but I recommend balancing them with medium- and low-difficulty keywords so you can start ranking sooner.
Identifying Keywords To Avoid
Not all keywords are worth targeting. Be cautious of:
- Irrelevant high-volume keywords: These might bring traffic but not conversions. For example, a B2B software company probably shouldn’t target “free games” even if it has a high volume.
- Overly competitive keywords. If the top 10 results are dominated by major brands with high domain authority, it might not be worth the effort.
- Low commercial intent keywords: Words like “free,” “DIY,” or “homemade” often indicate users aren’t looking to make a purchase.
- Competitor brand terms: Unless part of a specific competitive strategy, these rarely convert well.
- Outdated or deprecated terms: Ensure you’re not targeting keywords for obsolete products or technologies.
- Seasonally irrelevant keywords: If your business isn’t year-round, avoid keywords that peak in your off-season.
By carefully selecting which keywords to target and which to avoid, you can streamline your SEO efforts and improve your chances of success.
8. Update Your Keyword Strategy
Once you finalize which keywords to target and remove irrelevant search terms, you’re ready to refresh your keyword strategy. I find it’s easier to implement keywords if you organize them into thematic clusters. You can then build content pillars around each topic to thoroughly address the subject and demonstrate your authority in the niche.
After your audit, prioritize your keywords based on:
- Alignment with business goals. How well does the keyword support your overall objectives?
- Current ranking and improvement potential. Focus on keywords where you can make short and long-term gains.
- Search volume and competition. Balance potential traffic with ranking difficulty.
- Conversion potential. Prioritize keywords that are more likely to drive valuable actions.
- Content readiness. Consider how much new content you’ll need to create and how much existing content you have that you can optimize around your new terms.
Create an action plan that outlines:
- Top priority keywords to focus on immediately.
- Content creation or optimization tasks for each keyword.
- Timeline for implementation.
- Metrics to track for measuring success.
Use your keywords to guide your SEO and content strategy. Plan pieces of rich content related to each keyword, keeping in mind the user’s search intent and schedule your content optimizations so you can tackle them strategically. Your content should fully address your target audiences’ questions or concerns and serve up valuable insight.
Be sure to implement SEO best practices in terms of formatting, meta descriptions, and internal linking to help search engines interpret your content.
Troubleshooting Guide for Common Keyword Strategy Issues
You’ve done an audit, but you’re not quite sure what’s happening with some of your keywords. It happens to all of us! Here’s how to address some common keyword strategy problems.
Issue: Keyword Cannibalization
Symptoms:
- Multiple pages ranking for the same keyword. You can spot this in a keyword research tool or Google Search Console. For the latter, click on a specific query and then check the pages tab. Unless sitelinks are present in SERP for the query, it should just have one URL listed.
- Fluctuating rankings. If you see a page that’s up one day and then down a lot another — and it keeps happening — check to see if another one of your pages is ranking for the same keyword.
Solution: Consolidate content into a single, comprehensive page or clearly differentiate the focus of each page. Use internal linking to establish content hierarchy.
Issue: High-Volume Keywords Not Converting
Symptom: Traffic increases without corresponding conversion growth.
Solution: Reassess search intent, improve content relevance, and optimize landing pages for conversions. Consider adding more specific, long-tail keywords to your keyword strategy to target users further along in the buying journey.
Issue: Difficulty Ranking for Target Keywords
Symptoms: Stagnant or declining rankings despite optimization efforts.
Solution: Focus on long-tail variations, improve content quality and depth, and build authoritative backlinks. Consider creating “pillar” content that comprehensively covers the topic.
Issue: Seasonal Fluctuations in Keyword Performance
Symptoms: Dramatic ranking and traffic changes during certain periods.
Solution: Develop a year-round content strategy that addresses off-season topics and leverages evergreen content. Use historical data to prepare for seasonal trends in advance. Don’t get rid of seasonal pages, though. Keep the same URL so that your pages build authority over time.
Issue: New Competitors Outranking You
Symptoms: Sudden drops in rankings for previously stable keywords.
Solution: Analyze competitor content, update and expand your own, and consider new content formats. Look for gaps in competitor content that you can fill.
Issue: Keywords Not Aligning with Business Goals
Symptoms: Increased traffic but no improvement in key business metrics.
Solution: Refocus on keywords that target your ideal customer and their specific needs or pain points. Align your keyword strategy more closely with your overall business objectives.
Useful Keyword Audit Tools
Keyword audit tools help you track rankings, size up competitors, and brainstorm keyword ideas in a few clicks. The best tools for your business depend on your needs and budget. I’ve listed a few suggestions below to get you started.
Google Search Console
A free tool that draws data directly from Google, Search Console gives you insight into your performance in the SERPs. You can get information on rankings, impressions, and click-through rates for various keywords. Search Console also highlights your most popular pages and alerts you to crawling and indexing problems that affect your ranking.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a comprehensive platform that shares click-stream data from 10 different search engines, letting you track rankings, generate keyword ideas, analyze the competition, and assess keyword difficulty. You can also use the tool for SEO tasks such as backlink monitoring and website analytics. Ahrefs offers some features through a free Webmaster Tools account and additional functionality through paid plans.
Semrush
Semrush is a full suite of tools that provides rank tracking, PPC audits, and in-depth competitor analyses. Keyword ideas are pulled from a database of more than 23 billion search terms. The tool provides insight into search intent, keyword difficulty, and search trends over the past year. It’s one of the more expensive paid tools, but it does offer a free, seven-day trial, so you can see if it fits your needs.
Discover Your Winning Keyword Strategy
Keywords are deeply entwined with SEO success. The ones you choose significantly impact whether your web pages surface during your customers’ online searches. A well-executed keyword audit provides the foundation for a robust, data-driven SEO strategy that aligns with your business goals and market realities.
If you’d like an experienced partner to help create a precisely focused keyword strategy for your business, driving relevant and profitable traffic to your site, reach out to Victorious for a free SEO consultation and to learn more about our keyword research services.
