Table of Contents
Long-tail keywords are the backbone of SEO. As a newbie, it's always hard for you to rank your website with keywords that have higher search volume. In such a case, long-tail keywords play a vital role that can help you boost your ranking and gain more traffic. Well, even if you have an established eCommerce store with good ROI, implementing long tail keywords can always help you attract a larger target audience.
Furthermore, as per resources, around 70% of search queries are in the long tail format ( Source: embryo), which tends to have a higher conversion rate compared to higher volume keywords. In this article, we will explore how advanced keyword research for your Shopify eCommerce store will help you find long-tail keywords and maximize your SERP rankings.
Understanding the Basics of Keyword Research
As a Shopify store owner, you are aware that keywords play a vital role when it comes to ranking your product, landing, category pages, and more. Having relevant keywords that reflect your brand or store can help gain more traffic. Before we directly dive into long tail keywords, let’s understand the basics of keyword research
Search Volume
Keyword search volume is mostly measured in average monthly searches. This is the number of searches every month for every specific search phrase (keyword). Ideally, you are searching for the keywords with the highest search volume.
Ranking highly with more search terms with higher search volumes means more robust traffic and conversion potential for you and your store. Unfortunately, there is no magic number that represents the perfect search volume for everyone.
Analyzing Competition
Search volume and keyword aren’t the only things you need to look for. Competition is also of the utmost importance, if not, then there’s no point in trying to rank for keywords you have no chance of ranking for. Competition refers to the difficulty of ranking for each particular keyword.
Topical Authority
As search engines improve and more emphasis is placed on related terms, quality content, and natural language. You need to highlight your website’s expertise by offering in-depth, interconnected content. Clients will want to click on your website if they consider you a trusted source of information for a certain topic. Authoritative content and a good reputation will help you rank highly on SERPs. Now, let’s understand more about long-tail keywords.
What are Long Tail Keywords?
Long-tail keywords mostly consist of three to four words or even more. They are mostly very particular about a product like Puma sneaker shoes, or there may be a question that the end user may ask, like “Running Shoes for winter”
Short-tail keywords, as you might guess, are of one or even two words, like running shoes, sneaker shoes, etc
To help you understand, let’s search on Google
For example, when you search for running shoes, the intent is a little clear to Google that the user is searching for running shoes, but it’s not very clear whether the user is searching for running shoes for men, women, or kids.
So, when the user specifies their requirement by adding extra information, it helps Google to show them exact results that match their needs. You can refer to the image below to understand long-tail keywords.
Why Long-Tail Keywords Are Essential for E-commerce
Less Competition
When it comes to competition, long-tail keywords are less competitive than shorter ones. For instance, if you are searching for roses, it shows around 823,000 searches.
Similarly, when you add a red rose bouquet for a wedding, it shows around 1000 search results. Long-tail keywords have high conversion rates
Long-tail keywords aren’t longer. They are more particular with mostly commercial or transactional search intent. In other words, people looking for long-tail search terms usually have a buying intent compared to those of just short-tail keywords.
For instance, take a keyword like ’Personal training’, someone searching for personal training is probably learning about how it can benefit or how it works, which states that they are not ready to purchase anything.
But Someone searching for a longer version, like ’personal training courses’, is closer to making a purchase. So, the traffic you get from long-tail terms has a higher conversion rate than traffic from head terms, as it probably comes from robust clients.
How to find niche Long Tail Keywords?
Finding long-tail keywords that will improve your conversion rate mostly includes a long length and search volume. By following a few important steps, you can easily find long-tail keywords for your niche.
Step 1: Google autocomplete suggestions
The very first method of finding long-tail keywords is very simple. All you do is use Google’s autocomplete suggestions
For instance, if you are running an ethnic or traditional wear store, you may be targeting something like traditional women's wear or traditional men's wear. You can just search for traditional wear on SERP and see what autocomplete suggestions appear.
Step 2: Do Extra Long Tail Keyword Research
Follow up your initial research with a long-tail keywords tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush. You can confirm any terms you identified in the previous step, and you can also add keywords to target.
You can filter by search volume and then start adding keywords into an Excel spreadsheet to perfectly match them up to the page on the client’s website that ranks for those terms.
Step 3: Check Search Intent
Search intent matters the most. So, it's always recommended to check each term manually in search results to make sure it matches the user's intent. This saves our time from optimizing product pages for a keyword when people are looking for a blog post, and vice versa.
Step 4: Continuous Monitoring
Analyzing your keyword performance helps you optimize your content. You can also set up keyword alerts in Ahrefs to analyze the new long tail terms we need to include.
If you think one of those keywords can convert well and help you gain more traffic. You can optimize them in your relevant website content page.
Advanced Tools for Finding Niche Keywords
Semrush
Semrush is an all-in-one digital marketing tool with a robust keyword research toolkit. You can conduct keyword research in many ways. Also, for instance, the keyword magic tool of SEMrush helps you to generate thousands of keyword ideas from one seed keyword.
As SEMrush has over 25 billion keywords, you will definitely find new ranking opportunities and keywords with low competition.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another big gain in the SEO tools market. Even though Ahrefs has expertise in link building, it has a dedicated keyword research tool called Keyword Explorer. Moreover, Ahrefs offers all vital metrics for keyword research, like keyword difficulty, search volume, global search volume, traffic potential, and the number of clicks per second.
Moz
Moz is one of the famous SEO solutions that can help you to maximize your website’s visibility in organic search results. Moreover, MOZ also provides various backlink analysis, rank tracking, and keyword research tools.
Moz offers 10 free queries per month to research and analyze keywords. The keyword report data is limited, though. You may only see monthly keyword difficulty, organic click-through rate (CTR), SERP overview, and Keyword suggestions.
Google Keyword Planner
Google keyword plan highlights which long-tail keywords have commercial value, but we mostly find fewer of them. You may often find better results with Google tools that are not particularly developed and designed for eCommerce keyword research.
Summing Up
Advanced eCommerce Keyword research is vital for eCommerce businesses looking to stand out in a competitive market. By attracting niche long-tail keywords, you can attract highly targeted traffic, maximize conversion rates, and develop a stronger connection with your audience. If you are not aware of how you can add long-tail keywords to your website, you can get Shopify SEO Services for your store that can help you maximize your store’s conversion rate with the best ROI.
