If you have had any previous experience with a SEO agency/consultant, you have probably heard of the concept of keyword mapping. Keyword mapping is the process of matching up the pages that you have with the keywords you want to go for. In essence, before you start doing any serious SEO, you need to know:

1. What pages you have.
2. What keywords they are getting ranked for.
3. How well they are getting ranked for them.
4. Should they be getting ranked for them.
5. Should they be  targeting other keywords.

I have seen companies that do not know how many pages they have on their sites! It may sound crazy, but that happens folks. Obviously, if you don’t know the pages that you have out there on the Internet, then you probably don’t know what keywords these pages are getting ranked for. Once you know what keywords your pages are getting ranked on, you basically have to figure out how well you are getting ranked for those keywords. More importantly, you need to figure out if you are getting ranked well for the main keyword that should go with that page. As a part of this process, you want to avoid keyword cannibalization phenomenon. As you know, you can have only 2 listings on every page of Google. So if you have three pages competing for those 2 keywords, you need to know that the right 2 pages are winning. Better yet, by only having 2 pages getting ranked on the first page for that keyword, you avoid the keyword cannibalization issue. One biggie is to avoid getting ranked for the wrong keyword. If you have a page that is related to let’s say summer trips, you should probably not get ranked for winter trips. In short, if your page is getting ranked for the wrong keyword, then you will have to find a way to either change the theme of the page or add the right keywords to them. That’s why keyword mapping is so important for your SEO efforts. I have seen SEOs that come up with a set of recommendations without analyzing their clients’ websites properly. You can not recommend adding pages to a website without knowing what you have already just as you can’t target a keyword on a new page without knowing if your existing pages are going for those keywords as well. So don’t forget to bring keyword mapping up if your SEO somehow forgot about it.