E-commerce SEO

 Ecommerce keyword research

Keyword research is the critical first step in an e-commerce SEO campaign.

 You’ll target keywords too difficult to rank for and won’t make it to page one.

1. You’ll rank for keywords that don’t garner traffic or cause customers to buy.

Neither of these situations is ideal, which is why e-commerce keyword research is so important — it will ensure you target keywords that are easy to rank for, have decent search volume, and have high conversion rates.

However, there is more to choosing keywords than simply looking at how difficult it is to rank or how many people search for them. The following four options can help you to perform e-commerce keyword research, find keyword difficulty (KD) and search volume, and uncover buyer intent:

 Right keywords

Unless you use a tool like Ahrefs, you likely won’t have keyword data for the phrases you picked. You need to determine keyword difficulty, search volume, and buyer intent to know which keywords to use.

Using Google Keyword Planner, you can find rough search volume and CPC to determine buyer intent. However, it doesn’t give you keyword difficulty (KD) or spread.

If you want to get serious about your SEO efforts and maximize your keyword spread, consider creating a keyword matrix.

A keyword matrix is a way to dig through relevant keywords and organize your spreadsheet to quickly determine the best possible keywords to use on each of your pages. It’s based on KD, search volume, and searches intent.

 Amazon for keyword research

Amazon is a gold mine of high buyer intent keywords since people typically search on Amazon with the intent of buying something.

To find keywords with Amazon, start typing in your seed keyword. In response, Amazon will spit out autofill suggestions. These are all keyword ideas — put them in a Google spreadsheet to keep for later.

As you can imagine, if you have hundreds or thousands of products, this could take a long time. That’s where the Amazon Keyword Tool comes in. 

This tool automatically scrapes Amazon’s autofill suggestions for any keyword you type in. Each time you search, check off all the keywords and add them to your list, then download that list to a CSV with the “Download Selected Keywords” button.

 keywords through competitor research

If you have competitors who rank higher than you in search results, you can use their site to take keyword ideas. First, type your keyword into Google, choose a competitor, and scan their category and product pages for potential keywords. 

It is important to remember that you shouldn’t blindly use the same keyword as your competitors simply because they outrank you — there are other factors such as domain authority. 

It is also critical to consider breadcrumbs, an advanced navigation function that helps Google scan and index your site. You can tell if you’ve set up breadcrumbs correctly by entering your site into Google. If you see “yoursite.com -> category -> subcategory”, you have breadcrumbs set up.

Ahrefs keyword opportunities

Ahrefs is an all-around, fantastic SEO tool. You can use it for keyword research, competitive research, building backlinks, and much more.

Through its easy-to-use system, you can view built-out reports of keyword rankings on your site and your competitors, allowing you to see how you stack up and where you can make improvements.