Keyword research is all about getting noticed by your audience. How? It’s about knowing what your customer is searching for and the kind of products available that match your product line.
The mystery about keyword research for digital marketers and marketing departments is matching the same keywords with that of the customer keyword searches. Often, it does not match. This is a pain point for e-commerce businesses across the value chain.
So, how do you spin them around to benefit your business? Can keyword research genuinely add volumes to your business? And by volumes – it means revenues, traffic, CTR, and conversions.
E-commerce businesses thriving in globally challenging markets are aware of the fact that keyword research is key to their success.
Therefore, as a marketer, most would build up keyword research lists based on the product and service descriptions used by a customer. Hence, by making keyword research a top priority in your marketing ‘To-Do-List’ should be able to guarantee the road to success to a large extent.
It is certain that it will reap your business benefits that are logical revenue channels. Your long term business goals will be implemented if you follow these steps.
You will find tons of information on guides to keyword research online. But that’s not what you need. What you need is a thorough A-Z guide that covers all-encompassing factors on keyword research. So, let’s start with the basics of keyword research!
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research! Two words which are daunting for marketers yet a necessary exercise to be carried through. Those extensive search lists that are drawn up based on rankings.
Now add ‘Keyword Strategy’ to this! A vital requirement for any successful business. It is based on the decisions the marketing teams make to research and finally narrow down the niche on the products and services offered on business webpages.
The next step is to find the key phrases.
Don’t know what are the key phrases? These are a string of multiple words used to search for a product online. To be clear – Keywords are basically key phrases. We use keywords as a defining point like ‘WordPress SEO’ is a keyword. So, remember ‘keyword’ is not a single word. As a guide to make things simpler, these are a set of words which make up these phrases.
Following this, you need to know about Longtail Keywords and how they work. Longtail keywords usually are used to focus on niche research.
Because the words are long phrases and specific to particular products, hence, these long tail keywords are considered to have higher rankings. Any long phrases in the SEO research are termed as Longtail Keywords.
Along with this, it is recommended you use Focus key phrases. Google Ads trusts focused key phrases with high rankings. Hence, it’s a good idea to use Google Ads key phrases for research and a list of recommendations that match products and services.
Remember to focus on ‘search intent’, which is the primary reason for a buyer visiting a webpage of any e-commerce store online. Their searches will define your search goals and help in reaching out to a niche audience.
Why is Keyword Research Important?
One of the reasons why businesses are successful is knowing what your customer wants. Sounds like a tough task! Probably it is. However, the task may get slightly easier if you get to know what keywords are being used by your target audiences.
Basically, get into your customer’s head. Often, marketers use keywords that describe the product such as – ‘Nainital vacation homes’. But your customer probably won’t use these keywords at all. It is imperative to use keywords that help in optimizing your webpage.
So, to effectively reach out to your targeted groups, use the links to build up the search criteria. Be specific while setting up web pages so that your rankings grow. The idea is to start with a ‘seed’ – which means an idea, a topic or a word in particular.
A seed can come from any of the multiple platforms you are using while carrying out research. Sift through the numerous network groups and online chat rooms that you can enroll in, to gain more industry knowledge on key phrases and keywords.
Remember, longtail keyword research is necessary to reach your organizational goals. They can be a massive benefit when you are building your main website framework and links to the content being used in the products and services webpages.
Importance Of Keyword Intent In PPC
For any e-commerce business to survive, it is crucial to have growing traffic in volumes to your webpage. How do you achieve high volumes of traffic? Try to carry out SEO organically and use PPC advertising to complement your SEO efforts.
It is recommended that the use of top ranking keywords is the route to follow. Use a landing page to discover the latest in consumer behavior matrix. Understanding the user mentally and their search choices are a great way to get insights into customer market search keywords. Make the search conversational and user-friendly.
Choose long tail keywords combined with a narrow niche selection of keywords. It will ensure that Google ads – pick up the right words to engage with the incoming traffic. Sometimes, long tail keywords may carry unnecessary or negative keywords. Do not edit your list. Retain both useful and superfluous words. Once your lists are ready, and your research is a rich file, start strategizing on the next step.
While strategizing, run a search on MSN, Yahoo, and Google specifically to find out if the choice of keywords listed by you are top ranking.
Also, research on meta descriptions and keyword tags. The webpage will be spiderable when using Google ads. Once the list is confirmed and designing the webpages in underway, start researching on competitor analytics.
Find out what your competition is doing. Select their best practices. Match these to your strategies. Take out the top matches and employ these best practices to optimize the webpages using PPC.
Adopting business ideas from dominant and authority websites will further traffic to a new e-commerce site. There are instances of small businesses achieving high volumes of traffic because they decided to follow the textbook and perfected their business goals over a period of time.
Steps In Keyword Research
Now that you are equipped with what keyword research is, the next step is to learn how to start your research. One of the main reasons why marketers are continuously adopting new methods of research ideas is to better their SEO activities and achievements. This is because the business landscape is constantly changing.
How can you track this? Check out these steps in the ultimate guide to keyword research that will improve your business strategies and help in building a robust website to challenge your competition.
1. Brainstorm Keywords Ideas Related To Your Product/Service
There are dozens of tools to research and list keywords most suitable to the website. Before planning the website architecture, it is recommended that you start with internal research via a process of brainstorming and sifting through ideas from products and services teams. Internal customers are critical to organizational success in the e-commerce space.
Thriving e-commerce businesses believe that internal research brainstorming is a vital exercise. It gives insight into markets trends and strategic goals. Employ the keywords shared from internal research to the existing list of keywords.
Use Google Search tools and ads to analyze the subtopics and long tail keywords. If the keywords are in the top ranks, then you know you are using customer-friendly contextual and meaningful keywords to reach your target users.
2. Review Landing Page To Extract Brand And Generic Keywords
In the e-commerce business realm, it is essential to use a landing page. It will be the first point of customer contact that helps in gathering customer information. Use the data collected to analyze the best-used keywords.
Find out what the competition is using. It helps in extracting the brand and generic keywords that describe your products.
There are lots of great examples of successfully designed landing pages. One of the best examples is a short form with relevant data.
While individual businesses may ask for customer names, locations, addresses along with other questions related to preferences and genders, it is recommended that you keep the structure of the form simple. Simplicity is the key to achieving CTA goals.
The PPC Google ads make your search worthwhile if the keywords are trusted by Google SEO. Optimize your search activities around trusted and top-ranked brand and generic keywords.
3. Use Keyword Research Tools To Find Long Tail And Other Variations Of Keywords
When you are targeting traffic in volumes, use online marketing tools to find the right set of longtail and other variations of keywords.
Combine the keywords and ensure that the copy has relevant key phrases. E-commerce businesses are continuously using new and improved algorithms to research Google SEO keywords. It ensures that these are spiderable keywords that match with Google’s policies.
By aligning your SEO goals with Google, now the task is looking a whole lot simpler. Keywords come at a cost, but what happens when you can research for free! Yes, that too is a possibility.
4. Research Costs For Keywords
Keywords are costly. Marketers spend millions of dollars to perfect SEO keyword strategies. Planning is vital. Without a monthly calendar, you will realize that costs are high.
To keep a check on expenses there are free tools that you can use which will benefit the business. Using Google Keywords Planner will help in starting a new site. It is an added benefit while growing your content reach.
5. Don’t Avoid Negative Keyword Research
Relevance is a winner in the e-commerce space, but negative keywords have considerable impact. Believe it or not, they have a positive effect on overall business growth. Your SEO strategy must have negative keyword research built in on a priority. Use them and keep these negative keywords on the list.
Marketers across the globe use negative keywords as weapons to reach relevant audiences. By adding the negative keywords to the ad group level, it will substantially boost the performance of the SEO campaigns. For example, searching for ‘transformers music video’ will act as a disclaimer and your campaign will avoid being featured on irrelevant music video searches.
6. Bid Higher On Keywords With High Relevance To Customer Intent
It is customary for a marketer to bid higher on keywords with high relevance to customer intent. Why? Because Google ads are focused on cost per click (CPC) bid. This can happen if the advertiser has targeted settings and ad content match with customer intent. For example, Google ads will not show an ad on bread to a customer searching for butter.
7. Create Tight Keyword Groups
Subgroups are known as tight keywords. Why do you need to be specific here? It creates a higher traffic volume to the site. Try to keep the Google ads keywords short.
Google algorithms are designed to sift through smaller and tight keywords to match with the customer intent. Therefore the customers get to see the most relevant ads to his search.
In such cases, marketers are aware that quality scores must be a point to keep in mind. Remember your business landing page needs to have a CTA goal which brings traffic that will ultimately lead to conversions.
Conclusion
With the e-commerce marketplace evolving daily, today’s businesses are adapting to challenging economic conditions and demanding global standards. To create brand recall, companies are ready to spend billions to get the right type of traffic to their website. Landing pages play a critical part in the gamut of conversion rates. To build a robust flow of traffic and fully reap the benefits of conversions, keywords are a dominant part of the website strategy planning, that figures prominently on a marketer’s ‘To Do List’.
Once an e-commerce business is ready to start catering to its audience, it is imperative that customer behavior is noted at every step of the shopping journey. Shopper experiences will be the final step to achieving success.
In order to draw out critical business decisions, every e-commerce marketer needs to invest in keyword research. Using the right keywords and combining it with good ideas will further the company’s business revenue streams. To stay relevant to the audience can be best accomplished by aligning with Google ads. It will show the effects of the positive impact it has had on the traffic generated. In fact, there is the possibility of trebling the traffic in a matter of a few months.
Also, keywords research benefits with the use of negative keywords, as it is a weapon used by marketing professionals across the globe. It helps filter out your advertisement and brings in more potential users to log in to the website. Hence, this leads to more conversions resulting in a robust set of loyal customers.
PPC ads will boost your business when the use of longtail and key phrases match customer intent. Do not confuse your research on keywords with customer intent in any way. Because it will further your reach only if your research customer intent is kept as a goal and not a point to remember.
Always aim to keep a simple CTA that’s impactful. Your CTR is dependant on the CTA planning. Your company’s goals must resonate with the CTA. Along with this, try to stay relevant when it comes to the cost of keywords research.
There are free platforms offered by Google. Use it to add a valuable edge to your strategic goals. Most of all, encourage your teammates to brainstorm. One of the ultimate methods to gain rankings and traffic flow is to ensure that your keyword search is based on user-friendly content that’s contextual and resonates with the audiences’ search criteria.
How These Steps Will Be Beneficial For Google Ads Account?
Well, in a competitive landscape where any business is thriving and grabbing customer attention, the research that’s thoroughly carried out is intended to reach a global audience. Your company will benefit and earn high rankings if you follow the step by step guide to ultimate keyword research.
Awesome
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Good and useful info on keyword research.
It’s been a game-changer for me, and I can’t thank the author enough for breaking down such a complex topic into easy to understand steps. The practical tips and tools recommended here have completely transformed my approach to SEO. This is a must read for anyone serious about improving their online visibility through keyword research.