How to complete keyword research for e-commerce

How to complete keyword research for e-commerce

Keyword research is the basis of every SEO strategy, especially for onsite SEO. Done well, it provides direction for what type of content it should optimize for you. So, a good keyword with a poorly completed strategy won’t help you make sales in your e-commerce store. In this article, we provide 15 reasons on how to perform keyword research for an e-commerce website.

1-Keyword research for SEO

When performing keyword research for an e-commerce website or otherwise, there are two significant ways to do it: starting from nothing with your study or spying on the competition. Before getting started, it’s essential to know the various factors that go into choosing good keywords. Here are a few critical factors:

A- Search Mass

There are numerous free keyword research tools, though this author swears by the paid tool. Use your device of choice to discover search volume. A high exact match search volume means there are a lot of users searching for a given term. That said, high search volume might say high game for ranking. You have to be realistic when comparing search volume to ranking difficulty in terms of your website’s domain authority. A basic rule of thumb for determining keywords is that anything over 20 monthly searches is worth considering.

B- Ranking Difficulty

A high-ranking difficulty score means it will be hard to compete with existing search results. Ultimately, it comes down to your website’s domain authority in your specific niche. For example, Ahrefs presents a helpful tool for determining where you stand. For domain authority, they relate to it as domain rating, based on your existing backlinks. For a new website, you’ll want to stay on the lower end of keyword difficulty. Like the now-defunct Klout score, it becomes exponentially harder to come up in a relevant search for terms as their problem approaches 100. We can say the same for growing domain authority, which is measured on a logarithmic scale.

C- Search Connection

If you find a keyword with high search volume that you’re confident you’ll be able to rank for, you must consider its relevance to your website and what you’re selling. To put this into context, consider the value of 10 qualified prospects driven by a search of over 1,000 unqualified visitors who will buy nothing and who bounce immediately when your website cannot deliver on what they were hoping to find because of a relevance mismatch.

D- Which E-commerce Pages To Optimize

For an e-commerce store, your home page and product pages are the highest preference for keyword optimization but not the only pages worth these efforts. Don’t miss the chance to optimize category pages, blog posts, image files, ALT tags for your target keywords.

2-Concluding where you rank in related search

Before you can make informed decisions concerning your keyword strategy, you must set benchmarks. Doing this can help guide your efforts around creating new content versus modernizing old content.

A- Using keyword rank tracking tools to benchmark success

Already started to build your e-commerce website and have attempted to incorporate keywords? Then make sure that you include some keyword ranking tracker to discover where you stand in a relevant search. Again, for example, Ahrefs can do this business for you alongside other already-mentioned functions with their rank tracker feature success. But you can rely on free data readily available by connecting your website to Google Search Console. The Performance report is where you’ll want to resolve which keywords you’re ranking for and their average position in search. Make sure to add your keywords besides those suggested within the report. Remember to regularly check on your rankings to implement a trigger for improving content that starts dropping in terms of average ranking positions. Dropping rankings act as an early warning that updates are needed to preserve your spot on search engine results pages.

B-  Observer on the competition

After deciding where your website is ranking, check to see how your competition is ranking. This will help you resolve how much work you’ll have to do to come out on top and to get ideas to adjust your keyword research efforts. This is important for an e-commerce website because not ranking first directly changes to losing out on conversions. If you’re in second place on the SERPs and your competitor is first, you could be to lose about half the potential traffic for that query. A few things to watch out for during your competitor research process:

– The specific keywords they’re going after.
– The page authority is needed to rank where they’re organizing.
– Their domain authority measures the power of a domain based heavily on high-authority and niche-related backlinks.
– Where their backlinks are coming from, which can give you ideas for guest posting and other collaboration opportunities.

3- The SEMrush keyword tool

The SEMrush keyword tool is one of the best for conducting competitor research in SEO and PPC efforts. It can help you discover all the pieces mentioned earlier in the puzzle. The SEMrush keyword tool is helpful for monitoring and research for your e-commerce website, but SEOs love it for its usefulness in spying on the competition. All you have to do is input a URL. It will display metrics like organic search volume, organic traffic over time, paid to search book, the number of backlinks, referring domains and IP addresses, and traffic by geographic channels. You can see these stats in terms of both desktop and mobile search and Google indexes in different countries. You can do regional searches for the specific areas you sell to.

SEMrush provides you a list of related keywords and phrase match keywords variations that users input into the search bar, identifying most like your websites based on organic seed keywords. This feature is helpful if you’re not exactly sure who your closest competition is. Also, SEMrush offers a tool that allows you to see everyday and unique keywords for up to five domains and another device that shows how difficult it is to rank against keywords your competitor is using. As if giving you the knowledge to spy on the competition wasn’t enough, SEMrush has a Keyword Magic Tool, which provides you with access to over 2 million keyword ideas. It is an all-in-one solution for competitor analysis, though Ahrefs offers many similar features if you want to stick with one monthly SEO tool subscription. Ideally, you’ll experiment with both before deciding on the best one for your needs.

4-  Use long-tail keywords

Using broad keywords isn’t a good SEO plan in modern times because of too much competition and relevance issues. So make sure to optimize primarily for long-tail keywords when creating product pages and blog post content for your e-commerce website. Fewer people will indeed search for these queries, but they’re the ones who are surer of what they want and, as a result, have higher purchasing intent. High intent keywords have heightened commercial sense, which signifies a strong likelihood for the searcher to take any action, whether to inquire, purchase, or gather information, which may later lead to a sale. One way to recognize keyword intent in e-commerce is by looking at the cost per click on your favorite keyword research tool, a metric that references paid search ads. More specific keywords tend to cost more but are an indicator of high search intent. Many SEOs identify three kinds of search intent: navigational, informational, and transactional. But based on findings shared on Think with Google, there are four. For this article, we’ll concentrate on the main three that most SEOs identify. Since navigational intent is more or less about users typing in branded queries to find a specific page on a company website, we’ll discuss about the other two types of intent and one that bridges the gap between these two:

A- Informational intent

Keywords with the informational intent signal that a user is watching for information and has questions that need answering. According to Google’s Search Quality Rater guidelines, these keywords would come under the want-to-know searches, and in the sales funnel, they would place searchers at the top of the funnel. According to practical e-commerce, optimizing for these keywords won’t lead to a deal right away, but they still represent ways to engage with potential clients early in their buying process. Informational intent keywords answer questions about how, how to, what to, and where to, ideal for creating. Content that provides tips and answers questions. Optimizing for informational intent has the added benefit of giving your content a shot at the featured snippet, which is position zero for your target keywords, enabling you to jump ahead of other content currently ranking in the top ten. If you’re not unless competitive with currently ranking domains sharing this type of content. Choosing keywords that optimize for informational intent is best for positioning yourself as an authority, which is essential when you’re selling informational products like online courses and ebooks.

B- Investigational intent

We can define an investigational search as something between an informational and transactional investigation. It’s not directly transactional. There’s a future that users searching for these queries may not be ready to make a buy, but they represent users further along in the sales funnel compared to informational searches. When people engage in an investigational search, they may try to link prices and various product features or further their understanding of something by doing research. Investigational intent isn’t included with the top three types of search intent, but it makes sense to expand on this hybrid type of intent when considering e-commerce purposes. Some keyword signals for this type of intent include: compare, for men, for women, alternative, review, and best. Optimize for these keywords to make content demonstrating to your potential customers that you are better than the competition.

C- Transactional intent

Transactional searches are those achieved when the customer is ready to buy something. These are referred to as high commercial intent keywords. Some keywords that say transactional intent include: sale, coupon, price, buy, for sale, free shipping, where to buy, discount, and review. Product keywords: winter clothing, coffee maker, specific products like iPhone, Samsung, and branded searches can be keyword signals for transactional searches. Use these keywords to build optimized product pages and local SEO content. Besides looking for long-tail keywords, aim to target opportunity keywords, which rank in the 11- 20 spots and have a good search volume/low difficulty score. Bring it all together by creating an editorial calendar that reflects a strategy optimizing for each type of intent. Don’t concentrate on optimizing for transactional purposes. You’ll build up a more complete sales funnel that reaches people at various stages of the buyer’s journey by creating content to appeal to each type of intent.