Great keyword research is the foundation of every SEO strategy. It even plays a part in paid advertising.
Yet so many eCommerce marketers pull their hair out trying to get their head around it.
The danger of not knowing how to perform keyword research is that a) you won’t get the traffic that matters and b) you won’t get the sales as a result.
The problem with all the blogs you read and the templates you download?
They tend to complicate things.
What marketer has time for a 20-step how-to… ever?
In this article, you’ll learn:
How to perform keyword research for enterprise eCommerce
How to run search term reports (STR) on your Google Ads account.
How to generate and clean a keyword data set.
How to find high-potential keywords you aren’t currently ranking high for
How to collect data from third-party tools.
How to identify non-performing keywords.
What’s so special about longtail keywords?
Longtail keywords are such a big deal because almost 70% of searches on Google are made with a longtail search term of 3+ words.
Long-tail keyword searches have a click-through rate 3% to 5% higher than generic searches (Source: Impact)
The problem is, that so few marketers know how to find their long tail of demand.
Your three (maybe four) step guide to performing keyword research for eCommerce.
Step 1: Generate a Search Term Report (STR) from your Google Ads account.
Google Ad’s Search Term Reports (STR) allow you to see what search terms triggered your ads and how users search for products and services.
To collect data for your STR:
Head to your Google Ads account and click Search Campaigns.
Click Keywords under the overview column
Click Search Terms in the dropdown menu
Create two filters by clicking Add filter below the chart.
Select Conversions = > 1
Select Search term doesn’t contain and enter [enter pure brand names & misspellings]. E.g. ‘longtail ux’, ‘lux’, ‘longtailux’.
For instance:
5. In the top right corner of the page, select the date range to include all results from the last 12 months.
6. Just above the results section, click Download as an .xlsx
For more information on downloading STRs, go here.
Step 2: Generate and clean the data
Download this template (Excel file) and add all the keywords you’ve collected from your Search Term Report into Column A in the document.
NB: The below steps all apply to Excel and may be different if you’re using other software.
1. Remove duplicates and singular/plural keywords
In the template, copy and paste the keywords from column A into column B (called “Singular version”). Note: Column B is only used to clean up keywords and eliminate duplicates.
Scan through column B and change any plural keywords to singular.
Now, select column B > go to Data > Remove duplicates > Expand the selection > Select only the Singular version column.
2. Eliminate head terms and search terms of 8+ words
Remove keywords with a word count of less than three and more than eight.
To filter out keywords with less than three and greater than eight words, click the dropdown arrow at the top of the Word count column and unselect all number values less than three and above eight.
Keywords of up to two words can be used to find long tail keyword variations (see Keyword Planner).
3. Exclude specific keywords
In the sheet called “Trigger Words”, add words you do not want to target, such as pure brand and competitor names.
If you’re an Aldi, you might include keyword triggers like:
Go back to the Keywords sheet and in the Keyword exclusion column paste the following formula in any row there is a keyword:
=INDEX(‘Trigger words’!$A$2:$A$10,MATCH(1,COUNTIF(A2,”*”&‘Trigger words’!$A$2:$A$10&”*”),0))
As this formula has already been inserted into the first few rows, all you need to do is make sure you copy the formula to any row that contains a keyword.
Now, click the dropdown arrow at the top of the Keyword exclusion column and unselect all of the trigger words, leaving only #N/A selected. This will hide any row that contains one of your trigger words.
Step 3: Collect data from third-party tools (Optional)
Note: This step is only required if you want more keywords than you got from the search term report.
For SEMrush: generate an Organic Research position report for your website domain or competitors’ domains:
Filter out positions 1 to 5
Exclude word counts less than three and more than eight.
Exclude pure brand keywords and any other words you do not want to target. For example, competitors’ names)
For AHREFS: generate an Organic Keyword report for your website domain or competitors’ domains:
Filter out positions 1 to 5
Exclude word count less than three and more than eight.
Exclude pure brand keywords and any other words you do not want to target. For example, competitors’ names)
For Google Ads Keyword Planner: use either seed keywords or URLs to discover new keywords in your Keyword Planner. More documentation on this can be found here.
Once you’ve generated the relevant report, repeat Step 2: Gather and clean the data.
Step 4: Select your final keywords
1. Add the average monthly search volume to your spreadsheet
There are a heap of third-party tools available online to retrieve your average monthly search volume. For instance, Google Ads Keyword Planner or Keyword Keg.
Keep in mind that this data is not always entirely accurate, especially for longtail keywords.
2. Ensure you have multiple matching products for those keywords
To ensure that your pages offer an excellent user experience, only keep keywords that exactly match one or more products that you sell.
Why? Because if a user types a long tail search term into Google, they’re ready to buy.
Putting your keywords list into action:
Now the fun part. Building multi-product landing pages, each targeting a long tail keyword in your list. If you create one for each keyword, you’ll capture these ready-to-buy users. So, you’re giving your pages every possible chance to rank higher and turn your users into customers.
But how to do it all at scale? That’s a question we have the answer to.
