Solid keyword research is a cornerstone for any effective SEO effort. But with so many possible search terms that can lead shoppers to your ecommerce site, the process can be a bit overwhelming. Watch today’s video for a jumpstart to your keyword research efforts.
Beyond launching your website, keyword research is the first step to your SEO strategy. Far too often, online business owners skimp on this important step, only to wonder why their traffic for critical search terms just isn’t coming in.
Of course, the possibilities for search queries are endless, which is why so many people get frustrated with the process. Never fear, I’ve got a quick guide to help you find the ideal keywords to target, all while keeping your cool.
Have questions? Leave me a comment in the box below.
Happy selling!
-Matt Winn, Volusion
Here’s the transcript if you’d like to read along:
Hi Everybody. My name is Matt and I’m the Social Media Manager here at Volusion. Welcome to Two Minute Tuesdays, where we give you two minutes of ecommerce advice to bolster your online success.
The first step to any healthy SEO or pay-per-click campaign is to conduct solid keyword research. If you don’t want to hire professionals to do this for you, that’s okay, but it’s going to take a lot of work. With that in mind, I’ve got five things that you should do to help perform keyword research without going insane.
First, start with a simple brainstorm. For example, let’s say I have an online store that’s called “Matt’s Organic Hot Sauce.” To begin my brainstorm, I’ll simply sit down with a pen and paper (or an Excel spreadsheet) and create a list of all the potential keywords that people might search for to come to my store. Once you’ve exhausted your own mind, feel free to bring in friends, family and acquaintances to get a new perspective.
Secondly, I recommend that you take heavy inspiration from your competitors by seeing what keywords they’re using. To do so, all you have to do is visit their website, right click or click “view” in your browser, and select page source. From there, go to the Meta data, and in the description tag, you can see a list of keywords that they’re using, of which you can use that to your own advantage.
Third on our list, I highly recommend using a keyword suggestion tool. Google AdWords has a great one, and there are lots of others out there too, if you just do a web search. In essence, you just put various keywords into the tool, and it will suggest several others for you. What’s also cool is that the tool tells you how many searches are performed for these keywords each month, and how competitive they are. This is a really great way to get an overall perspective of how your keywords are looking.
Now fourthly, once you’ve had your keywords all listed out, you’ll want to separate and organize them into nice little piles. For example, you can take a look at your branded versus category keywords. Branded keywords, in my case, would be names or keywords related so Matt’s Organic Hot Sauce, whereas category keywords would be more general like: hot sauce, picante sauce, organic hot sauce, etc.
You can also take a look at your large scale versus long tail keywords. Large scale, again, are more general and shorter in length. Long tail keywords, on the other hand, are a lot longer and more specific. The idea here is once you separate them out, you can then plan your approach as to how you’ll implement your campaign.
And last, but definitely not least, once you have all your keywords together, you want to prioritize your plan of attack. Do you want to focus on creating content for your long tailed keywords first, or do you need to go back and create content that really focuses on more of your branded keywords? Once you have all of these things organized, it’s really helpful for you to go through and time out your approach so you have the best SEO gain, in the fastest amount of time.
Hopefully, this list of tips will keep your keyword research on track, and get your SEO efforts up in no time whatsoever. If you have any questions, just leave a comment in the box below. Get right back to you. From me to you, happy selling.
About Matt Winn
Matt Winn is Volusion’s Marketing Communications Manager, where he helps oversee the organization’s branding and communications efforts. Matt has created hundreds of articles, videos and seminars on all things ecommerce, ranging from online marketing to web design and customer experience. Beyond being a certified nerd, Matt is an avid college football fan, enthusiastic home cook and a self-admitted reality TV junkie.
are you referring to using these keywords in the meta tag keywords, under advance settings of each product?
Hi Dan, that’s a great place to start. You can also begin to incorporate these keywords into the content of your pages themselves, and even create new content, such as blog posts, videos, etc. around them to drive more traffic to your site. Thanks for watching! -Matt
Thank you for the video. At the end of the video you said after you organize your lists…. “You need to time out your approach”, What do you mean by this statement. Do I need to rotate words?
Hi Melissa, thanks for watching! By timing out your approach, I mean decide in what order you want to begin tackling your optimization efforts. For example, which keywords do you wish to target first, and on what pages? Will you be creating new content around these keywords or optimizing what you already have? By figuring out a plan of attack, it will keep your SEO efforts on track. Hope this helps! -Matt
If we have keywords that have a ‘high’ competition that reach 14,000 customers and also ‘low’ keywords that reach 220 customers. How do you decide which to use in the equipment parts industry?