SEO Keyword Strategy: How to Drive Traffic and Increase Leads

An SEO keyword strategy is a long-term plan for finding, prioritizing, and targeting Google search terms.

In this guide, we break it down into four parts, discuss different approaches marketers typically take, and why we think our process, Pain Point SEO, is the most effective for a large fraction of businesses using SEO to acquire customers, not just grow pageviews. 

#1. Whether to Prioritize Keywords by Traffic or Buying-Intent

Most marketers and SEO advice tells you to prioritize traffic with all SEO efforts — that growing traffic is the goal of SEO. And for some businesses, this is absolutely correct. For example if you run a blog or media site monetized by ads, you should create an SEO strategy focused on maximizing traffic. 

However, for businesses selling a product or service — where revenue isn’t driven by ads — your keyword strategy should prioritize conversions (e.g., leads, sales, trials, add to carts) rather than just traffic. It’s important to remember that more traffic doesn’t automatically translate to more conversions.  

Let’s look at why that is. 

If we look at the sales funnel, the top of the funnel (TOFU) is where you draw in lots of people (i.e., a broad audience). As you move down the funnel, fewer and fewer people stick around until you’re left with just the ones that become paying customers. 

Many marketers believe that if you use SEO content to fill the top of your sales funnel, other content (e.g., product pages, white papers, case studies) will draw the readers in and down the funnel and eventually lead to conversions. This is the crux behind the high-traffic keyword strategy approach: target high traffic keywords with the assumption that more traffic will lead to more customers. 

But, let’s say you’re an IT company targeting the keyword ‘cybersecurity’ — a classic TOFU keyword. This term has a high search volume of 119k per month and is related to the service you offer. 

On the surface this looks like a great SEO keyword. But consider who would Google the term “cybersecurity”: 

• A student doing research on the topic
• Someone considering a career change
• An elderly person concerned about getting scammed, etc.

In other words, this is an introductory term for a broad topic, and most people Googling it are seeking overview-level information. 

Now consider who would be in charge of finding a new IT services company: Likely a high level manager-type who is already familiar with what cybersecurity is (they just need someone to manage it for them). Why would this person sit down at their computer and Google “cybersecurity”? They wouldn’t. 

If you ranked for this term as an IT security company, you’d find that the conversion rate from TOFU content to leads is quite low for products or services. We’ve seen across thousands of keywords for numerous clients over the years. 

For businesses selling products or services via their website and using SEO to acquire customers, not just traffic, we instead recommend targeting keywords with buying-intent.

This means that people searching for these keywords are actively looking for a product in that category, researching competitors, or otherwise showing intent to buy. In our experience, high buying-intent (also called bottom of the funnel) keywords convert at a much higher rate. 

For example, below is a graph that shows the conversion rates of 65 different posts — some targeting bottom of the funnel (BOFU) keywords and others targeting TOFU keywords. 

As you can see, the BOFU posts had a conversion rate of 4.78% whereas TOFU posts had a conversion rate of just 0.19% — that’s 25x the difference! And this is just one example; we’ve seen this across thousands of articles for clients across a wide variety of industries and business models. 

#2. Finding and Prioritizing Keywords

We’ll start by discussing how to find and prioritize keywords if organic traffic is your goal. Then, we’ll cover how we brainstorm and prioritize keywords to get conversions (jump to that section). 

High Traffic Keywords

It’s easy to find keywords with high search volumes. First, brainstorm a bunch of topics related to your business. For this example, we’ll say you’re selling human resources software. 

Your list might look like this: 

• Human resources management
• Hiring and onboarding
• Conflict management
• Training and development
• Performance management
• Recruitment
• Employee management, etc.

Then, enter each of these topics into a keyword research tool such as Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush and it will return a list of keywords that either contain the original keyword or are related. 

Most tools automatically arrange the list by search volume, but you can usually do this manually if it’s not already done for you. 

Once you have your list, consider how difficult it will be to rank for each keyword. The two most important factors here are keyword difficulty (KD) and domain authority (DA). 

KD indicates the level of competition for a keyword (most keyword research tools will provide this metric). The KD that you can handle (i.e., target and rank for) will depend on your DA and available resources. 

DA measures a website’s strength in terms of its ability to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) compared to other websites. Ahrefs and Moz are the two most common tools that provide this metric. For reference, here is Ahrefs article on how their website authority metric works. You’ll need to consider your own DA and the DA of the top ranking websites for a given keyword in order to determine your chances of ranking. 

Both of these metrics are scored on a scale from 0–100. Higher KD numbers indicate more competition, while higher DA numbers suggest a greater likelihood of ranking.

But, you’ll need to experiment with different KD and competing DA to see what you can rank for. For example, DA isn’t the sole factor in ranking. If you look at the search result for any keyword, you’ll see the top results are never sorted by DA. It’s common to see lower DA sites ranking above higher DA sites for any given keyword. So don’t use that metric as the end-all-be-all of your ranking potential. 

High Converting Keywords

The most practical way to find keywords with high buying-intent is to look for ideas in these three categories: 

• Product or service category keywords
• Competitor comparison keywords
• Pain point keywords

Below, we’ll discuss how we use these categories in our SEO process with clients and provide examples to illustrate them. We’ll also link an in-depth article on additional ways to find high-quality keyword and content ideas.

Category 1. Product or Service Keyword

The first category of keywords we target describes our client’s product or service. They’re the top terms that most businesses are bidding on through paid search ads, and the most obvious keywords that any business would want their website to rank for.

For instance, if you sell marketing analytics software, you definitely want to target and rank for the keyword “marketing analytics software.” Similarly, if you offer Shopify development services, focus on ranking for “Shopify development services.” There’s nuance to going after these competitive terms, which we’ll discuss below, but these are the highest buying-intent terms for any business and therefore deserve high priority.

It’s important to note that there are often more product or service keywords — that is, relevant keyword variations closely related to your business — than many companies realize.  

For example, take a business we’ve worked with that sells remote executive assistant services to startups. The first obvious service category keyword is “executive assistant service” or “executive assistant for startups.” 

However, when you look and think a little deeper, there’s a wide array of keywords that they could target in this category:

• “Executive assistant” variations:
  • Executive assistant service
  • Executive assistants for startups
  • Remote executive assistant service
  • Executive assistant staffing agency
  • Executive assistant staffing firm
  • Startup executive assistant
    
    
• “Virtual assistant” variations:
  • Virtual assistant service
  • Virtual executive assistant
  • Virtual assistant for startups
  • Virtual assistant staffing agency
    
    
• “Administrative assistant” variations:
  • Administrative assistant service
  • Remote administrative assistant
  • Administrative assistant staffing agency
  • Outsourced administrative assistant

We find that many (if not most) of our clients face a similar situation: there are numerous ways people search for what they offer. As you start your keyword research, it’s useful to identify as many of these variations as possible.  

Category 2. Competitor Comparison Keywords (vs. and Alternatives)

The second category of keywords we look for are competitor comparison keywords. These include keywords such as:

• [Competitor brand] vs. [Your brand]
• [Competitor brand] vs. [Other competitor brand]
• [Competitor] alternatives

People who are searching these terms are either: a) looking to understand the differences between products or services because they have intent to buy, or b) unhappy with their current solution, and looking for a different product or service to use instead. Therefore, like product and service category keywords, these terms have very high buying-intent. And in our work, we’ve seen these keywords convert very well for our clients.

To identify keyword opportunities in this category, enter different variations of these terms (including relevant competitors) into Google or your keyword research tool to see what comes up. 

For newer or smaller brands, where there may not be much search volume for the brand compared to competitors, we’ve found success creating content targeting “[competitor] vs. [other competitor]” keywords. 

By including “[competitor] vs. [other competitor] vs. [our client’s brand],” we can piggyback off of the search volume of people comparing our clients’ competitors and position our client as a viable option.

The more competitors in your space, the more opportunities you’ll have for comparison keywords.

Category 3. Pain Point Keywords

The third category of keywords we look for are pain point keywords — keyword phrases that indicate the person searching has a problem that our client’s product or service solves. 

Pain point keywords allow you to reach people at the right time (i.e. when they’re trying to figure out how to solve a specific problem) and offer a natural opportunity to present your product or service as a solution to that problem. 

Here are some examples of pain point keywords we’ve targeted for clients and links to the content we created targeting them:

• “How to edit video fast” for our client Reduct: How to Edit Video Fast: 5 Tips to Speed Up Video Editing

• “Who is visiting my site” for our past client Leadfeeder: Who Is Visiting My Site? How to Identify B2B Sales Leads That Don’t Fill out a Form

• “Keep track of staff holidays” for our client Timetastic: How to keep track of staff holidays (without clumsy spreadsheets)

• “How do I know if I need an executive assistant” for our past client Persona Talent: How to Know When You Need an Executive Assistant—and When You Don’t

Compared to the first two keyword categories discussed above, pain point keywords rely heavily on a deep understanding of your customers and their specific challenges. 

Read our article on Customer-Content Fit, where we discuss in detail how we approach this.

How to Prioritize High Buying-Intent Keywords

1) Start with Your Product and Service Category Keywords

Product or service keywords tend to be the highest converting so we typically start with these. However, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• These are often high competition keywords, meaning it can take more time and require more backlinks to rank. If you want to eventually rank for these, it’s good to start on them ASAP.

• Long-tail keyword variations are typically easier to rank for than broad terms (e.g. “hvac software compatible with quickbooks” vs. “hvac software”). Targeting these keywords first can help you secure early wins while still focusing on high-intent keywords.

• Look for SERPs where the top results have fewer backlinks. These keywords tend to have lower keyword difficulty and can provide quicker ranking opportunities.

2) Mix In Some Competitor and/or Pain Point Keywords

It’s good to diversify the types of keywords you’re going after to see how different keywords perform from a rankings and conversion standpoint, spot new opportunities, and double down on what’s working (more on this below). 

These categories are often less competitive and easier to rank for than product/service category keywords, so you can get rankings and build momentum faster, even with high-intent terms.

The same considerations regarding competition and backlinks discussed above apply when choosing the order in which you tackle these.

3) Monitor Rankings and Conversion Metrics and Adjust Accordingly

Monitoring your SEO performance is crucial because it allows you to see what is and isn’t working. There are many tools available, but we use Ahrefs to track rankings and Google Analytics to measure conversions. 

Example #1: Prioritize High-Converting, Low-Competition Keywords

If you identify a subset of keywords that are easier to rank for or drive significant conversions, consider focusing on more of those.

For instance, a client we worked with operated in a niche where competitors hadn’t yet adopted the “competitor vs. other competitor” keyword strategy. Despite their low domain rating, we were able to achieve position 1 rankings for these terms. Additionally, these keywords drove substantial conversions despite having low search volume, so we prioritized targeting more of those keywords.

Example #2: Consider Increasing Backlinks

If certain keywords are stuck on page 2 or 3 in the SERPs, that may indicate that they need more backlinks to improve their ranking. In this case, consider increasing your link-building efforts for those pages. 

Example #3: Optimize Your SEO Title

If certain keywords are stalled near the bottom or middle of the first page, you might try updating the SEO title to something more compelling that can increase CTR, which can boost the ranking. We’ve had a number of instances doing SEO for our own agency where changing our SEO title helped us move from the bottom or middle of page 1 to the top.

Monitoring your rankings and conversion data is essential for spotting these opportunities and getting the most out of your SEO efforts. 

Other Ways to Come Up with Content and Keyword Ideas

In addition to the keyword research process we’ve shared so far, consider these tactics for generating content and keyword ideas:

• Interview key departments in your company that have deep knowledge of your customers and their pain points (sales, customer success, executive team, etc.).

• Use tools like email auto-responders to collect feedback from customers on their biggest challenges.

• Join or create online communities where customers ask questions and discuss challenges.

• Examine your Google Ads account for high-converting keywords that could also be tackled through organic search.

• Plug keywords into Google to uncover additional opportunities via Suggested Search, People Also Ask, and People Also Search For.

Check out our article on content ideation for in-depth advice on how you can approach this. All of these tactics can further inform your keyword research and help you find new keyword opportunities for your business.  

#3. How to Choose Pages to Optimize for Each Keyword

Once you’ve completed your keyword research, the next step is to decide which web pages to optimize for each keyword. Here are the key things to consider:

Factor #1: Match Search Intent

Examine your list of high priority keywords and determine if you have any existing pages that closely align with the search intent of each keyword.

When analyzing the SERP for a given product or service category keyword, check whether the top results are primarily home pages, product/service pages, or blog posts.

You’ll likely want to match the page you optimize with the types of pages that frequently appear in the top results, as that indicates the search engine algorithm favors that page type for the keyword. While there are exceptions, this is a good guideline to follow. 

So, if you have an existing page that closely matches the search intent, focus on optimizing it for the target keyword. Otherwise, create a new page.

Factor #2: Create Dedicated Pages

If you don’t have an existing page that closely matches the search intent for a keyword, create a dedicated blog post or landing page to go after that keyword. 

We cannot emphasize the importance of the word “dedicated” enough. Many companies and agencies attempt to target multiple keywords with a single page, but as Google’s algorithm has evolved, this approach has become far less effective. 

Getting a position 1 ranking requires deeply matching the search intent for each specific keyword, and in our experience, creating individual pages for each keyword is the best way to do that.

#4. Updating content

Many marketers recommend updating content on a fixed schedule because they feel Google rewards new content. However, we’ve found that updating content simply for the sake of updating content doesn’t significantly impact performance. 

Instead, we recommend updating content when the intent behind the SERP changes or there’s a new position or feature to discuss. 

You can learn more about when to update content here.  

Articles to Help with Executing Your SEO Keyword Strategy

This article has focused entirely on keyword strategy (i.e. finding and prioritizing keywords that have business value). But there’s a lot that goes into execution — doing SERP analysis, creating content, and measuring performance — that’s also necessary to get results.

Here are additional in-depth articles we’ve written to help you with the other essential steps in executing your keyword strategy:

• 6 Step SEO Content Strategy (Examples & Common Mistakes)
• SEO Content Writing: A 5-Step Process You Can Follow
• Underdog SEO: How to Beat Your Competition at Search
• Content Marketing Attribution: How to Measure Content Performance

Want to Work with Us or Learn More About How We Approach Content Marketing?

• Our Agency: If you want to hire us to execute content marketing in this way, you can learn more about our service and pricing here.

• Write For Us: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing in this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.

• Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback. Learn more here or watch our video walkthrough.