Here we are, in the
midst of some serious keyword research.
We have gone ahead and created a nice
list of keywords we've found people to
be typing into search engines. So now
what? Do we choose three to four of
them.. five to eight? How many keywords
should we be targeting? Initial instinct
may say either one of the above ranges
is appropriate, but let's ignore our
instincts for a minute and give it some
more thought.
For this discussion,
let's assume our site sells women's
clothing. We have our list and we see
that the top 5 searched for keywords
are:
-
women's clothing -
9,282
-
women's clothing shop
- 3,885
-
plus size women's
clothing - 638
-
women's sport
clothing - 420
-
women's clothing
catalog - 322
(Numbers shown are
approximate searches per day provided by
Overture)
For our purposes, four
out of the five keywords listed relate
well to what we are trying to sell. Our
clothing is general women's clothing so
we can remove plus size women's clothing
from the list. So, here we have four
keywords that are very relevant to our
sites topic, receive lots of searches
and everything looks just peachy.
So what's the hitch?
Well, unless your store name is Macy's,
Wal-Mart or some other big name clothing
retailer, you've got many problems if
your strategy is to only target these
four phrases. The biggest one being the
amazing amount of competition you will
be facing to achieve top rankings for
these words, but that's not what we're
talking about here. Keyword competition
is only one aspect of selecting good
keywords. The aspect we're focusing on
today is very simple in concept but for
some reason many people/site owners
don't get it or choose to neglect it.
First, let's get some
perspective here. The five keywords
listed above, after doing some quick
math, bring in an approximate total of
15,000 searches per day according to
Overture's numbers.
9,282
3,885
638
420
+ 322
--------
14,547 total
searches per day
That's a lot of potential
traffic, IF you rank highly for EACH one
of those phrases. I can tell you now
that if you spend the next 2 years
tailoring your website for those phrases
alone you'll be lucky to exist in the
top 40 results for all of them when the
2 years is up. That's a lot of time and
work for mediocre results that will
bring maybe .01% of those searches to
your site. If we know anything by now
about search habits it's that users
don't like to stray much farther than
page one then they move on to a new
search term. Which just so happens to
tie in perfectly with the concept we're
about to explain.
Search habits show that a
user may initially type "women's
clothing" into a search engine to find
what they are looking for. Once the
search is complete and the results are
displayed, they will probably click to a
few of the top 5 ranking websites as
well as some of the paid listings. What
the user generally ends up realizing
after this process, is that the results
being shown are entirely too vague in
nature to find exactly what they are
looking for. So what do they do next?
They narrow down their search of course.
Instead of women's clothing they now
type in something like "women's tank
tops".
What's this? They're not
searching for women's clothing anymore?
Of course they are, but instead of such
a broad term as women's clothing they
search for more specific items to get
better, more relevant search results.
This process continues until they find
exactly what they are looking for (pink
women's tank top with silver sequins) or
give up trying. So, with this knowledge
in mind, let's move on to the concept at
hand.
When it comes to your
website, what is it that you are
actually trying to sell?
Is it women's clothing? Yes. But is that
all? I should hope not. In addition to
the overall theme of women's clothing,
you might have women's tank tops,
women's jeans, skirts, shirts,
accessories and many other individual
products and categories that exist in
the realm of women's clothing. This is
where we get into the 'more keywords'
is better idea. Every product, category
and more importantly, page in your
website should be targeting something
different. If you have a category for
women's jeans, that page should target
women's jeans and two or three other
variations of that search term. If you
have a product within the women's jeans
category name seven jeans A pocket
style, that page should be targeting
keywords consistent with seven jeans A
pocket style. The goal here is to get
specific with our keywords where
appropriate.
Now, you may say, "But
when I do my keyword research it shows
hardly any searches for seven jeans A
pocket style, so why would I target that
keyword?" Well, regardless of what those
numbers say one can never know for sure
every search queried in the search
engines.. So be honest with yourself and
think, "If I wanted a pair of these
jeans, what would I type in to Google?"
Me, personally, I'd search for seven
jeans A pocket style or A pocket seven
jeans, etc. And chances are my site will
rank much higher for that more
specific/less competitive keyword than
it would for something as competitive as
women's clothing.
Now, take this concept
and apply it to all of your
categories/products/pages and, depending
on your inventory, you'll begin to see
why you should be targeting possibly
hundreds of keywords at a time instead
of three or four site wide.
To give us further reason
to apply this method to our website,
let's look back to the previous numbers
mentioned above. We saw approximately
15,000 searches a day for the top five
women's clothing searches performed
according to Overture. How does at best,
a few searches a day for these very
specific terms even compare? I'll show
you.
Using our search term
suggestion tool we see approximately 10
searches a day performed for seven A
pocket jeans, 45 searches a day for earl
jeans and similar numbers down the line
for all of our specific products and
categories.
In the essence of time,
let's say on average our specific
keywords get about 20 searches a day
each, and we have a list of 120 specific
keywords based on our products and
categories.
So again, we'll do some
quick math.
20 searches per day X 120 keywords =
2,400 searches per day
We can see from these
numbers that with high rankings for our
specific keywords we could potentially
see 2,400 searches a day coming to our
site. This is by no means 15,000 but the
truth is, you can eventually equal that
number of total searches by expanding
your keyword base over time and get much
more targeted traffic in the process.
I'll take 2,400 targeted visitors to my
site over 15,000 general searches any
day. Remember, the users searching for
women's clothing usually end up
modifying their search to something more
specific anyway. So much of that traffic
generated by a search for women's
clothing ends up in a quick visit then a
quick click on the back button. Whereas
a user typing in seven jeans A pocket
style clicks to your site and sees
exactly what they are looking for.. That
type of traffic is much more likely to
end up in a sale, which is the ultimate
goal for all of us.
If we lock down all of
our specific products and categories
with high rankings in the search engines
we are ensuring that most of the traffic
generated by our optimization efforts is
highly targeted to what our site offers.
Women's clothing is a
great theme for your site, and should be
optimized for (we will go over how to do
this in another article).. But as far as
sales, rankings and overall targeted
traffic is concerned, we need to spread
our reach well beyond women's clothing
to all areas of women's clothing. Make
sense?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ryan
McCann is an
Online Marketing and
Search Engine Optimization manager
at Ecommerce Partners located in New
York, NY.
http://www.ecommercepartners.net
