Adding keywords

RankYak discovers keywords automatically, but you know things about your business that research may not surface. Sometimes you may have keyword ideas of your own, or a list handed to you by an agency, a consultant, or another SEO tool. You may add these keywords to your site at any time, and RankYak folds them into the same pool it plans content from.

Adding keywords

1. Go to Keywords in the left menu and click Add keywords, or open the Research tab, click New research, and choose Add keywords.
2. Enter your keywords, one per line.
3. Click Add keywords to confirm.

You may add up to 500 keywords at once, each up to 80 characters long. Keywords are normalized to lowercase, and any that are already in your keyword pool are recognized rather than duplicated, so pasting an overlapping list is harmless.

Metrics

New keywords are imported in the background as a keyword research run, which you may follow on the Research tab. RankYak looks up the search volume and keyword difficulty for each one, measured against your site's country and language. Typically a list is ready within a minute; a large one may take a few. When your site is set to review research, the new clusters the import forms wait on the Research tab for your approval before they join the pool; a keyword that joins one of your existing clusters is available right away, and with auto-approval on, everything is.

One guarantee is worth knowing: manually added keywords are always kept and remain available for planning, even when the measured volume is low or zero. You added them deliberately, so RankYak keeps them regardless of what the data says.

Grouping and topics

Added keywords go through the same grouping as discovered ones. Keywords that Google answers with the same results are grouped so that one article covers them all, which means a pasted list of close variations becomes a handful of articles rather than a page of near-duplicates. When an added keyword shares its results with an article you already have, it joins that article's group instead of scheduling a competing one.

Every group is also filed under a topic on your topical map. Typically that is an existing topic, but when your list opens ground the map does not cover yet, RankYak creates the topic for it, and later research grows it like any other.

Sometimes you may wish to keep the keywords apart instead. The same service in different cities, for example, reads as one intent to Google but deserves an article per city. Turn off Group into clusters before you confirm, and every keyword in your list becomes a cluster of its own, one article each, with its primary keyword locked so research never merges it away. Research may still add variations to it later. With grouping off, you may also tick Pull existing keywords out of their clusters: a keyword from your list that is already in your pool then leaves its current cluster and becomes its own, right away and regardless of the review step. The primary keyword of a cluster that already has an article or a planned date stays where it is. You may manage clusters by hand at any later time as well.

Planning

Added keywords become part of your keyword pool and are eligible for the content plan from that moment on. However, adding a keyword does not schedule an article for it by itself. If you would like an article for a specific keyword sooner, you may schedule it on a day of your choice on the calendar, and RankYak writes it in the early morning of the date you picked.