In 2024, search will become more competitive than ever. In order for your products to get seen in high search rankings, you have to understand how to do keyword research strategically. In this post, you’ll learn how to create an eCommerce keyword research strategy to find the best keywords to use for your products.
If you’re an eCommerce brand owner, you understand the importance of SEO (or you should). Optimizing your website and your products for search is a great way to consistently (and organically) drive free visibility, brand awareness, and website traffic to your site. Google is the world’s largest search engine and people conduct search every single day. You have customers all around the world using Google to search for products you offer, but you’re invisible to them because your product titles aren’t targeting the keywords your potential customers use to search.
In this blog post, you’ll learn how to conduct an eCommerce keyword research strategy so that you understand how to find the best keywords to use within your product titles. This way, Google understands exactly what your product is and can send it out in search results as people conduct searches.
Now, this blog post is great for beginners if you don’t want to hire an SEO marketing agency just yet. Also, this post will not go over where to place keywords on your product page or how to optimize your product page.
When it comes to SEO, we know what we’re talking about. Just this year, in 2023, we helped our clients reach 1 million dollars in revenue with our unique SEO Strategy, which you’ll learn part of in this post. Let’s get started.
Before you can start the eCommerce keyword research process, you’re going to need a really good SEO tool. Our agency uses SEMrush but we also recommend these tools:
All of these SEO programs offer a great keyword research tool. Most of these programs offer free trials, free plans, or affordable basic plans. Depending on your SEO needs will determine which platform is best for you but essentially, they all work the same to find the best keywords to optimize your product titles for. With that being said, our eCommerce keyword research guide will be based on SEMrush, but you can follow the same steps with any of these other SEO tools.
In order to understand the voice of your target consumer when it comes to eCommerce keyword research, you have to start from the broadest short tail keyword. Let’s use an example to follow out the rest of this guide. Let’s say you’re a body care brand and you sell body care products of all types. You want your products to show up high in google search so you’re trying to find the best keywords to add to your product titles.
The first thing you want to do is start with the basics. Start with the keyword of what the actual product is and go from there.
So for this example, let’s suppose our body care brand sells body lotions. We are going to use the keyword “body lotion” as an example to start off with in our keyword research tool. From here, you will learn what data to look at and consider before choosing the best keyword for your product.
The goal is to start off broad, then modify the keyword as we go along in research. Ultimately you want to target product keywords that have a high search volume, and low competition.
Ok, so you typed in your keyword to start off with like we did with “body lotion”. Now, you’re given all of this data. However, what is the most important data to look at when determining if this keyword is the best to target?
Search volume tells you how often that keyword you typed in is searched on a monthly basis. This is an important metric to consider because you don’t want to optimize your products for a keyword that no one is searching for. Ideally, the higher the search volume the better but there’s one more metric you need to pay attention to with search volume.
Keyword difficulty is a score given on how competitive the keyword is and what it takes to compete with other brands using this keyword. A high keyword difficulty is usually a percentage or score above 60. A medium keyword difficulty is between 40-50. And a low keyword difficulty is 40 and below. It is an important factor to consider when looking at search volume as well. If the keyword has a high search volume and a high keyword difficulty, this is a competitive word and your site must have a good number of referring domains (quality backlinks) to compete.
We love SEMrush because, under the keyword difficulty section, it tells you how many backlinks your site would need to compete and rank high for this keyword. So, if you’re doing eCommerce keyword research and you find the first word you analyze is highly competitive, you want to look at adding modifiers to make the keyword more specific (long-tail keywords). More on long tail keywords in a few.
Search intent is the purpose of a search. There are 4 different types of search intent:
It’s important to understand the intent behind someone’s search because you want to make sure the page you’re using these keywords on matches the user’s intent.
Here’s why this is important. Let’s say we use the keyword “body lotion”. Notice how SEMrush shows us that this is a “commercial intent” type of search. This means that the person using Google is typing the word “body lotion” in to investigate any brands, products, or services.
Ideally, you want to rank your product pages for this type of intent over a blog post. If you optimize a blog post for commercial intent, you can potentially lose that lead. Why? Because they landed on a page full of information when they were actually looking for a product page of, let’s say, reviews.
So, let’s say after doing the initial broad, short-tail keyword search, you’ve realized that this keyword is way too competitive. The next thing you want to do is add modifiers or other sub-keywords to the short-tail keyword. Keywords that are more than two words are considered long-tail keywords. What are long tail keywords? Long tail keywords are low search volume phrases with high degrees of specificity.
So using body lotion as our example, the term “body lotion” would be a short-tail keyword and the keyphrase “organic body lotion for dry skin” would be a long-tail keyword (or keyphrase).
Now, essentially, targeting a long tail keyphrase leads to less traffic simply because it is highly specific. Many users probably won’t be searching those exact variations of words as much as they would the short-tail version. However, if you’re a brand new eCommerce brand or a brand with a low domain authority and low backlinks, to get any visibility you’ll have to start with long-tail keywords.
What we love about SEMrush is that they give you a list of keyword ideas that you can sort through to find less competitive keywords/keyphrases to target.
The last step we recommend for you when conducting eCommerce keyword research is to use your SEO tool to find out what sites are already ranking high for the keyword you decided to use.
There’s so much information you can gather and use to your advantage using this information. Ideally, you’d use this SERP Analysis section on SEMrush to do competitor research. Click on the links of some of the brands ranking high for this keyword and study their landing page. You can use free SEO Chrome extension tools like META SEO Inspector or SEO Pro Extension to help do additional keyword research as well.
Here’s what you want to pay attention to on their page (because it’s a reason why they’re ranking high)
With this information, you can find the missing link between these competitor’s product pages and fulfill them on your page, especially if these competitors are targeting your ideal customer.
We hope this post on building an eCommerce keyword research strategy helps you learn how to find and target the RIGHT keywords to use within your product title and page copy.
If you’re looking to outsource your eCommerce SEO Management, we’d love to invite you to check out our eCommerce SEO Services or you can also fill out the contact form below to get in touch.
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eCommerce keyword research is the process of identifying and selecting relevant keywords and phrases that potential customers are likely to use in search engines when looking for products. It’s crucial for online businesses because it helps optimize product titles, descriptions, and content, ultimately improving visibility and driving more organic traffic to their online store.
To find the best keywords, start by brainstorming terms relevant to your products. Then, use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to identify high-traffic and low-competition keywords. Analyze your competitors’ keywords and consider long-tail keywords for specific product variations.
It’s best to strike a balance. Include broader, high-traffic keywords to capture a wider audience, but also incorporate specific, long-tail keywords that match the unique features of your products. Specific keywords can help you stand out in a crowded market and attract more qualified leads.
Regular updates are essential to stay competitive. Review your keyword strategy periodically, especially when launching new products or when you notice changes in search trends. Aim to refresh your product titles at least every few months to maintain relevance and visibility.
Avoid the mistake of keyword stuffing, which can harm your SEO. Additionally, don’t neglect long-tail keywords; they can bring in more qualified traffic. Also, steer clear of using irrelevant keywords just to attract clicks. Focus on keywords that genuinely relate to your products and content.
