How to Do eCommerce Keyword Research

eCommerce businesses cannot ignore the importance of keyword research. There are over 8.5 billion searches on Google everyday, and the pages that get clicked on are the ones that rank highly in the search results. If your website pages are not ranking well, you will limit the number of organic visitors your site will have. The lower the visitor number, the lower the sales volume. 

What is eCommerce Keyword Research?

eCommerce keyword research involves you identifying the best keywords or phrases to use on individual pages of your website, specifically product and blog pages. Firstly there are four key terms you should be aware of:

• search intent - search intent refers to the specific reason someone entered a keyword into a search engine. They could be looking for a specific product or the answer to a question. There are four types of search intent: navigational (wanting specific websites), informational (wanting answers or explanations), commercial (specific products) and transactional (ready to take action and buy). 
• search difficulty - this refers to how hard it is to rank for a specific keyword on a search engine results page. When search engines decide upon search difficulty, besides the keyword, they also take into account the authority of the website and its specific pages, such as links to pages. It is important to consider using long tail keywords rather than short tailed ones. While long tail keywords have fewer searches, they have fewer competition, which increases the possibility of your page showing up in search results.
• search volume - search volume is the average number of monthly searches a specific keyword or phrase has had for a specific search engine, mostly Google.
• search relevance - search relevance refers to how close the search query is to the search results. For instance, it's no good using a highly popular keyword if the page you are using the keyword on does not relate to the keyword. An example would be using the keyword Nike shoes, if the website didn't sell Nike shoes.

How to Do eCommerce Keyword Research

First up, you need to know exactly where your website is ranking and for what keywords. Connecting with one of the many keyword research tools such as Google Search Console will help you to see which ones you are ranking for and which ones you should target. This will help you see what content you will need to create and update. Other keyword research tools include Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, Moz and Semrush.

Next, start making a list of seed keywords. These are the major words for the products, topics and terms used for your business. These should be short tailed keywords, which are words or phrases that have a lot of searches for them and would bring the widest amount of results in a search engine results page. 

Then from your seed keywords, you work to widen your list of keyword ideas, creating long tailed keywords. Google Keyword Planner is one keyword research tool that can help you identify new words and phrases from your seed list. 

From here you should look through your large list of keywords and remove those which are of little relevance, have little to no average search volumes or have super high levels of competition from other websites. Your ideal eCommerce keywords will be those with low competition, high relevancy and high search volumes. They should be a mixture of keyword intent, with all four types making the cut. Sticking with a niche topic is best for new websites, adding different niches as you go. 

Using your culled list, conduct some research into which of these if any keywords they are using in their paid advertising and on their website. You may also find some keywords they are using to add to your list. 

Divide your keywords up into search intent so you can allocate them to the most suitable type of content on your website:

• informational - these are generally blog pages, providing detailed information and answering questions.
• commercial - here the customer is looking for information on specific products or ranges. This could be on product or category pages.
• transactional - here the customer wants to buy, so will use keywords such as buy kids shoes.
• navigational - these keywords relate directly to your type of website, such as shoe shop or gluten free supermarket.