Choosing keywords is the foundation of your search engine optimisation effort and you should take time to choose the most important and relevant keywords for your website.
A keyword is a word that a search engine user would enter to find your website. Most people enter search phrases that are between 2 to 5 words.
Good keyword phrases are specific and it is better to have a smaller number of targeted keywords rather than have many irrelevant users find your site listed under generic search terms, who will be unlikely to spend much time on your site. Your ultimate objective is to get targeted traffic to your site. There is no reward in being on the first page on google unless those visitors become paying customers.
The more targeted and specific your keywords are, the greater the chance that visitors to your site will find what they are looking for.
Research The Best Keywords To Use.
In order to determine which keywords are most important and relevant to your website where are free tools available such as Google Trends.
This tool will also give an indication as to the popularity of a keyword so that you may know how difficult it will be to rank for it. Less expensive keywords on pay per click will tend to be easier to rank in an organic search.
One way to go about choosing your site’s keywords is to make a list of all the possible words that your customer may use to find the products and services on your site remembering to think like your customers and avoid using words that your customer are unlikely to use.
Then use google’s keyword trends tool to help identify the keywords that you should be able to optimise which are not too popular or unpopular. Avoid generic keywords or keywords that are just a single word. So, for example, to get a top ranking for “bracelet” you would be competing with millions of other web pages.
Select Your Prime keyword.
After you have narrowed down your keywords to around 20, choose one that will be your most important keyword. Typically this will tend to be your company name. You should ensure that your most important keyword appears on most of the pages of your site. You should also have a number of variations of your primary keyword such as synonyms and alternate spellings and include these in your keywords list. So a primary keyphrase for the website “Health Store UK” should have the primary keywords “Health store UK”. Variations of this would be “UK Health Store”, “Healthstoreuk”, “healthstore UK” etc. Notice how the primary keyword is still present in the more specific pages.
Targeting keywords for conversions.
The more specialised and targeting your keyword is, the more targeted your visitors will be, and thus the more likely that they will purchase a product from your eCommerce website.
2 to 5-word phrases are much easier to rank well for because your competition is unlikely to use the same combination.
It is often a good idea to put a geographic modifier to your keyword such that “health store” becomes “health store UK”, provided that your eCommerce website focuses on a particular region or country.
Each page of your website should then contain your primary keyword. Where appropriate, your products pages should contain variations of your primary keyword or the remainder of your chosen keywords. To avoid being marked for spam, you should also use keywords that are appropriate on each individual page. So a page that contains contact details should not contain the keyword “Silver Bangles” for example but more appropriately include your shop’s full name and variations of it where appropriate. It is also important not to stuff webpages with keywords as keyword stuffing is also considered in contravention of google’s increasingly strict webmaster guidelines.
