Chapter 08: Critical keywords

Almost no one reading this will actually work on this sprint.

Why? Because they’re usually reserved for market leaders. 

Critical keywords are industry defining keywords. Ranking for them means:

• You get 20+ SQLs per month just from that keyword
• You establish your position as the industry leader (Think: If you searched for “HR software” and saw 10 companies on Google, wouldn’t you already think they’re big companies?)

But chasing these keywords isn’t a walk in the park. It comes with its own set of challenges, especially when it comes to getting approval for the necessary budgets.

The approval dilemma 

In most organizations, it’s already hard to get budget approvals for SEO initiatives. It’s even harder to get budget approvals to try ranking for critical keywords.

Imagine asking for $10,000 to rank for a single keyword when your stakeholders don’t really understand how it’s worth it. If they can’t see the potential impact, they’re unlikely to approve the spend.

In this chapter, I’ll share both how we at Spear Growth help get approvals and how we rank for these keywords.

Categories of keywords 

There are 3 types of critical keywords:

1. Impossible to rank for
   These are the keywords dominated by industry giants with massive domain authority. For example, a new HR software company trying to rank for “HR software” is up against behemoths like Sage, BambooHR, and Oracle.

2. Expensive but possible
   Ranking for these keywords is feasible, but it requires a significant investment. Think “HR software in Dubai”—it’s challenging, but not impossible with the right strategy.

3. Surprisingly accessible
   Some keywords that you expect to be highly competitive actually turn out to be easier to rank for. For example, “HRMS Software UAE” might have less competition than expected.

(Note: I didn’t actually check the difficulty of these keywords, these are just examples I have used to illustrate my point. Also, they’ll have varying difficulty levels for each business.)

For more on keyword difficulty, refer to the chapter on Keyword Difficulty.

Turning critical keywords into strategy

Stage 1: Getting approvals to even get started

Step 1: Identify your keywords
Start by identifying 10 critical keywords that could potentially transform your business. These are the high-impact keywords you want to rank for. Don’t worry much about keyword difficulty at this stage.

Step 2: Reporting
The next step is to report on these keywords monthly. Keep track of your rank, see which competitors are outranking you, and monitor the trend.
The toughest part about this stage is making sure you’re forcing marketing leadership including the CMO to look at these numbers as part of your monthly/quarterly report.

It’s about showing where you stand and building momentum with the stakeholders.

Step 3: Nail the conversation when asked
At some point, someone—likely your CMO or another executive—will ask you for more details. This is your chance to nail the conversation and set expectations.
Here’s what your response should look like:

“The reason we haven’t targeted these critical keywords yet is because they require significant resources to rank. We need a budget for content creation, backlinks, and maybe even hiring external teams. Typically, for these types of keywords, you’re looking at several thousand dollars in investment. But once we get that budget, we’ll be able to put a plan in place, get your approvals on the specifics, and execute. Let me know if you’re serious about considering this, I can present a plan to you then.”

It’s important to get this right because this could be the last 5% of work that helps secure the budget approval. If you can clearly communicate the value and the investment required, you’re more likely to get the green light.

Stage 2: Creating the “Money-Money Menu”

Let me break down why I call it the “money-money” menu. Starting with the “money- money” part.

When presenting this report (or any report for SEO), try to get as close to making units of the left hand side and right hand sides of your equation the same, i.e., don’t say “I want X dollars to generate Y backlinks”, instead, get as close as possible to saying “I want X dollars which will help generate Y dollars in Z time.” 

The reason why I call it a menu, is because when you do this activity for all of your 10 shortlisted critical keywords, it looks like a menu with 3 columns- The dish (keyword), the calorie count (revenue), and the price (budget needed).

Here’s how we create it:

Step 1: Create a cost estimate
You need to outline the resources necessary to rank for these keywords. This could include things like:

• Content creation
• Backlinks
• Internal team time
• Any additional tools or third-party help needed

This cost estimate should be as detailed as possible, so decision-makers can clearly see where the budget will go.

Step 2: Value assessment
For each keyword, estimate the potential ROI. Use the search volume, expected click-through rates, conversion rates, and the value of a conversion to create this. Essentially, you want to show how much revenue or leads these keywords could bring in.

If you don’t have access to pipeline information to do this, use the metric closest to revenue that you have access to, like pipeline or SQLs. The execs should be able to estimate it beyond that.

Step 3: Menu approach for approvals

Now that you have the cost and value outlined, present this as a menu to your stakeholders. This “money-money menu” shows the cost vs. expected return for each keyword, helping make the decision process smoother for your executives.
The clearer you can make this ROI comparison, the easier it will be for them to approve the spend.

Stage 3: Implementation

Once you’ve got the budget approval for a few critical keywords, you’re ready to implement. Here’s how you do it:

Step 1: Add the activities
For each keyword, break down everything you need to do to rank. This could include:

• Internal linking
• Creating a new page or section on the website
• Building backlinks
• Minor structural changes to the website
• Updating on-page content

Step 2: Add the requirements
For each task, include:

• Stakeholders involved
• Time required to complete
• Estimated cost
• Priority/Chance of success

Step 3: Build a project plan
Once you’ve outlined all the tasks, you need to build a project plan. Organize tasks in phases, and try to batch similar activities for efficiency. Each phase typically should be 3 weeks long.

For example, instead of adding internal links to a single page at a time, do it for multiple pages at once.

Step 4: Project manage it
There are a lot of moving parts and people involved, so project management is key. It is the SEO team’s job to make sure everyone is doing what they have committed to do, and the handoff between each team is happening smoothly. During this time, also monitor the keywords and see if your rankings improve. If you see progress, you may not need to implement the remaining phases—sometimes 40% of the work is enough to see the kind of rankings you want.

An example of the kind of results you can expect doing this!: 

Take Darwinbox, for instance.
After we implemented a critical keywords strategy in the MENA region, they went from closing just a few enterprise deals a year to securing five enterprise deals in a single quarter. This is a 5x increase in deals closed from a single critical keywords sprint!