What is Keyword Bucket Optimization?
What do fried chicken, popcorn, and keywords have in common? They are best served in buckets of course! During our Advanced SEO Webinar on content writing, we explained how using keyword buckets greatly increases the effectiveness of your website optimization as well as successfully guide search engine spiders through pages deep within your website. Some refer to this method as content silos or thematic optimization, but as you will soon discover the bucket analogy is very applicable (and more fun!).
So what are these magic buckets?
Think of your homepage as the serving tray these buckets sit on. The meta and written content on your homepage should include your more general keywords and hit upon the major themes about the product or service you provide. This gives users and search engines an overview of what your company is all about.
Next come the buckets. Your homepage should include internal links to other pages on your website discussing more specialized topics. These pages group together content under a central theme, allowing you to target more specific keywords in the written and meta content. We refer to this as a level one page. Then, on this page, there should be several other links pointing to pages that continue to specialize and support the topic on the level one page. And yes, you guessed it, we call these level two pages. Level one and level two pages make up the keyword bucket because they both relate to the same subtopic.
How to Do It
Keyword Bucket Optimization is a key trick of the trade in SEO because search engines love buckets. To them, buckets look like treasure chests of relevant information that their searchers are going to appreciate. The bucket technique also allows you to optimize your internal pages for more specific keywords and long-tailed phrases, greatly helping them rank high for these less competitive keywords. The internal links also guide search engine spiders through your internal pages, ensuring that your whole website is crawled. This is very important because the spider is able to follow your links to deep internal pages which they would normally overlook.
In the example shown above, a company specializing in customer relationship management (CRM) is able to target its general keyword, CRM, on each level one page as well as more specialized key phrases (CRM services, CRM products, and CRM solution). Also, the level two pages signal to the search engine a wealth of information on these more specific topics. Now you’re not depending solely on your homepage to gain high Search Engine Result Page (SERP) rankings for the most competitive keywords and phrases but also have internal pages targeted to specific keywords and long-tailed phrases that are less competitive. As a result, these keyword buckets help improve your overall ranking for broad keywords (in this case CRM) as well as more specific targeted keywords (CRM services).
Keyword Buckets: A Win-Win-Win Situation
Everyone benefits from keyword buckets. Search engine crawlers can navigate deep into your website to discover a wealth of interconnected information that their searchers are sure to appreciate. Also, the buckets organize information by specific topics, enabling search engines to index internal pages targeting more specific keywords and long-tailed phrases. In turn, your company benefits as your website improves in search engine rankings, allowing your business to reach customers at the very moment they are looking for your product/service. Lastly, the searcher will profit from the relevance of your website to their more specific search terms and appreciate the useful link navigation that lets them explore your website in a logical way.
So although some people might not prefer fried chicken or popcorn, in the world of Keyword Bucket Optimization, everyone is happy.