eCommerce Keyword Research Guidelines | Digital Dot

eCommerce keyword research guidelines for business owners

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the first terms you come across when you’re new to the world of digital marketing. SEO is crucial since the vast majority of your customers will find you by typing a query into a search engine. SEO comprises a wide range of strategies, but the fundamental idea is to make it easier for search engines to comprehend your eCommerce site’s focus and products. In turn, this raises the likelihood that search engines will include your site in their results when potential customers conduct product-related searches. One of the most important SEO strategies is keyword research. However, eCommerce keyword research entails little more than aligning your website’s and marketing materials’ vocabulary with that of your target audience. This can be challenging, especially if you are a beginner.

In this article, the SEO pros from our New York digital marketing agency share some vital tips on how to choose the best keywords for your eCommerce business.

Guide to eCommerce keyword research

Doing keyword research is crucial for any eCommerce SEO campaign. It uncovers essential information about how to expand your internet business and provides guidance on what to optimize for. It’s a great way to learn about the competitive landscape and the queries users are using to reach your site online, both of which can lead to discovering previously unrecognized openings.

SEO written in colorful letters on a white background
eCommerce keyword research is one of the most important parts of any successful SEO strategy.

By learning which terms already have high rankings, you can improve your exposure, traffic, and conversion rates in Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). In fact, experts from SEO services NYC advise that eCommerce keyword research is probably the most important step when building your SEO strategy. Now let’s find out what are the main factors you should consider when doing keyword research for your online store.

Factors to consider when doing eCommerce keyword research

Before you even start, it’s crucial to know what to expect from eCommerce keyword research and how to choose the best keywords. Some factors to think about are as follows:

  • The search volume for a certain keyword or phrase represents the total number of monthly searches for that term. To maximize your efforts, go after search terms that receive a lot of monthly traffic. However, this may also mean that there is more rivalry for placement due to the high volume of searches. It’s important to remember that there is no “magic number” to shoot for because the ideal amount of searches will vary from one website to the next. If a keyword has over 20 monthly searches and you believe it could lead to quality leads, you should give it some serious thought.
  • The keyword competition or keyword difficulty is the next factor to consider. In essence, this means that you may estimate how challenging it would be to rank on Google for a specific keyword with a score between zero and one hundred. If the keyword difficulty score is high, it will be challenging to outrank the current search results. We recommend keeping the keyword difficulty low when starting off a new website.
  • Lastly, focus on search relevance as it measures how closely a search query matches a set of search results. Finding a popular search term is possible. However, if the results it provides don’t accurately reflect the content on the page or the products being sold, you’ll have difficulty making any progress toward your objectives. If you receive 10 quality leads via organic search, that’s much better than having 1,000 people who instantly leave because they couldn’t find what they were looking for.

How to conduct eCommerce keyword research?

Now that you know what factors to focus on, let’s find out how to perform keyword research for your online store in a way that will help you boost your eC0mmerce business brand visibility.

Find out where you rank in relevant searches

In order to make educated decisions about your keyword approach, you need to first create some baselines. Doing so can help you prioritize between making new content and fixing old. Use a keyword ranking tracker to see where you are in a relevant search if you have already begun creating your eCommerce website and incorporated SEO keywords.

Computer screen with website metrics on it
There are plenty of tools you can use to help you with your eCommerce keyword research.

By linking your site to Google Search Console, you’ll have access to free and easily accessible data. Google Search Console checks how well your site is doing in Google’s search results generally. It keeps tabs on the search terms for which your website is already ranking, letting you know where you are and which terms are worth focusing on. You can truly make better content decisions with this data.

Think about the search intent

Attracting qualified visitors to your website is now mostly dependent on their search intent. The older version of Google’s algorithm put a premium on how strategically you used keywords and how many other sites linked to you. Therefore, long-tail keywords are highly recommended by most keyword research guides.

However, when low-quality backlinks and keyword-stuffed articles became more common, Google updated its algorithm to place a higher value on semantics, intent, and relevance, necessitating new approaches to keyword research. Yet some SEOs may still make the huge (and avoidable) mistake of ignoring search intent. If search intent isn’t considered, a website may end up ranking for irrelevant terms or attracting the wrong kind of visitors.

Although SEO professionals may classify searches in a variety of ways, Think With Google identifies four distinct categories of intent: informational, commercial, transactional, and navigational. Clues like identifier words or specific eCommerce pages can be used to determine keyword intent while conducting eCommerce keyword research.

The cost-per-click (CPC) indicator on your preferred keyword research tool is a great approach to determining the commercial intent of specific search phrases. However, you can always reach out to PPC services New York to help you with this part of your marketing strategy.

Search for target keywords

You can conduct your own study or look at what your competitors are doing to find suitable keywords. The two together are what you should prioritize. You can use Google’s keyword planning tools (Autocomplete, People Also Ask, and related searches) to generate a list of potential keywords for your online shop. To get your creative juices flowing, you can even look to Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world.

Once you review your list of keywords, select one to use as your focus keyword. Keep in mind that there are many moving parts in eCommerce keyword research and that you should use data to verify your keywords. Using a tool of your choice, you can determine the number of queries, search relevance, keyword difficulty, as well as search intent.

Person drawing on a white board using a marker
Doing thorough keyword research will help you attract the right audience to your online store.

After you’ve chosen a few keywords to focus on, research whether there are any long-tail variants you can use instead; this is especially important when writing content for your e-commerce site’s product pages and blog posts. Fewer people will use certain search terms but they will also be more affluent, well-informed shoppers. Therefore, they are more likely to make a purchase.

Final thoughts

We hope our article helped you learn how to conduct eCommerce keyword research in a way that will help you maximize your SEO efforts. However, it’s always the best option to rely on the help of digital marketing experts who will know exactly how to make your online store stand out among the crowd. Rather than waiting for your eCommerce business to take off, get in touch with Digital Dot today and let us start working on growing your brand together!

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