Mapping keywords to content - need a better approach

This has always been a massive pain in the ass for me. I've done my kw research, found a good 1,500 keywords I want to use in my campaign. But now it's time to create a backlog of articles with their respective keywords for the freelancer to follow.

My current process:

I've been going through my spread sheet of keywords, and I will assign one primary keyword, and a few related keywords to an article.

Eg,

Main KW: Best model cars

Secondary KW: Model cars, best model cars for teens

Article: The best model cars of 2016



So I'd tell me freelancer, I want an article on the best model cars of 2016, and here are the kws to use.

Now I want to create an entire content plan before hand so I can just give the whole list to the freelancer and they can do their thing, and I can keep working on SEO etc.

But what I am doing is far too tedious and long, because some keywords could belong to other articles, etc etc.



What process do you guys follow to do this?

No one has any ideas? I'm still building a nice excel template for this but dreaming of a day where I find a piece of software to make this process much more effecient

Excel is the way to go - but if you have a freelancer then maybe Google sheet - that way you can both update.

Also you could look at smart sheet - it's similar to excel but allows for discussions and timelines and so on, along with the standard spreadsheet layout.

As for the actual data, one way or another you have to document and organise your keywords- best as you said per article - primary keyword, long tail variations and if you want to complicate it further related keywords - like not what you want to rank for, but keywords that just re-enforce the subject matter.

As for overlap of categories, perhaps you should consider setting up a silo structure and the overlap would be the ideal way to cross link between categories.

Google sheets for sure so you both have access, then figure out which KW is going to be most profitable for you and the easiest to rank for and prioritize in that fashion. You might also be able to target the long tail variations while doing so as well, which will help eliminate the need for additional content creation. Track using a ranking software and go from there.

Looks like its the old school sheets, was hoping someone had some pretty software to help me

Thanks guys