Finding the best of 100's of keywords?

[seoman10]

Have an online e-commerce store and need to start on keyword research.  There is a round 1000 products, not very many all things considered but a very big job to do manually.

Do you know any tools that could speed it up?

or

Process/method that could help?

Thanks

[ZoeRigley]

Hi,

I'm not aware of any tools which can automate this, but I can share my usual process with you. When I'm approaching a new E-Commerce store's keyword research, I'll usually create a prioritised list of the top pages on site, based on the client's goals, and current top page data. Ideally each product page will have the target keyword in the title- though this isn't always the case- so I'd go through based on popularity of products, and best margins, to ensure the keywords are good, and the descriptions are unique and optimised. Are the products already generating sales, or are they sold elsewhere? Could you get a list of the best sellers from other platforms?

I'll usually make a prioritised list of pages in Excel, usually starting with the homepage, then categories, then sub categories and products, to write optimised descriptions & meta data. It can be a huge job- I have one client with over 20,000 products and nearly 3,000 categories for example- but I haven't found a way to really automate this process yet!

Definitely keen to hear how other SEOs respond to this, it's a very interesting question. 
Hope this helps, 
Zoe

[Toddfoster]

Hello,

To answer your question in short, there isn't really a way to "speed up" this process, but that shouldn't be the goal in the first place. Keyword research is the foundation upon which you build your rankings, so you should really be prepared to put some serious thought into it.

In terms of making the process more effective, however, there are a few tactics I have used which have helped me. Feel free to follow this checklist:

1. Assess your product categories

Presumably you are not dealing with 1000 different products from unique niches. Start by assigning each of these products to a category and using that category as a landing page. Then you can research each category for relevant keywords.

2. Assign keywords for each category

I would take no more than 10-20 keywords for each category unless the products you are selling are well-known (and therefore, well-searched). No e-commerce site can rank first for every item they carry.

3. Determine the ranking difficulty of your chosen keywords

I use a national keyword checking tool called Authority Metrics (www.authoritymetrics.com) for national keyword research. It shows you organic competition levels and PPC costs along with national monthly searches based on multiple countries. It is not particularly useful for local clients, but as an e-commerce website, I doubt this will impact you. In any case, it will give you more information than Google's Keyword Planner Tool.

4. Create your sitemap/category pages

This should be done after you have determined what keywords you can/will be ranking for. My strategy tends to involve a 2-pronged approach where I use 1 sales funnel for low-hanging fruit (long-tail keywords or unique products) and another for large-scale keywords which will take time to rank. This allows you small-scale income very quickly, while also allowing you to build your site organically.

5. Create content for each category, and your top-sellers

Obviously you need quality content to rank. I like to focus on a percentage of products that I feel have the best chance of success. There is no hard rule about this, but I typically go for about 5% of my overall product list. Generally speaking, 10% of your products will yield 75% of your overall sales. Find the balancing point between your keyword's monthly searches and the ROI you stand to gain from ranking each of these products.

This has gone beyond keyword research and into sales and CRO, but I hope it helps to give you a helpful outline of my approach to the e-commerce landscape. This process will put you in good shape for establishing your site and getting purchases.

Feel free to follow up with me if you have further questions.

All the best,

Rob