MKT 446 Week 2 Keyword Strategy Example

What Pet Owners Actually Type: A Keyword Strategy Built on Search Intent for a Boise-Area Veterinary Practice

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MKT/446: Search Engine Optimization

Week 2 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Treasure Valley Animal Hospitals and all search volumes are composites written for a model paper.

Week 1 found that Treasure Valley Animal Hospitals, a composite three-clinic veterinary practice in Boise, Meridian and Nampa, Idaho, ranks well only in Boise and trails a newer independent clinic and a national chain elsewhere. One reason is that the practice's website uses its own vocabulary, such as wellness examinations and companion animal services, rather than the words pet owners use. Practice manager Luis Ortega needs a list of target searches before any pages are rewritten. This paper explains search intent, describes how candidate keywords were gathered and judged and presents a keyword strategy with a page map.

Search Intent

Broder (2002) analyzed search behavior and proposed that web searches fall into three types. Navigational searches aim to reach a particular site, such as a clinic's name. Informational searches seek knowledge, such as why a cat stops eating. Transactional searches aim to perform an activity, such as booking an appointment or buying a product. A page designed for one intent rarely satisfies another.

Jansen et al. (2008) built rules to classify queries automatically and applied them to more than a million queries from a search engine log. They found that about 80 percent of queries were informational, with roughly 10 percent each navigational and transactional. The finding matters for a veterinary practice: most pet owners' searches are questions, and a practice that answers them well earns visibility long before the pet owner is ready to book.

Long and Specific Phrases

Ghose and Yang (2009) studied a retailer's sponsored search campaign across hundreds of keywords and found that the features of a keyword shaped its results. Click-through and conversion rates differed with the keyword's length and with whether it included retailer or brand information, and higher ad positions did not always bring more profit. Although their data came from paid search, the lesson carries to organic search: specific phrases often bring visitors who are closer to acting.

Gathering Candidates

Candidates came from three sources. First, the 12 core queries from Week 1. Second, the practice's appointment system, which records the reason for each visit; the top reasons were vaccinations, skin problems, dental care, limping, vomiting, senior pet checkups and spay or neuter surgery. Third, a keyword tool, which suggested related terms and estimated monthly searches in the Boise metropolitan area. The process produced 60 candidates.

Scoring Criteria

The team rated every candidate on a five-point scale against four tests. Volume reflects estimated monthly local searches. Difficulty, scored in reverse so that easier terms score higher, reflects how strong the sites ranking for it are. Relevance reflects how closely the term matches services the practice wants to grow, especially dental care and senior pet care, where it has capacity. Intent reflects whether the search fits a page the practice can offer, with transactional local searches and common health questions scoring highest.

What the Scores Showed

Broad terms such as veterinarian had high volume but very high difficulty, dominated by directories and chains. Town-specific service terms, such as dog dental cleaning Meridian, had modest volume, about 50 to 150 searches a month, but low difficulty and clear transactional intent. Health questions, such as dog limping but not in pain, had wide reach across the region and moderate difficulty, and fit articles written by the practice's veterinarians. Several candidates, such as exotic bird vet, scored low on relevance because the practice treats only dogs and cats.

The Final Keyword Set

Twenty-four keywords were selected in three groups. Nine are primary local service terms, three per town: for example, veterinarian Meridian ID, dog dental cleaning Meridian and senior cat checkup Meridian, repeated with Boise and Nampa. Six are secondary service terms used across all locations, such as puppy vaccination schedule cost and pet spay surgery recovery. Nine are informational questions tied to common visit reasons, such as why is my dog scratching so much and how often should cats see a vet.

The strategy gives up on the single biggest term and wins two dozen smaller ones that bring people who are ready to call.

The Page Map

Each keyword is assigned to one page. The three clinic pages target the veterinarian plus town terms. New service pages will be created for dental care, senior pet care, vaccinations, surgery and skin and allergy care, each with a short section for each town, targeting the service terms. The nine questions become articles written or reviewed by named veterinarians, each linking to the related service page. No two pages share a primary keyword, which prevents the site from competing with itself.

Competitors' Keywords

The newer independent clinic ranks for several dental and senior care terms the practice wants. Rather than copying its pages, Treasure Valley will offer more depth, such as its veterinarians' advice on anesthesia for older pets, where its experience is an advantage.

Local Modifiers and Synonyms

Pet owners describe the same need in several ways. Some type vet, others veterinarian or animal hospital, and many add near me instead of a town name. Searches ending in near me depend on the searcher's location rather than words on a page, so they are served mainly through accurate map listings and clinic pages with full addresses. The strategy therefore treats vet, veterinarian and animal hospital as variants of one keyword on each clinic page rather than as separate targets, and it relies on the town names in headings, addresses and directions to signal location. Spelling variants, such as spay versus spaying, are handled the same way.

Reviewing the Strategy

Rankings for all 24 keywords will be checked monthly, along with calls and booking requests from organic search. Every quarter, new candidates from the appointment system and search data will be scored, and keywords that bring visits but no appointments will be reconsidered.

Conclusion

A keyword strategy starts with customers' language and the intent behind it. Research on intent shows that most searches seek information, and research on keyword features shows that specific phrases often bring more ready buyers. By scoring 60 candidates and mapping 24 to distinct pages, Treasure Valley Animal Hospitals can compete where it has a real chance and build the content that next week's site architecture will organize.

References

Broder, A. (2002). A taxonomy of web search. ACM SIGIR Forum, 36(2), 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1145/792550.792552

Ghose, A., & Yang, S. (2009). An empirical analysis of search engine advertising: Sponsored search in electronic markets. Management Science, 55(10), 1605-1622. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1090.1054

Jansen, B. J., Booth, D. L., & Spink, A. (2008). Determining the informational, navigational, and transactional intent of Web queries. Information Processing & Management, 44(3), 1251-1266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2007.07.015