Though I have seen people do this in Excel, I prefer the ability to quickly wipe away, move, change my mind, and finalize my concepts much like a figure artist with a sketchpad. For that reason I recommend a sketchpad or ideally a whiteboard.

I'm going to stick with my earlier example of building out keyword intelligence visuals for SLR accessories since there are a lot of terms and a lot of potential variations for each stage in the intent funnel.

Once you've finished tagging all your keywords for best and intent, there's one additional caveat that I like to add, occasionally, which I call content type. And this is exactly what it sounds like, it's a human element that provides some context around what might be the best path for creating content around that keyword - and while there's a lot of options, I tend to focus on blog posts, aggregate pages, and evergreen pages.

Here's a quick look at what this might look like:

In the above view I have sorted the intent column by Average search volume > Search intent for commercial investigation > Best.

Next we move onto the keyword column to separate which keywords should be targets for organic versus PPC, because all keyword opportunities are not created equal. These are based on a few heuristics but really come down to average bid price versus AdWords competition on the PPC side, and search volume versus organic competition on the SEO side.

Here's a peak at this list tagged for targets:

Where this becomes really powerful is when you start to use this data to drive your content creation and distribution efforts.

Here's a few tips for creating keyword targeted page content:

• For keywords containing commercial investigation modifiers such as best, price, list, or deals - create views that aggregate information to create a representative view.
• For keywords that contain commercial investigation modifiers such as deals, beginners, brand names, or use the best term in conjunction with a specific product, i.e. best SLR camera - create more time-focused content using blog posts (tip: leverage potential inclusion in Google News results by making sure your blog URL's are designed to meet Google News Technical Requirements).
• For terms where the searcher is putting in a specific parameter, i.e. "for the money" create pages that are intended to be perpetually useful, or evergreen content; these will require that you gather data and information from several sources, and you will need to update them often. BUT, these pages are often link magnets and can become long-term sources of both traffic and links.

In Closing

Now you have a enough data to start making informed decisions regarding your keyword targeting and timing. Using a keyword matrix gives you the ability to quickly refer back to a set of data (as long as you keep it up to date!) to drive your editorial calendar, your on-page content, when and which pieces warrant video, and any other opportunities for keyword optimization.