If you’re new to the world of eCommerce or digital marketing in general, you’ve probably heard of search engine optimization ( SEO ). In a world where most online traffic comes from a line of text typed into a search box, search engine optimization can be a game changer in the fate of your eCommerce business. SEO involves a variety of tactics, but the basic principle is that you’re helping Google and other search engines better understand what your eCommerce site is about and what it sells. This, in turn, increases your visibility, increasing the likelihood that search engines will list your site in search results when potential customers search for the products you sell. One of the foundational tactics of SEO is keyword research . SEO keyword research is the simple art of better understanding the terminology your potential customers use to search for the products you sell, and then matching the terminology north korea b2b leads to your site and marketing. In this article, we’ll cover the basics of keyword research for eCommerce. The end goal is to create a relevant list of keywords that you can return to and use when building and optimizing your website , writing product descriptions, and writing blog posts.
Contents hide
1 Why is eCommerce Keyword Research Important?
2 Keyword Research for E-Commerce: The Basics
2.1 Keywords
2.2 Long-tail keywords
2.3 Search volume (average monthly number of search queries)
2.4 Competition
3 How to Research Keyword Research for Your Ecommerce SEO Strategy
3.1 Define your keyword set
3.2 Find Niche Keyword(s) to Win
3.2.1 Topic: Best Dog Food
3.2.2 Topic: Dog food container
3.2.3 Topic: raw food diet for dogs
3.2.4 Topic: Natural dog food
3.3 Create a research process
3.3.1 The most common types of content are:
3.4 Map out different types of content
3.5 Develop a content calendar
4 Your Keyword Research Process Determines Your Progress
5 FAQs on Keyword Research for Ecommerce
5.1 Related publications:
Why is eCommerce Keyword Research Important?
Every time someone performs a search , the search engine must decide which handful of results to display from hundreds of thousands of possible pages. Search engine algorithms must determine the best and most relevant matches for each specific search. That's why it's important to carefully select your keywords so that search engines can pick up and display your site in search results for the most relevant keywords . It's important not only to rank on the first page of search results for relevant search queries , but also to rank at the top of the first page. To understand how big a difference ranking makes, consider the graph below, which shows search results position and average traffic share :
From the graph we learn that the first three search results receive more than 58% of the traffic. Keyword research will help you:
Understand search demand to create an optimal SEO strategy
Create a list of relevant phrases that match your marketing goals.
Prioritize your keyword investments to target high ROI keywords first
Eliminate Keyword Gaps in Your Store
In short, the closer you are to the top of Google search results for relevant terms, the more traffic (and potential sales) you will receive. Depending on the search query and the volume of monthly searches for that query, a difference of just a few positions can represent a significant loss of revenue in the long run.
Keyword Research for E-Commerce: The Basics
Before you begin researching keywords for your online store , it is important to know and understand a few key terms that you will encounter. These terms include:
Keywords
A keyword in the context of search engine optimization is a specific word or phrase that serves to briefly describe the content of a web page or website. Keywords are part of a web page's metadata and help search engines match the page to a relevant search query.
]
Long tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are simply keywords that contain three or more words. Long-tail keywords are important (hence their name) because they catch people later in the buying cycle and therefore have a higher conversion rate . Someone searching for “hair extensions” is likely in the early stages of information gathering. However, someone searching for “hair extensions 20 inch price” is likely further along in the buying cycle and much closer to making a purchase. These keywords are called “high purchase intent” or “high commercial intent.” SEO often assigns one of three search intents to a keyword :
Navigational: when search engines are looking for a specific site
Informational: When searchers want to know or do something, such as creating a homemade recipe
Transactional: When the searcher wants to buy something
Search volume (average monthly number of search queries)
Search volume is usually measured in average monthly search volume. This is the total number of searches per month for any given search phrase (keyword). Ideally, you want the keywords with the highest search volume. Ranking highly for search terms with high search volume means more potential traffic and conversions for you and your store. Unfortunately, there is no magic number that represents the ideal search volume for everyone. What constitutes the “right” search volume will be different for every site.
Contest
Search volume isn’t the only thing you need to consider. Competition is just as important, if not more so. There’s no point in trying to rank for specific keywords that you have no chance of ranking for . Competition refers to the difficulty of ranking for each specific keyword. In an ideal situation, your strategy will include keywords with high search volume and low competition. However, these gold nuggets are hard to find and will require hard work, patience, and perhaps a little luck to find them.
How to Research Keyword Research for Your Ecommerce SEO Strategy
Define your keyword set
There are a lot of nuances between new and existing stores, so for the sake of brevity I’ll assume you’re working on a brand new site. If your store has been around for a while, you’ll likely already have a good database to draw from to guide your research. But for a new site, you’ll need to rely on competitor research . The right way to do this is to find the major players in the space that aren’t colossal brands — avoid Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and other well-known general e-commerce sites . Don’t be too dismissive of big information brands like Wikipedia or Quora , though . These sites can be a treasure trove of keywords and topics. You can also start your search with an SEO tool like:
Ahrefs
Moz
Semrush
Google Keyword Planner
In this tutorial, we'll be using Ahrefs. Let's say you're an organic pet products brand, and your main competitor is Only Natural Pet. You can enter their website URL into Ahrefs' search bar and get a list of organic keywords that brand ranks for .
You can also view Top Pages to see which web pages get the most traffic and the keywords for each URL.
Open a Google Sheet and start writing down the keywords you want to rank for. As you write down each keyword , you begin to build your keyword universe.
Find Niche Keyword(s) to Win
To compete with the 800 pound e-commerce gorillas these days, especially if you’re just starting out, you need to start with a hyper-niche – a niche within a niche, and sometimes even a niche within a niche (that’s niches all the way to the end). With the importance of specialization in mind, let’s walk through the entire keyword research process from start to finish with a real-world example. Looking at something tangible is a good way to make the concepts we’ll be covering more understandable and actionable. Continuing with the pet products example , let’s look at how to find the right keywords to rank for your store. The first step is to head over to Google and do a basic search, starting with good old-fashioned common sense. All we want to do now is see what Google suggests in its auto-suggest results. For this search, I typed in “dog food,” just to get started.
