Effective keyword analysis for your store in 7 steps

One of the first elements of building an SEO strategy for an online store must be keyword analysis, which will then be used to create or optimize existing content on the site.

The organic success of the largest e-commerce sites in Poland and worldwide is based on a properly created and expanded keyword list. This is because, in the case of positioning, the only way to direct our site to the target we are interested in is precisely to select the right keywords, which, displayed in high positions in search results, will „bring” us to the site of the user with the intention to purchase our products.

However, before we take action to achieve high organic positions, we need to decide on what words we need to gain those positions for. We, therefore, need to conduct an extensive analysis, which consists of several key steps. However, before discussing each of them, it is worth reviewing the most important concepts related to keyword selection.

Keyword analysis – basic concepts

Keyword Search Potential

Keyword search potential is the number of monthly Google search queries for a keyword. In the keyword analysis process, phrases with high search potential should be most interesting, but this is only one factor to consider.

Search intent

It is the goal that a Google search user has when typing a keyword into Google. Keywords are divided into four main groups in terms of search intent:

• Informational—The user is at the initial stage of the purchase decision process. He has a purchase need, but he needs more information to specify the exact parameters of the product he is interested in. So he enters general phrases in the search engine or phrases that constitute questions, such as „types of cleaning robots” or „which cleaning robot to choose for a small apartment?”
• Commercial: The user searches for keywords already having a purchase intention but may not yet have decided on a specific product, such as „comparison of cleaning robots with washing function.”
• Transactional—keywords with such an intention typed in by the user indicate that he has already decided on a purchase, so they may lead directly to making a transaction. These are, for example, specific product names along with their models or other distinctions, such as „Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X10 cleaning robot price.”
• Navigational—Such keywords are typed in by a user who intends to reach a specific subpage/product in the online store he or she is thinking about, such as „cleaning robots media markt targówek.” The user has encountered the e-commerce in question before and wants to return to it to continue the shopping process or purchase decision process.

Keyword types

There are several types of keywords distinguished in positioning; their division was adopted due to the common characteristics that each group has:

• Generic phrases are usually characterized by a very high number of searches due to their very general nature. They are usually vague, short one—or two-word phrases, such as „mountain bike.” These types of phrases usually very rarely lead directly to a transaction; they are more of an informational intent.
• Long tail – these are long, quite specific queries characterized by a fairly small number of searches. They usually have two types of intentions – informational, when the decision to buy a particular product has not yet been made, such as „mountain bike for a child 140 cm height most important parameters”, and transactional, when the length of the query is due to its precision „Mountain bike Romet Rambler 20 Kid 2 2023”
• How-to searches are questions typed into the search engine with an informational intention to help clarify the purchase decision. They usually begin with the phrases „How…?”, „What…?”, or „What…?”, e.g., „How to fit a mountain bike for a child?”
• Branded keywords are those that include the name of a particular brand, store, or manufacturer in their content, e.g., „comet mountain bike” or „decathlon mountain bike.”

Organic Competition

Organic competition is sites displaying high results for keywords of interest. Importantly, competition in organic search results does not necessarily equal our business competitors. This is primarily because not every one of our business competitors needs to be present in the search engine at any given time and because not every organic competitor for a given keyword needs to be our business competitor.

In the latter case, this may be the result of keyword ambiguity. For example, after typing the phrase „warm home” into Google, we will see results related to the government program of that name, the website of a fireplace installer, a heat pump manufacturer, a window distributor, or a home design studio. These companies are not directly competing with each other, but they are the search results for the phrase.

Keyword difficulty

This parameter is determined in SEO tools (using different scales) but with the same genesis—its task is to determine how difficult it will be to position a given keyword, considering already existing results, competitors’ actions, and monthly search potential. Information about the difficulty of keywords allows you to plan the budget of SEO activities more easily.

Keyword difficulty

The phrases we choose as part of our SEO strategy for e-commerce must not only have high potential for monthly searches but must also be directly related to our products. Selecting keywords with too distant a connection to our offerings and positioning them can result in „acquiring empty traffic,” that is, acquiring visits that do not translate into transactions due to the fact that a user hitting from such a phrase may not necessarily be interested in our product at all.

Keyword analysis–examples-of-useful-tools

To perform keyword analysis we will need SEO tools, without them the whole process is virtually impossible. There are a number of paid commercial tools that we can use. However, if we don’t want to pay, free tools from Google can also help us. Here are a few examples for both groups:

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a tool that shows us the overall status of our site in organic search results. One element we can check there is the site’s effectiveness, i.e., the number of monthly impressions and clicks juxtaposed with the position of keywords and CTR.

In GSC, we can check for which phrases exactly we are visible in the search engine, in which positions and what traffic they bring us. In keyword analysis, this tool is only useful for online stores with previous history because we will realistically have baseline data there only then. By analyzing the information from GSC, we can see which keywords are currently further down the list and which are worth focusing on.

Google Keywords Planner

This is a tool available within Google Ads that allows us to check the potential of given keywords, their difficulty, seasonality, and suggestions for additional phrases related to those we originally entered. In principle, it is a free tool, but some parameters, such as the number of monthly searches, can be seen as specific numbers, not just „from-to” ranges only from within an account with an active Google Ads campaign.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a free tool from Google that shows us search trends for a given keyword over time. We can check the popularity of a phrase or topic and compare it with others. However, remember that Google Trends does not show the number of monthly searches for a given phrase or topic, but only the interest over time, on their adopted scale of 1-100.

Senuto

If we want to position our online store in Poland in our native language, a tool worth getting would be Senuto. This is a paid tool of Polish production that allows us to conduct a fairly broad and detailed keyword analysis.

Access to it can be purchased in several packages. It will allow us to check, among other things, elements such as keyword potential, search trends, CPC, seasonality, difficulty, or the degree to which phrases are related to the topic we entered. Within the Keyword Database, after typing in the issues we are interested in, we will get a whole list of keywords that we can verify from the angle we are interested in.

With Senuto’s help, we can also check which keywords and positions our competitors are visible on, which is also very useful for building a keyword list.

Semrush

If we plan to position our online store outside of Poland, the Semrush tool will be very useful. It allows us to check all the keyword parameters of interest and competitor phrases for any country worldwide.

Semrush is a paid tool, billed in monthly packages, its rather high price is mainly due to the fact that it is not just a tool for SEO analysis, but a global analysis of online marketing activities for a given site.

Stages of keyword analysis

If we know the basic concepts of keyword analysis and have the right tools waiting at our fingertips, we can start building an optimal list of phrases for our online store.

Step One – Establish Main Topical Ranges

Step one should be to determine what thematic scopes related to the products we sell we need to include. In this case, it is worth looking at our store’s category tree; it can be a starting point for our analysis. Transferring the category tree and subcategories to Excel will facilitate the whole process, so we can easily assign dedicated phrases for each of them.

Let’s treat the main product categories as the most important topics within which we will select keywords, following the „general to specific” principle. Thus, if we are running a small and large home appliance store, our main subject areas will be on the selection, comparison, purchase, use, financing and warranty of various types of home appliances.

The main product categories will be the most important ones.

It is very important to realize that in the case of e-commerce, the topics and keywords included on the site cannot „circulate” only according to the mere purchase of a particular product because we pull search engine users down by keywords typed with different intentions. This is related to the specifics of the purchase process of different products.

Step two – consider what the purchase decision process is like for the products you offer

The buying decision process for your products is also important when choosing keywords for your online store. We will choose phrases slightly differently for a store that sells products on the lower end of the price scale, offering products whose purchase may be impulsive, and differently for products whose selection requires a slightly longer analysis and comparison of various offers.

When selling lower-priced products subject to impulse buying, it is worth focusing on phrases with high search potential that will draw as many users as possible to our site, who may convert.

If, however, we are selling more expensive products that require thinking about and comparing many parameters (not just price), we need to break down the buying process into several smaller stages and match keywords with the right intention to each of them. Let’s take the process of buying a new dishwasher as an example:

• Step 1 – my dishwasher broke down/ I’m doing a renovation or finishing my apartment and I need to buy a dishwasher – at this stage, the user, will enter information phrases into the search engine that will help them make a choice, for example,, „what size dishwasher to buy for a family of 4”
• Stage 2 – I have decided to buy a dishwasher with a width of 60 cm – at this stage the user already begins to compare specific technical parameters and prices for the product, he will enter commercial phrases to choose the best product for himself, for example, „dishwasher 60 cm price”
• Stage 3 – I made an analysis and decided to buy a specific model, here the user will type phrases typically transactional such as the name of a specific model „Dishwasher BOSCH SMS4HVI00E”

The purpose of the analysis and selection of keywords is to include phrases from each stage of the purchasing process of the products we offer on our site so that the user will always find his way to our store and finally make a purchase.

Step three – create a keyword scheme

Suppose we have already established the main subject areas related to our products and defined their respective buying stages. In that case, we can move on to creating a schema that will make it easier to select keywords.

In the aforementioned case of a home appliance store, this scheme might look like this:

• TITLE SCOPE / MAIN CATEGORY: Type of product e.g. dishwasher
• General phrases related to product subcategories – e.g. freestanding or built-in
• Phrases related to the first stage of the buying process – guidance
• Phrases related to the second stage of the purchasing process – related to product parameters
• Phrases related to the third stage of the purchasing process – related to price, financing e.g. instalments), discounts,
• Phrases related to the use of the product – related, for example, to interchangeable accessories
• Product brand-related phrases – the type of product plus its brand and manufacturer

Step Four – check what the biggest competitors are visible for

In this step, it’s worth checking what the biggest competitors are visible on first to see what’s working in the market. It’s worth learning from those who have already gone through the whole process and what’s still missing to find a niche to develop.

To check what keywords our competitors are visible for, we will find it useful to use the tools mentioned earlier, such as Senuto, Semrush, or others. We can analyze the phrases chosen by others and the scheme in which they were placed. This will allow us to decide whether we want to appear for the same or similar phrases or find another way.

If we do not yet know our competitors that we want to verify, SEO tools will point many of them out to us for consideration.

Step Five – Ask yourself if there is an undeveloped niche in your industry

When our SEO budget is significantly lower than that of our competitors, or when we want to enter an already saturated market, it is worthwhile, as part of a competitive analysis, to look for niches that have not yet been developed in terms of searches or are only marginally developed.

Such niches/topics that have not yet been „touched” by the competition can be positioned quickly (with proper site optimization) and thus quickly collect traffic and conversions.

Step Six – think about what types of content must be on your site

Not every type of keyword will look natural in every type of content on the site. It is obvious that phrases typically transactional must be found directly on the sub-page of a product; with the rest, the case is slightly different.

Long-tail keywords, which usually have an informational intent, should be placed within the advice section/blog section of the site to maximize the development of a topic and give the user as many answers as possible to issues of interest.

Many informational and commercial phrases will work well in the content of category and subcategory descriptions, so creating them will also be essential in optimizing the site.

Navigation phrases are good to include in the main menu and footer, but they should also be part of category menus and breadcrumbs.

Step seven – start assigning keywords-to-scheme-established

Into the previously prepared Excel reflecting the product category tree of our service, it is worth applying the schema in which we want to supplement it with phrases (see step 3). Having a schema assigned to each category, we can begin the process of supplementing it with specific keywords, remembering to consider each of the previously established characteristics of the phrases.

This process should be carried out separately for each category on the site, so if our online store is very large, the keyword analysis will take a lot of time – but it is an essential step for search engine success.

When selecting keywords for each schema element, we need to consider their search volume and competitiveness. It is also worth assigning them a priority; this will help later create the site’s content plan order.

We can choose keywords in two ways, by checking phrases from a list we have created beforehand, which is, for example, the result of analysis of the competition or our own ideas from experience in the industry, or by typing into SEO tools the subject areas we are interested in and analyzing the suggestions we receive. Usually, these two methods are used in parallel, and the resulting words are supplemented with a previously prepared scheme of keyword topics.

Summary

While time-consuming and tedious, the e-commerce keyword analysis process is nonetheless essential to building organic visibility in search results. It is the backbone of any SEO and content marketing efforts, so it is worth paying close attention to.

Contact us if you need help performing keyword analysis for your online store!