Help With Choosing Keywords Wisely

What keywords should you use for your search marketing campaign? What about for your title tags, header tags, and within your product content? Identifying the keywords that resonate with your customers can help you with search engine marketing, page optimization for natural search, and even for selecting key phrases in your outbound marketing, all of which are meant to drive more valuable traffic to your site. Today we’re introducing a new tool called Keyword Finder which you can use when making keyword decisions.

Keyword Finder leverages the rich data in your store to your advantage by exposing keyword/product relationships. Three different types of keywords are included in the tool: converting keywords, referring keywords, and product names. Depending on your sales and traffic history, the keywords in the tool will rely more or less heavily on each of these types. Newer merchants are likely to find that the majority of the keywords are derived from product names or referrals while merchants with longer tenure may find that conversions make up the majority of the keywords.

Converting keywords are keyword phrases that have a history of converting to sales. For example, if eight people have come to your site via the keyword “blue umbrella” and purchased the product “‘Rain Rain Go Away’ Umbrella” you know based on its conversion history that the term “blue umbrella” is a pretty good keyword for this product.

Referring keywords are keyword phrases that have driven traffic directly to product pages, regardless of whether they resulted in sales. Taking the same product as an example, let’s say that Keyword Finder shows you that five people arrived on the product page for “‘Rain Rain Go Away’ Umbrella” after searching for the keyword phrase “child’s rain gear,” but there were no conversions for that keyword. This may mean that the phrase “child’s rain gear” isn’t the best keyword phrase for this product. However, it may also mean that you need to do a better job on your product page description to convey that this product is indeed for kids. Also, if you don’t have any conversions for this product yet, a keyword phrase that has referred in the past may be a good keyword to start with – it’s certainly better than guesswork. You can always more finely tune in the future.

Oftentimes, merchants may overlook their product names as keyword phrases because they think they are too specific, but this isn’t always the case. Some product names, like known branded products or book and movie titles, are quite likely to have been searched for in a search engine. Product names with a search history will be included as keyword phrases in the tool where relevant, but will be ranked lower if they haven’t produced any conversions or referrals.

Keyword Finder is meant for repeat use. You will find that the keywords you see will change over time as you gain traffic, orders and change the products you offer. Also, don’t forget that although many SEO improvements are quick (adjusting title tags or adding to the “keywords” field in Catalog Manager, for example) changes to your site can take time to be recognized by search engines – give them a chance to kick in before drawing conclusions and making additional changes. On the other hand, search engine marketing can show almost immediate results, but does require more time to write ads and place bids. Either way, there are plenty of places you can put your newfound keywords to work.

Please refer to the Keyword Finder Help documents for more information on this new feature.

Laurie Briggs
Yahoo! Small Business