Launching a new ecommerce website is exciting, but one of the most critical steps to ensure its success is effective keyword research & on top of that just for your information, 23.6% of e-commerce orders are directly linked to organic traffic? So yes, if ecommerce keyword research is done right, you might be able to attract the right audience to your website leading to more sales and hence growth in business.
In this guide, we’ll break down a step-by-step approach to ecommerce keyword research tailored specifically for newly launched ecommerce websites, but before that let’s understand why keyword research for new ecommerce websites matters.
Terminology You Need To Know Before Starting Off With Keyword Research For Ecommerce Website
1. Search Volume
This refers to the total average number of searches per month for that specific keyword. Make sure high search volume doesn’t always mean that it is an important keyword.
2. Keyword Difficulty
This refers to how difficult it is to rank on that particular keyword on the first page of Google. Keyword difficulty is measured on the scale of 0 to 100 where 0 means very easy and 100 means very hard.
3. Search Intent
This explains the intent of the user who is searching a particular term in the search engine. In easy language this means what is the intention of that search, is it informational, commercial, transactional or navigational.
In ecommerce, commercial and transactional intent is what matters as users searching terms with these intent are the ones that are on the journey to buy a product. Example, “white sport shoes for men”, this is a keyword with commercial intent while searching “buy white sport shoes under 1000” is a keyword with transactional intent.
4. Long-tail keywords
A keyword having more than 3 words in the search query is termed as long-tail keywords.
Most of the time these keywords have less volume than the broad keywords but the specificity of these keywords is way better than them.
For example, you are owning an online shop that sells candles, now one person is searching “buy candles online” and the other one is searching “buy scented candles with coffee fragrance”, which one is more specific?
Obviously the second one, this is what specificity means. Long-tail keywords are more relevant and drive far better sales than broad keywords as they clearly explain the need of the user.
Step-By-Step Process To Do Ecommerce Keyword Research That Will Drive Sales
1. Prepare catalogue sheet of your products
Assuming you own an ecommerce website that sells scented candles, you will prepare a sheet of all the categories of candles you will be selling.
For example, you have two categories of scented candles, first being paraffin wax made and second one soya wax made.
Now jot down the products under these categories with their variants. Once this is done, your next step in the ecommerce keyword research journey will start.
2. Prepare a list of seed keywords
You are selling scented candles, right? So your seed keyword will be “scented candles” or “aroma candles” as these keywords clearly explain the products you are selling.
3. Find keywords relevant to your seed keywords + your business
So, in the first step you already have a list of products with their variants and you know what products are available at your online store that are relevant to your seed keywords.
Now put the seed keyword in any keyword research tool, let’s assume you have access to Ahrefs Keyword Research Tool and you will find the list of related keywords with their metrics as shown below.
After this, choose keywords as per the products available at your online store by clicking on “Include” and adding particular phrases as per the variants available at your website.
For example if you have vanilla fragrance available, click on “Include” and then add “vanilla” there and click apply. All the keywords having “vanilla” in it will appear. This is one way you can create a list of keywords related to your seed keyword for your ecommerce website.
4. Performing keyword analysis of your direct, indirect, and SERP competitors
This is one of the best ways to do ecommerce keyword research for a new website if you don’t know where to start from. Just go to Ahrefs site explorer section > add the website url > tap the search icon > click on “organic keywords” in the right side navbar, and analyze the keywords on which your competitor website is ranking.
You can also filter out the keywords based on location, volume, difficulty etc that are relevant to your ecommerce brand and boom you have the list of keywords with you.
5. Conduction keyword gap analysis with your competitors
Finding keywords on which your competitors are ranking on but you don’t is called Keyword Gap analysis.
To find new keyword opportunities, you can go to Ahrefs and click on “Competitive Analysis” in the header section, put your website and then the websites of your competitors, then click “show keyword opportunities”, you will have the list of keywords on which you are not ranking but your competitors are.
Now you can filter out the keywords on the basis of relevancy, volume, and difficulty as your desire.
6. Paying attention to intent, relevancy, volume, and difficulty
The most common issue with SEO agencies in India while doing ecommerce keyword research is that they don’t focus on the search intent and relevancy of the keyword, thus creating the wrong content type which doesn’t rank in the SERP or targeting a keyword with low relevance which doesn’t bring sales.
While choosing a keyword from the 1000s of keywords given in the you have pay attention to the parameters given below:
- Search intent: It explains what type of content (product page, category page, sub category page, or blog post) the searcher is looking for and also explains the intent of the keyword whether it is informational, commercial, transactional, or navigational.
- Relevancy: Before choosing the keyword make sure if it is relevant to your ideal customer and can it bring in revenue if it ranks on top in the SERP.
- Volume: Choosing keywords with high volume might not be the right decision if it has high competition in the search. We recommend you to maintain a balance between search volume and difficulty to find relevant keywords quickly.
- Keyword difficulty: Selecting keywords having high competition will not help your website go anywhere if you are thinking of getting quick wins. If you want to rank high up in the search, go for keywords with KD from low to medium.
Bottom Line
This ecommerce keyword research guide was basically for newly launched ecommerce websites. Keyword research is the most critical part of any business as it is the first step towards creating your content strategy for your business and if the foundation of your website content strategy is weak, your whole strategy won’t give you results as you will think.
Being in the SEO business for more than 5 years now, we can help you in building your ecommerce website content strategy from scratch + also help in execution of the same. If you are interested, just schedule a call with us.