Ultimate Guide to Marketing a Store — Chapter 1 — Keyword Research

Robert M Kilonzo
Aug 23, 2017 · 6 min read

In this chapter, you`ll discover how to

  • Use Keyword Research to Help You Win in the Search Engines
  • Do Keyword Research Using Ahrefs
  • Spy on Your Competitors with SpyFu
  • Analyze and Outgrow Your Competitors with SEMrush
  • Identify Your eCommerce Keywords Using Moz

Use Keyword Research to Help You Win in the Search Engines

Every marketing plan starts with keyword research.

Why is keyword research important? It is because eCommerce websites make most of their money from search engine queries. Search engine queries are generally just keywords.

You’ll understand this when you put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer.

Here’s what they will do if they need to buy something. Most likely, they will type in the product that they would like to buy in the search engines. When they do this, they just don’t just type in the name of the product and the brand. Sometimes, they will include specifics such as the product’s color, size and weight.

Let’s take a simple ‘hair dryer’ for example.

Instead of typing the word ‘hair dryer’, the customer may type something specific such as ‘Jacking 2300 Watt Salon Professional Ionic Hair dryer Blow dryer with Diffuser’. That may seem extremely long but it shows how serious the customer is in finding the particular product.

Another thing that you should note is the buyer intent. When they type these extremely long keywords, they usually have a stronger intent of buying. And that is good news for eCommerce website owners.

Now that you understand why optimizing for the search engines is important, you now know why your website simply cannot live without keywords. In fact, it is the building block that leads to sales. Without it, marketing your website is like throwing darts outside the window. It will not hit your target market. Why? You simply cannot promote your website without keywords for you will not know what you are optimizing for.

How do you know what to optimize for? Keyword research.

And for that you need some tools. Here are 4 tools that I found effective. They have their pros and cons. Used together, they can be crazy powerful.

How to Do Keyword Research Using Ahrefs

If I can only recommend one tool among the bunch, I would recommend Ahrefs. Why? I love it because it is an all-in-one tool that lets you do more than just keyword research. You can also track your competitor’s backlinks and do an in-depth website analysis. Here are some of its functions: link tracking, traffic tracking, keyword research and analysis, social media analysis and website analysis.

I think most SEOs will agree with me when I say that Ahrefs is the best among the bunch. This is because you can use it for so many SEO activities and export all reports afterwards.

If you are on a limited budget and can only work with one tool, then use this one. It is worth every penny.

Here’s how you can research keywords through Ahrefs.

STEP 1: Use Keyword Explorer

Want to know the basic stats for your main keyword? You can use Ahrefs’ keyword explorer. All you need to do is type in your desired keyword and watch it work its magic.

Once you hit the orange search button, you’ll be greeted with the following metrics: the KD or keyword difficulty score, search volume and the number of clicks. On the right is the global search volume.

If you scroll down, you’ll see some keyword ideas.

This is the part that you should focus on if you are just starting keyword research. It will give you tons of long tail keyword ideas that may be interesting to rank for along with its estimated search volume.

You can get more ideas by simply clicking ‘View Full Report’ and exporting all that you have found.

STEP 2: Spy on Your Competitor’s Keywords

If you are feeling a bit lazy, you can look at your competitor keywords instead.

One of my favorite methods is to look at my competitor’s anchor text. This is extremely easy.

All you need to do is select the word ‘Anchors’ from the left and clicking 4-term words on top. It will instantly give you all the long tail keywords that your competitor is targeting.

Once you do this, you’ll find that not everything will be a good keyword for your website. This is the reason why you cannot just export all of these. Be sure to select keywords that are relevant to your online store.

And that’s not all. You can also take the easy way out and just look at your competitor’s website.

All you need to do is type in the website’s URL and click Organic Keywords on the left.

Then, sort the KD from smallest to highest.

This will yield a good list of easy to rank keywords.

A Word about KD

It is impossible to use Ahrefs without understanding what KD means. KD stands for keyword difficulty and it can mean different things in different tools.

For Ahrefs, KD pertains to the metric in gauging the difficulty to rank a particular keyword.

KD ranges from 0 to 100 where 0 is the easiest and 100 is the hardest.

KD is based on the number of referring domains. The higher the KD, the higher the number of referring domains.

You can refer to the information below for a more accurate measure:

KD 0 = 0 Ref. Domains
KD 10 = 10 Ref. Domains
KD 20 = 22 Ref. Domains
KD 30 = 36 Ref. Domains
KD 40 = 56 Ref. Domains
KD 50 = 84 Ref. Domains
KD 60 = 129 Ref. Domains
KD 70 = 202 Ref. Domains
KD 80 = 353 Ref. Domains
KD 90 = 756 Ref. Domains

But KD is not created out of the blue. It is also based on Ahrefs’ observation on what makes websites rank. When I use the word ‘rank’ in here, I am referring to the front page of the search engines and not #1. This is how Ahrefs conducted its study.

When they did this, they found that one of the major factors that rank a particular website is the number of referring domains (unique backlinks). And this is how they came up with KD.

Note: This article was originally published on the OSI Affiliate Blog. To see the whole article you can go here http://www.osiaffiliate.com/ecommerce-marketing-guide/keyword-research.html.

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Robert M Kilonzo

Written by

osi affiliate software, ecommerce marketing podcast, running with the horses

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