Discover A Surprising Tool For Successful ECommerce Keyword Research

ECommerce companies spend anywhere from 39% to 81% of their budget on search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. The most important element for both SEO and PPC is keywords. Without the right keywords, you might as well throw that marketing budget down the drain.

For eCommerce brands, keywords are even more competitive because there’s so much market saturation. However, using the right keywords can help you beat the competition and secure those conversions to grow your business.

You need website traffic to drive sales, and that traffic has to come from a relevant audience that is likely to convert. Therefore, you must do comprehensive keyword research to find the best keywords to target for your website, posts, and campaigns.

What Are Keywords? What Is Keyword Research?

Keywords are terms that people type into search engines to search for things — for instance, a shopper types “leather jacket” into a search engine. Here, the leather jacket is the keyword. A keyword doesn’t have to be a single word; it can also be two words or even a phrase or question.

Search engines use these keywords to find relevant results. The pages optimized for said particular keywords rank higher as search engine algorithms work to find the most relevant results the user is looking for.

On the other hand, keyword research refers to the process of finding keywords that people are searching for and are relevant to the business.

Keyword research is a critical component of SEO. Without exhaustive research into these terms, keyword optimization won’t be possible.

Keyword research is also valuable in terms of finding what people are looking for, which, in turn, helps businesses understand consumer demands. So there’s much more to keywords than just mere optimization of content.

Types of keywords

There are three types of keywords you’ll come across in your keyword research for eCommerce.

Short-tail keywords

Short-tail keywords are typically one or two words long. These are the most difficult to rank for because they are normally quite generic. For example, the keyword “shoes” is a short-tail keyword, which would have a high search volume (the number of times people have searched for it) but would be expensive to target.

You need a significant SEO and marketing budget to rank for such generic, short-length keywords. Unfortunately, most eCommerce businesses don’t spend time on these keywords for this very reason.

Middle-tail keywords

Middle-tail keywords are slightly longer than short-tail keywords. Therefore, they have more context and are easier to rank for on search engines. Normally, phrases that are three to four words long qualify as middle-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are some of the most desirable, especially in the eCommerce industry. These longer keywords are phrases or questions people search for on the internet. In addition, targeting these keywords is easier than targeting short-tail or middle-tail keywords.

Did you know that 69.7% of queries have four words or more? The search volume for these keywords might be lower, which means they don’t cost nearly as much as short, generic keywords.

As long-tail keywords have context, these keywords are more likely to bring an audience that’s ready to convert. For instance, someone searching for “leather jacket with grommets” is more likely to purchase a leather jacket than someone who’s just browsing around and types in the keyword “leather jacket.”

Why Is Keyword Research Important for eCommerce Companies?

There are several reasons for taking up keyword research and implementing an SEO strategy with those keywords. First, eCommerce businesses face tough competition when it comes to ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Of course, keyword research requires time and money. So why spend all those resources on this process? Here’s why:

• Keywords help you target the right audience, which is key to successful conversions.
• Optimizing for the relevant keywords brings in organic and relevant traffic that’s more likely to convert.
• Keywords allow you to formulate a strong content marketing strategy by presenting content your audience wants to see.
• Keyword research also reveals consumer behaviors and industry trends that can help you solidify your overall business strategy.
• Your website will rank better, which will bring in new visitors and potential customers every month.
• Your web pages and content may rank poorly without reliable keyword research and suffer from a high bounce rate.
• You can learn what kind of content may rank better for a particular keyword — for example, a video or an infographic.
• You learn about your website — for example, which web pages are performing better than others.

Simply put, the importance of keyword research for eCommerce businesses cannot be stressed enough.

How to Do Keyword Research for eCommerce

Whether you’re doing keyword research for huge eCommerce sites or small businesses with few products, the process is pretty much the same. This guide to keyword research for eCommerce will cover all the basics.

Before you begin, you can create a spreadsheet to which you’ll add all the keywords you finalize for targeting with your website and its content.

Keyword discovery (seed keywords)

The first step of keyword research is keyword discovery, through which you search for keywords that are relevant to your business. For this purpose, you’ll need seed keywords.

Seed keywords essentially describe your business, product, or service. Your keyword research will depend on these seed keywords, so they need to be relevant. In other words, these short keywords will define your keyword strategy.

You don’t necessarily have to pick generic or broad seed keywords. They can be two or three words long (middle tail). However, you should take your time to choose these seed keywords because your eCommerce keyword research ultimately depends on this. Again, put yourself in your customers’ shoes and think about what they will search for.

Keyword research tools

Once you’ve brainstormed seed keywords for your eCommerce business, you can use one of the many keyword research tools available.

Many of these tools are free, although some cost money. The latter tools offer more features and extensive keyword analyses that allow you to make more calculated decisions.

Along with the list of keywords related to the seed keyword, you’ll also see some important metrics. These include:

• Keyword difficulty
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Volume

These metrics are important for analyzing the keyword suggestions from the tool you’re using.

For instance, keyword difficulty metrics tell you which keywords are hard to rank for and which ones are easier. On a scale of 1 to 100, keywords with a difficulty score over 70 may be too difficult to rank for.

Similarly, CPC is an estimate of what you’ll be paying should you run a PPC campaign for such keywords on popular search engines.

Search volume defines the traffic volume for a particular keyword in a given month. For instance, if the volume is 50,000, the keyword was searched for 50,000 times in a given time frame.

Some great keyword research tools are Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ubersuggest.

Keyword analysis

The last step of your keyword research is using the list of keyword ideas and their corresponding metrics to analyze which keywords you want to use for optimization.

You can choose keywords based on their difficulty, search volume, or cost. For instance, you can pick keywords based on your budget and what it will cost you to optimize your eCommerce website for those keywords.

For this part of your keyword research, you should also look at competitors and determine what keywords they are ranking high for. Then, you need to target those keywords. A simple search of the keyword on a search engine can show you which of your competitors ranks high for it.

Choose the best keywords and add them to your spreadsheet.

Web Scraping for Keyword Research

While using keyword discovery tools is a great way to find relevant keywords, know that many of your competitors will also be using these tools. Moreover, many of these tools take a generalized approach to keyword research, at most considering the geographic region.

What if there were an alternative way to do eCommerce keyword research that could find out exactly what keywords your competitors are targeting? Enter web scraping.

Keyword planning is becoming a popular use case for web scraping these days, especially for eCommerce companies that also use it for price comparison.

A web scraper can crawl your competitors’ websites and come up with a list of keywords for which they are ranking high. Not just your direct competitors — this tool can also be employed for overall industry analysis to bring forth keywords that many users are searching for.

With a web scraper, you make your very own keyword research tool that exclusively searches for keywords based on your business requirements.

Web scrapers are super fast and can crawl hundreds of webpages in minutes.

But there’s a catch. Web scrapers for keyword research may not be enough alone. You need proxies to work with a web scraper for eCommerce keyword research.

The simple reason for this is that your web scraper has a higher chance of getting caught without proxies, and your IP address can get blocked from accessing the websites you’re targeting. That will end your research before it even takes off.

Best Proxies for Keyword Research

When using proxies for keyword research with web scrapers, you can choose from the different types of proxies available. Proxies are servers that reroute your requests and help you hide your IP address.

Rayobyte has all your needs covered if you’re looking for the best proxies for SEO keyword research. Rayobyte provides data center, ISP, and residential proxies.

Data center proxies

Rayobyte data center proxies are some of the most affordable proxy options, ideal for large-scale eCommerce businesses that are undertaking comprehensive keyword research. There are more than 26 countries to choose from and nine ASNs that ensure high availability.

Furthermore, you can affordably create a large proxy pool with proxies that reside in data centers across the world. These proxies can handle 25 petabytes a month, so bandwidth is never an issue.

The biggest advantage of data center proxies is that they are much more affordable, so you can buy them in bulk. In addition, in terms of performance, they are nearly as good as residential or ISP proxies. The drawback is that they are not as discreet as residential proxies.

ISP proxies

Rayobyte ISP proxies combine the features of data center and residential proxies. Like residential proxies, their IP addresses come from an internet service provider. Like data center proxies, these are also super fast and can handle a large number of requests.

You can choose a location from the proxy pool according to your business needs. For instance, if you’re operating in North America, you can choose a location anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. With eight different ASNs, you always have IP addresses available, even in the off chance of a website blocking an ASN.

The benefit of going with ISP proxies is that they emulate some of the advantages of residential proxies without costing as much.

Residential proxies

Rayobyte residential proxies are, hands down, the most reliable, as these are all sourced from actual residential areas, provided by real ISPs. There is a large IP Pool at Rayobyte, so you get high authority IP addresses that improve your scraping game.

Residential proxies can easily avoid CAPTCHAs and other such blocking mechanisms on competitor websites. They can also help with avoiding geographic restrictions. However, residential proxies are typically the most expensive of all types of proxies.

Conclusion

An eCommerce keyword research tool can provide reliable keywords for your SEO strategy. However, you can go one step further by utilizing a scraper with proxies to gather insightful information and keywords from competitors.

Keyword planning is incredibly important if you want to stand out from the crowd and secure more conversions. Targeting the right audience can boost your sales even with low traffic. That’s because the traffic is relevant and convertible. That’s the magic of keywords.

If you’re considering using a web scraper for your eCommerce keyword research, use Rayobyte proxies to get the job done reliably and discreetly.

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