How to Research Keywords for Your Ecommerce Site.
Ecommerce SEO to drive qualified traffic and sales starts with understanding how to research keywords, learn how to do it the right way here.
Building an Ecommerce empire, isn’t easy and can only be accomplished once you learn how to generate traffic and increase your sales. For the majority of Ecommerce brands most of this quality website traffic comes from organic search. The backbone of your organic SEO efforts is still doing research for the right keywords. This post is going to show you how to research keywords specifically for Ecommerce websites.
Keyword research is a very crucial aspect of SEO and clearly, it is THE primary stepping stone to start any campaign. Although there are other aspects that are needed for a successful SEO strategy, keyword optimization is the prerequisite.
In order to understand what keyword research is all about, let’s start with what keywords actually are?
Keywords are those phrases or queries that users insert into the search box of any search engine.For example, “Apple products” is a keyword, used to search definite branded products.So it becomes quite important to optimize content based on the search query, that is whether you need to show fruits or smartphones. Proper optimization will help you target the right audience and thus improve your sales numbers.
Broadly, there are 4 types of keywords:
- Generic keywords
- Broad match keywords
- Long tail keywords
- LSI keywords
As the name indicates, these types of keywords are nonspecific and have no particular direction.For example, “ shoes” , which itself is a broad category and has no specific information of type ,size,color or any other characteristics.
Broad match keywords:
This category of keywords provides somewhat additional information about the search. For example,” black sports shoes” narrows down the search to black color and for sports category only. This category of keywords is highly recommended for any SEO campaign as it is in the right place between being too generic and too specific.
Long tail keywords:
For targeting specific audiences and low competition, this category is the best choice.For example,” adidas black sports shoes price”. Now this type of keywords not only narrows down the search but also has a high rate of conversion.
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, are those words or phrases that start to appear as auto suggestions when you start entering a keyword in the search box.
Now that we have seen the broader classification of keywords, let’s dive in a little deeper to understand their further classification. Yes, there is an extra layer of classification based on the intent of the search. They are as follows:
- LSI keywords
Navigational keywords are directly employed for the search of your brand name. For example “ Adidas”, is here a navigational keyword and is navigating the search towards “Adidas” brand only.
Investigational keywords are those keywords which include prefixes like “best”, “affordable” or “economic” with the primary keywords that indicate high probability of purchase or conversion. These keywords are used for investigating a product before purchase.
These keywords are also known as commercial keywords are used when the user is determined to purchase a product and often use prefixes like “ buy”, “purchase” with the primary product name or keyword.
These, in the literal sense, are used for information gathering. For example, “DIY home tips” is an informational keyword and used only when a user is seeking some sort of general information about any topic with very meagre chances of any purchase.
Since we have gone through the detailed classification of keywords, now we can proceed towards the steps of selecting the right keywords for your ecommerce site.
So here it goes:
- Conceptualize the possible keywords related to your products and your targeted audience.
- Use keyword research tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush or even Google Search Console to analyze the keywords that are prominent and are already driving traffic to your site.All they need is some optimization for better performance.
- Think as an user and note down the possible keywords by using the LSI keyword suggestions.This method gives a fair idea of possible keyword combinations.
What tools can you use for keyword research?
You can use SEMrush, Google Adwords Keyword Planner or Ahrefs to know the search volume and the prominent keywords, which are driving the maximum traffic. Besides this, the most important feature of these tools is that they also show your competitor’s keywords statistics, which allows you to strategize your keyword structure.This helps in targeting certain segments of products and eventually drive more traffic, thus boosting your sales.
Selection of keywords is just a balancing game between popularity and competitiveness. Keywords with high search volumes are often difficult to rank, thereby you need to be careful in their selection. It is better to go for such keywords that ain’t too popular, and are relatively easier to rank.
How and where to use your keywords?
Now you are ready with your keywords list, it’s time to use them in the right ways, so that we get the best results.
Let’s see where we can use them:
1. In the meta title and description:
Make sure you optimize them with the right combination of words so that your keywords don’t get stuffed.
2. Amid your content:
Try to place your keywords in the middle of the content of your product’s pages.Google always focuses on the quality of the content and uses it as a ranking criterion.
3. In the URL:
Make your URL appear natural and genuine by placing your keywords in the right combination.But again, make sure the keywords don’t get overly stuffed, else it will have a negative impact in terms of ranking.
Along with the above mentioned places, you can also use keywords for internal linking to your other pages. It will help in bringing relevancy and also reduce bounce rate of your site.Even for external link building, through guest posting, blogging or business listings, you can rightfully use the keywords as the anchor texts.
How things have changed?
Google is all about evolving and it applies to its way of filtering information too.Its recent update, including the BERT update, now strictly focuses on the relevancy and quality of the content.This is enabled by algorithms that can use organic or natural language simulation to better understanding of the search intent of the user.In return, Google delivers the most relevant content to the user.
What does it mean?
The above situation clearly implies that we need to create original, authentic and more quality oriented content, while optimizing keywords in the most organic way, without indulging in black hat SEO tricks like keyword stuffing or Cloaking, in order to avoid penalties.
Keywords should also be optimized in accordance to conversational queries, as Voice search is a trending phenomenon in today’s times. With increase in the usage of smartphones and wireless smart speakers, users are finding more convenience in voice search queries.
Wrapping it up
So let’s wrap up the above discussion in a few takeaway points:
- Correct choice of keywords after competitor’s analysis is the stepping stone. Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs for better results.
- Think as a user and try to understand the search intent to better optimize the keywords.
- Place your keywords in the above mentioned places for authenticity.
- Focus on the quality of your content and maintain relevance.
As search engines are getting smarter, we need to take care of the vital criteria that are discussed above and keep ourselves updated with the latest trends.