Business Benefits
Improve website traffic, search engine rankings, and revenue.
Understand the different search term types in the SEO Pyramid.
The SEO Pyramid categorizes search term types for B2B businesses into 8 different categories. The categories at the top of the pyramid generally have the lowest volume but highest purchase intent and the categories at the bottom tend to have the highest volume but lowest purchase intent:
- Brand Terms: Searches for your product name. Shows that users are specifically looking for your product.
- Solution Terms: Searches for your product category. Shows that users are aware that a product category exists and are looking for a solution.
- Integration Terms: Searches for terms related to your product and its integrations. Shows that users are experiencing the problems your product solves and have special requirements or preferences.
- Alternative Terms: Searches for alternatives to your product. Shows that users are experiencing the problem your product solves but are not yet aware of your specific product and are searching for alternatives that they do know of.
- Competitor Terms: Searches for your competitors. Shows that users need a product like yours but may not be aware of your brand; or are existing customers of your competitors.
- Problem Terms: Searches for terms related to the problem your product solves. Shows that users are experiencing the problem your product solves but may not yet be aware of your product category or specific product.
- Upstream & Downstream Products: Searches for other products that show the searcher is in your target market, but may not yet be aware of your product category or experiencing the problem you solve.
- General Terms: Searches for terms that show users are in your target market but may not yet be experiencing the problem you solve.
Brainstorm potential keywords related to your business and add them to a seed list.
Start from the top of the pyramid and move on to the bottom. For example, if your product is point-of-sale software, your brainstorming might look like this:
- Brand terms: [your brand name].
- Solution terms: Point of sale software, POS software, iPad POS, Android POS, Retail POS, Cafe POS.
- Integration terms: POS software for Xero, POS software for Quickbooks.
- Alternative terms: Cash register, cash book.
- Upstream and downstream products: Deputy, BigCommerce.
Create a spreadsheet and add each keyword from your seed list as a row.
Adding your seed list to a spreadsheet makes it easier to keep track of your keywords and remove under-performing ones further down the line.
Enter your seed list keywords into a keyword tool like the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.
Add key information like search volume, clicks, competition, and current rank as columns on your spreadsheet.
If you’re using the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, adding each term or uploading your list as a CSV gives you important information on each of your keywords.
Add any related and relevant keyword suggestions from your keyword tool to your spreadsheet.
Click through each one and add the key information to your spreadsheet, too.
Model out the potential results for each search term you’ve identified.
Avoid putting too much emphasis on maximizing metrics like volume and minimizing competitiveness and model the estimated value of traffic all the way through to the sale to avoid optimizing for the wrong keywords.
Use the potential results from your models to map out key business metrics for each category of terms in the pyramid in a spreadsheet.
The goal here is to get a feel for which category has the most potential based on your estimations and identify where you should focus your SEO efforts. For example, if your key business metrics are search volume, clicks, signups, customers, and revenue, your spreadsheet could look like this:
Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T12:05:55Z