Select keywords to track

A complete SEO strategy balances head terms, mid-tail keywords, and long-tail keywords.

Head terms, also called “short-tail keywords,” are broad keywords with high volume relative to other keywords in a given topic select keywords to track.

For example, “sneakers” is a top term with a volume of 201,000.

“Nike wide shoes for men,” on the other hand, is a long-tail keyword that receives far fewer searches per month: 320.

Long-tail keywords are highly specific queries that typically have relatively low search volumes.

Despite their low volume, they represent 70% of all searches on Google .

Medium tail keywords are more specific than head terms, but they are not necessarily as specific as long tail keywords.

They can help drive more qualified traffic to a website compared to keywords, which are often broad and difficult to rank for.

Combine the strengths of all three types of keywords. Balance them in your targeting to ensure you’re targeting different intents and not relying solely on one type of keyword.

For example, the terms in your headline can often indicate that the searcher is simply looking for information. You could create content about the history of sneakers.

Medium and long-tail keywords, on the other hand, can indicate that people are looking to buy. You could create a page for a shoe size chart that takes into account the wide sizes you sell.

With this balanced strategy, you’re working to attract searchers of all types and build a larger audience.

Step 5: Map your keywords

Keyword mapping involves strategically phone number lead assigning relevant keywords to specific pages to improve their visibility and ranking.

The goal is to match each target keyword with a page on your site that best satisfies the search intent. This way, you can optimize pages for the most relevant terms and avoid keyword cannibalization .

A keyword map looks like this:

To get started, check out Keyword Mapping for SEO and download the Semrush keyword mapping template.

Step 6: Set up Semrush’s position tracking tool

To track the rankings of your target keywords, you can use Semrush’s position tracking tool .

To begin setup, enter your domain and add-ons and functionality click the ” Set Up Tracking ” button select keywords to track.

Before making selections in this next step, look at your website analytics to see:

• Which search engine drives the most traffic to your website?
• And what type of device do most of your visitors use: desktop, mobile or tablet?

Next, with those two answers in hand, choose the search engine and device you want Semrush to use for tracking. You could start with “ Google ” and “ Mobile ,” respectively.

You also need to choose a location, so choose the primary country your business sells to.

Next, click the ” Continue with Keywords ” button.

The next step is to manually enter your target keyword list, or import it from another source, such as a TXT or CSV file.

Once this is done, click on ” Add keywords to campaign ” and then on the ” Start tracking ” button.

Watch this short video for a demonstration of the steps we just went through:

You will then see a dashboard with various reports. The default view shows overall metrics for the landscape and a summary for the domain.

Go to the ” Overview ” tab to see business sale lead metrics for the keywords you’ve set up.

In this report, scroll down and you will see the “Rankings Summary”.

This lists your keywords, their rankings, and how they have changed in position over time.