What should be the first step in creating a keyword map?

Auditing your current content and listing every page on your site is the essential first step because it provides a foundational understanding of your existing content landscape. Before you can strategically assign keywords, you need to know what content you already have. This allows you to identify gaps, opportunities for optimization, and existing keyword cannibalization issues. Optimizing all pages for the same keyword is incorrect because it leads to keyword cannibalization and poor SEO. Deleting pages prematurely is not a first step; it's a potential action after an audit. Creating new content for all target keywords without understanding existing content is inefficient and can lead to duplicated efforts.