Keyword Research Template

Keyword research is arguably the most important task to complete when executing an SEO strategy. Only second to clearly defining your focus areas and content structure.

I used to think you had to get lucky to generate tens or even hundreds of thousands of visitors to your website every month.

Until I realized, it's not about luck.

We grew our monthly traffic to over 250,000 organic visitors. That's a lot of traffic for a B2B SaaS website.

I will walk you through how to do keyword research using a simple, but very powerful excel spreadsheet or google sheet. You can replicate or even surpass our results.

This Keyword Research excel template includes the following tabs:

• Instructions: instructions on how to use this template most effectively.
• Content Map TEMPLATE: a framework for outlining your content focus, both in breadth and depth.

• Keyword Research TEMPLATE: a blank template to analyze your target keywords.
• Content Map Example: an example of what your content map may look like after completing the exercise for your SaaS company.  
• Keyword Research Example: an example of keywords analyzed for a SaaS company.
• BONUS: a go-to-market checklist to inspire you to check all the boxes with best practices across the board.

At one point, I majorly screwed up our SEO strategy.  

We started targeting high volume keyword terms that had low competition, but no relevance to our target audience.

This made our traffic numbers go up, but they weren't the right people visiting our website. So it was just a vanity metric that made us feel good.

We convinced ourselves that we were doing well because our unique visitors were growing, but revenue remained flat.

This template is designed to walk you through a content mapping exercise first to ensure your keyword analysis aligns with your high level vision, then a detailed keyword analysis.

Here are the steps I recommend you take:

1. Review all tabs in the spreadsheet first. It's always good to familiarize yourself with the content before you really dig in.
2. Map out your content structure. Choose the breadth of content you plan to cover and then the depth within those focus areas.
3. Use a keyword research tool like SEMrush or MOZ to identify keywords that align with your focus areas.
4. Drop in keywords into the Keyword Research template.
5. Prioritize your keywords.
6. Start producing content to target the highest priority keywords.

Be sure to gather input and feedback across departments. Gaining buy-in early will help you avoid going too far down the wrong rabbit hole.

SEO is a long-term investment. I think every SaaS company needs to invest in it. How much you invest all depends on how big the opportunity is...

Immediately download this template and customize it for your team.

Click “Add to Cart” on the right. You will receive a link to the Google Sheet of the Keyword Research Template when you checkout.

If you run a go-to-market team at a B2B SaaS company, explore these other templates as well:

• Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Template
• Brand Guidelines Template
• Social Media Strategy Template
• View Templates Bundles