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For any established eCommerce brand, keyword research will be one of the first go-to’s in the pursuit of increasing visibility online.
Understanding what your potential customers are actually searching for is an essential first step in increasing the odds of them discovering your brand. With Google making up 92% of all of the web’s search queries, appearing as that illustrious first search result is not only, the quintessential marker that your website accurately answers your customer’s questions well, but it likely tracks with a big improvement in sales too.
Keyword research can do more for you than just improve your search rankings however; it also allows you to stay ahead of the competition, improve the user experience of your website, and optimise your advertising spend.
But with 8.5 billion Google searches made every day, it’s not exactly a journey you can undertake with no direction. This is where keyword research comes into play. Keyword research should be the obvious first step in any well planned SEO strategy, but one that will set you on the path towards increased rankings, greater visibility, and increased success online.
So, let’s uncover some of keyword research’s keys to success.
Keyword research is the process of identifying and analysing the words and phrases (keywords) that people use when searching for information, products, or services online. This practice is fundamental to search engine optimisation (SEO) and digital marketing, as it helps website owners and marketers understand what their target audience is actually searching for and how to connect their content with those queries.
Here are some tips for choosing the best keywords for your eCommerce brand.
You have to understand where you are to know where you’re going.
How are you supposed to know how to improve your rankings unless you take stock of the keywords that are relevant to the niche you are in, and where you rank in relation to them?
Tools such as Google Search Console can give you a ton of different keywords, both long and short, and display clearly how you rank against them. However, it’s really up to you to decide how many of them are relevant to growing your brand, and which ones are perhaps worth skipping. Competition is fierce after all, and there are thousands of other sites that will be ranking for the exact same terms as you. To whittle your list down to keywords that are actually worth your time and effort you’ll need to identify keywords with a mix of traits.
Does the keyword actually describe a product or service that you offer? If not, it’s not worth your time.
What is the customer trying to get out of searching this keyword? Usually it’s one of four things:
Depending on what kind of business you are running, each of these search intents will be of varying levels of importance. For example if you don’t have a physical store, you really shouldn’t be targeting any location based keywords.
Does the keyword get enough searches for it to demand your attention, and, conversely, does it get so much traffic that trying to rank for it would be an extremely difficult task? For most brands, somewhere in the middle, or just on the cusp of feasible is the way to go. So, for the example above, the keyword “running shoes” is an extremely popular search term, one where you’d be hard-pressed to dethrone Nike and Adidas as top results. Terms like this have what is called a high keyword difficulty (KD), meaning that it’s extremely difficult to rank highly for them. Therefore, a more specific search term, one with a lower KD, such as “barefoot running shoe” or “crossfit shoe,” both of which still have a high search volume, might be terms you could aim for. But again, ensure that you actually offer products that satisfy this description.
With these three factors considered, you can establish a set of core keywords that can lead the way for your SEO strategy.
Benchmarking where you are against these keywords gives you visibility to how much progress towards your goals you have made and how much more you need to make. And, for most, reveals that you are either on the right path already or have spun off the road somewhere along the way. And if the latter is the case, no worries, by conducting keyword research you’re already on your way to brushing yourself off and getting back on the right track.
Think of the keywords you’ve established here as the tallest skyscrapers in a city. These buildings would look a bit out of place if they were just on their own, and with little economy around them, they wouldn’t attract much business. Each building needs a number of smaller buildings surrounding them. This is to say that the “core” keywords you target should each have a number of derivatives being targeted too. To easily find these, we’re huge fans of using Semrush’s Keyword magic tool, which can generate tons of derivative keywords from one initial keyword.
Using the “crossfit shoes” example from above we get 1795 other keywords that we can pull from, ones with a lower average KD of just 31%. These are a mix of short and short-tail and long-tail keywords, and it’s important to prioritise both. As the name suggests short-tail and long-tail keywords each denote the length of the keyword, with longer keywords being more specific searches. So, “Crossfit shoes” is a short tail keyword, whereas “black crossfit shoes size 10” would be a long tail one, as it’s a more detailed search, but one that you can therefore rank higher for if you structure your store correctly.
Again, it’s equally important to filter these terms by their relevance, intent, and KD, but it’s a great starting point.
Having a fully fleshed out list of keywords is all well and good of course, but what do you actually do once you have them? Well, it’s all about optimising the pages that you have, and creating content that matches those core keywords. This could be through the addition of new pages such as blogs, or through optimising the pages you already have, through improving the product descriptions, H1s, H2s, meta titles, and meta descriptions.
For our client Cyberjammies, it was all about categorising their products and creating new landing pages based on these keywords. For example, they didn’t have a landing page that could use the meta title “family matching pyjama sets,” which was a relatively commonly searched term, that a number of their products fell into, so we made one. Of course, these new pages needed populating with keyword filled, relevant content. The most basic form of this would be a category description, but additional B block content, FAQ’s, and further supporting content is a great way to boost your rankings overall. This of course requires a significant time investment, but one that will pay its dividends in droves if executed correctly.
If conducting keyword research wasn’t enticing enough already, there are a number of other things that you can do off the back of your keyword research beyond just optimising your site for search results.
Here are two examples -
Whilst many eCommerce brands are born out of the minds of those on the cutting edge of their niche; those who have a deep understanding of their industry and all of its facets, this confidence shouldn’t lead to the resting on one's laurels and forgoing conducting keyword research. It’s a lengthy process that requires significant time and effort, but there aren’t many better ways to improve your site’s visibility.
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