Ecommerce Keyword Research is an important part of SEO strategy for identifying and analyzing an online store’s most relevant and profitable search terms.
Targeting the right set of keywords can increase your visibility in SERP and get more traffic and sales.
Why It's Important?
Ecommerce keyword research will not change your rankings overnight. E-Commerce keyword research is important and will impact your future decisions in terms of digital Marketing, online ads and content creation.
Finding relevant keywords and optimizing your product pages around them can boost your store traffic and sales.
Keyword research gives you an insight into your customer needs, which can improve your SEO efforts.
Good e-commerce keyword research can help you rank higher in Google SERP over time. 28% of all clicks go to the first Google organic result.
The higher your website rank on SERP’S more visibility and organic traffic you gain.
Ecommerce Keyword Research also helps you -
1. Understanding customer needs – When you do Keyword Research you can analyze the intent behind the keyword. Then you can create content and a product offering that matches the intent.
2. Research customers in a specific location – Keyword Research can help you reach your customers if your business has multiple physical locations. The same goes for targeting particular states, regions and countries.
3. Stay ahead of competition – Find hidden keywords your competitors might not be targeting.
4. User Experience – Find the right keywords to organize all your products into categories and subcategories. Providing a great user experience for customers leads to more sales.
5. Optimize your Ad spend – If you are running paid ads for your E-Commerce store you can find low-competition keywords for your ads.
Finding & Choosing right keywords Ideas -
Let’s say you sell make-up and accessories. Targeting keywords like “makeup kits” and “makeup accessories” seem straightforward but the competition is fierce for these keywords.
Hundreds of other big websites like Amazon, and Estee Lauder already rank for it. It would take years of effort time and resources to rank for these keywords.
In Ecommerce keyword research we have to look for keywords that have the following traits –
1. Relevance – The keyword is relevant to the product you have to offer.
2. Difficulty – How difficult is it to rank for a particular keyword?
3. Intent – Check the intent of your customer by analyzing the keyword. Find out if the customer is looking to research or buy your product.
4. Search Volume – How many searches per month a particular keyword is getting? The Higher the search volume the better it is.
Now let’s define each of these traits –
1. Relevance
First, you have to think about how relevant this keyword is to your product or brand. When doing your E-Commerce keyword research you will come across many keywords that look good on a spreadsheet.
But in reality, if you analyze then they aren’t actually relevant to your business and target audience.
Let’s take an example of the branded keyword. When you will do Keyword Research for your E-Commerce store. you might discover keywords like “loreal makeup kit” and “estee lauder makeup kit” match all the above traits.
But do your E-Commerce stores really sell these products? If not, then don’t choose this keyword as it is not relevant.
Another great example of an irrelevant keyword would be a product your store doesn’t offer. For example “Sephora gift sets”.
Users are looking for makeup products by Sephora. If your store doesn’t have any content related to Sephora makeup and your store doesn’t sell them, it doesn’t make any sense to target this keyword.
2. Keyword Difficulty
Keyword Difficulty metric estimates how difficult it would be to rank specific keywords organically. KD is measured on a scale from 0 to 100 with a higher value indicating higher competition.
For example, the keyword “Sephora makeup” has a KD of 73% according to the Semrush Keyword Research Tool.
A Keyword difficulty of 73% means it is very difficult to rank.
On the other hand keyword “kids makeup” has a KD of 36%.
Keyword Difficulty of 36% makes it possible but not hard to rank for this keyword. This does not mean you should not choose target competitive keywords at all.
You should be strategic when it comes to choosing keyword for your E-commerce website.
If your website is brand new target keywords with a difficulty of 20 and below.
If it is an established website with authority and links you can move your target to KD of 60% or below.
3. Search Intent
Search Intent means what’s the motivation of the user behind a search query. Google algorithms rank pages that are closely aligned with the keyword intent.
There are 4 categories of Search Intent –
1. Transactional – Users are ready to buy a product, book a call. For example – “buy makeup kit”.
2. Informational – Users are looking for explanations, answers on a specific product or topic. For example – “types of makeup kit”.
3. Navigational – When users want to visit a specific store or website, they will type something like “Yoga class nearby” or “pizza nearby”.
4. Commercial – Users are researching about a particular product before buying it. For example – “makeup giftsets”.
As a store owner, it’s your job to find keywords that align with pages on your website. Let’s say a user wants to buy makeup kits.
First, the user might search for informational keywords like “types of makeup kits”. After that, the user may type commercial keywords like “best makeup kits” to see what options are available there.
Last, they may search for “buy wedding makeup kit” and make a purchase. If you are selling makeup kits you will most likely find these keywords.
Should you target these keywords depends on whether you have the right pages or content to match search intent.
- “types of makeup kits” – Informational Intent. You have to create a guide on this topic in order to rank for this keyword.
- “best wedding makeup kits” – Commercial Intent. you have to create a list of relevant products or reviews to rank.
- “Buy wedding makeup kits” – Transactional Intent. You have to create a product page or product category page to rank.
4. Search Volume
The number of searches a particular keyword gets every month is known as ” Search Volume”. A high search volume means users are searching for it. Here’s some example from Semrush Keyword Tool –
By looking at the above picture you might be thinking of targeting high search volume keywords. But, just because a keyword has a high search volume doesn’t mean you should target them.
There is a bargain between Keyword Difficulty and Search Volume (which I will cover in next section ). Keywords that have high search volume tend to have more competition.
Even if you optimize your website perfectly, you will not receive any traffic because you don’t rank near the top results.
Focus on targeting long-tail keywords for your E-Commerce stores. Long tail keywords are more specific and longer. (e.g. – “best wedding makeup kit” or “men red Nike Air Zoom”.
Long tail keywords have low search volume which means less competition. Choose keywords you can easily rank for and then choose with a high search volume.
How To Conduct Keyword Research for your Ecommerce Website -
The process of finding, selecting and prioritizing keywords you’ll use to optimize pages of your website is called Keyword Research. Using SEO tools like Semrush makes it easier to research.
Create a list of seed keywords -
The basic ideas, terms and products you’ll use to generate a list of keyword ideas are “seed keywords”. Think of seed keywords as the main terms that come immediately to your mind when you think about your product and business.
If you sell makeup “makeup kits”, “wedding makeup kit”, and “bridal makeup kit” might be your seed keywords.
Generate a list of Keyword Ideas -
Once you have a list of seed keywords, use them to find a bigger list of potential keyword ideas.
I am going to use the Semrush Keyword Magic tool to generate a list of keyword ideas with insights into Keyword Difficulty, Monthly Search Volume, User Intent and more.
Here’s how to use it –
From the left-hand navigation click on “Keyword Magic tool”. In the search bar type your keyword. From the drop-down menu, choose your target country and hit “Search”.
The Keyword Magic Tool will give you a list of keyword ideas based on your seed keyword. The keyword “makeup kit” returns 19,204 keyword ideas.
These are a lot of ideas. You can trim that list down using filters that match the criteria discussed above in the article. – Relevance – Keyword Difficulty – Search Intent – Search Volume.
Filter by Relevance -
The left sidebar of the Semrush Keyword Magic tool contains words found in all those keyword ideas. Find keywords that aren’t relevant and add them to the exclusion filter by clicking on little icon.
For example, if your store does not sell Estee Lauder makeup kits, you can exclude 300 keywords that contain Estee Lauder with just one click.
Remove all the irrelevant keywords by continuing this process and you will end up with a manageable list of keywords to target.
Filter by Volume & Difficulty -
You can narrow down the list using the Difficulty and Volume filters. Let’s first start by filtering for Keyword Difficulty.
Set an upper limit on keyword difficulty considering the benchmarks we discussed before. Let’s assume you have a new online store and you are looking for keywords that are easier to rank.
Click on the KD% drop-down. Then type “25” in the “To” box and click Apply.
Then sort the list by search volume column header labelled ‘vol’ until the list is sorted by volume in order from highest to lowest.
You will now have a list of keyword ideas with a KD of 25% or lower, ranked from most popular to least popular.
Filter by Search Intent -
In this step filter out keywords that don’t align with your website products or content.
If your website has conversion-focused pages or product pages, find keywords that are commercial and transactional in nature.
If you are looking for keyword ideas for your blog focus on informational keywords. Click on the column labelled “Intent”. Hover over letter icons shown in columns it will show you the intent type and what it means.
If you are conducting Keyword Research for your store product pages and category pages focus on keywords that have commercial or transactional intent. Click on the ‘Intent’ filter drop-down.
Check the boxes for “Transactional” and “Commercial” intent and then click on apply.
Now select keywords that meet the criteria for search volume, Keyword Difficulty, CPC and other factors.
Build Your Keyword List
After filtering your Keyword Ideas review each one of them and build a list of keywords you plan to optimize your website for. It’s important to consider how relevant those keywords are to your business.
How difficult is it to rank for those keywords? Click on the checkbox next to the keyword you want to target. Then click “Add to the keyword” > “Create a new empty list”.
Type a name for your new keyword list in the box and click on green check mark button.
Competitor Research
You expand your keyword list by researching and stealing your competitor’s keywords. Let’s assume your online store is competing against Sugar Cosmetics a popular makeup brand.
Let’s analyze their website and see if can find any new keyword ideas to add to our list.
Click “Organic Research” and enter the Sugar Cosmetics URL in the Search bar. Click on the drop-down menu to select your target country and click “Search”.
Click on the “Positions” tab at the top of the report.
You will see a list of keywords for Sugar Cosmetics rank including keywords that you may want to target on your online store. Apply the same filters based on before when building a keyword list.
- KD% > 20 maximum
- Intent > Transactional, Commercial.
- Sort by Search Volume.
Scroll through these keywords and review each of them as you did in the previous step. If you find a keyword that fits your online business, click on the checkbox, next to it. Then click on “Add to keyword list” and select the list you previously created.
Repeat this process over a few time to discover more keywords for all your competitors.
Evaluate & Refine your Keyword List
Once you have completed your Keyword Research, use Semrush keyword manager to analyze and refine the results. On the left-hand navigation click on keyword manager.
Then click on the name of keyword list you created during Keyword Research.
This keyword list will display all list of keywords from all sources. Review this keyword list one more time. Weed out keywords that aren’t relevant to your business.
Create Keyword Clusters
The last step is to group your related terms into keyword clusters. This process helps you use your keywords strategically by combining all the related keywords into single clusters.
Then you can take keywords from that cluster and target on a single page rather than creating a unique page for each keyword.
For example “bridal makeup kit” and “wedding makeup kit” keywords are very similar.
Using keyword manager, you can do this with a single click. In the Keyword manager Table tab, simply click, “Cluster this list”.
All the keywords and results that appear in SERP will be analyzed by Semrush. Then click on the cluster tab to see the results.
Conclusion
Your website content, website architecture, and web pages can be improved using proper Ecommerce Keyword Research. With time good e-commerce keyword Research can increase your traffic, visibility and sales.
But Ecommerce Keyword Research is just a piece of one puzzle. You need overall good SEO and marketing strategy to achieve the best outcome.