Keyword research can be a daunting process. Only in SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool you can get over 18.3 billion keywords. 18.3 BILLION. And that’s only ONE of the tools in the market. Imagine the possibilities.
Also, 51% of all website traffic comes from organic search. And do you know how to get more of that organic traffic? Using the right keywords, of course.
What are keywords?
In the world of SEO, keywords basically equal search terms. This means the word combinations that people use when searching online.
Keyword research can tell you which topics your audience is searching for and how popular these topics are. They’re a great tool to help you provide your audience with the information they need.
Why are they important to your Shopify store?
Keywords can help you:
- Improve your website’s SEO and overall ranking
- Help potential customers find you faster
- Analyze your competitive environment
- Enhance your sales performance and ROI
- Engage with potential buyers
Believe it or not, keywords are extremely important for Shopify stores. They’re the pillar of SEO (and with 70% of marketers seeing SEO as more effective than PPC, that’s saying something), and they can make or break your online conversions.
Also, keywords are a big part of the ranking puzzle – and when it comes to SEO ranking, the only place you want to be is somewhere on the first page of Google.
But it’s not about matching the “exact” search keyword a user is looking for. It’s about matching their intent. Users search for things depending on what they want to accomplish. Are they looking to buy? Do they just want more information? Is there a location involved? Look out for these words in order to understand a person’s search intent:
- Informational intent: what, when, where, how, why, news, etc.
- Commercial intent: buy, purchase, cheap, prices, pricing, etc.
- Location intent: near, near me, nearby, from, directions, route, maps, etc.
Specific intent: the sum of the keywords with all three previous intents.
For example, a user could be looking for information about denim jackets.
An informational query could be “how to wear a denim jacket” or “denim jacket outfits”. A commercial intent would include “where to buy a denim jacket”. If they’re looking to personally look at the item, then they would do location intent search with “denim jackets near me”.
And all of the above would include “where to buy denim jackets near me”. A specific intent to shop, right now. All through keywords!
Now that you know why keywords are important for your Shopify business, let’s move on to how you can research them.
How to research keywords for your Shopify store
You can do a great SEO Keyword Research for your Shopify store in 6 simple steps:
- Step 1: Get a spreadsheet
- Step 2: Analyze your own store
- Step 3: Competitor Analysis
- Step 4: Research other keywords you want to rank for
- Step 5: Read the numbers & select your keywords
- Step 6: Plan your content
Let’s go through them, one by one.
STEP 1: Get a spreadsheet
This step should be pretty obvious. You’re going to need somewhere to write everything down.
Lucky for you, we’ve got you covered! We want to give you the keyword research template we use for ALL of our clients… absolutely free! It will make your keyword research easy, fast and actionable.
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STEP 2: Analyze your own store
Once you have your spreadsheet ready, it’s time to analyze your store. Here’s how to do it:
- Log into SEMRush
- Select Organic Research
- Enter your site URL & your country
- Scroll down to Top Organic Keywords
- Click View All
- Export as Excel
- Open the Excel file and copy the first 6 columns into your spreadsheet (Keyword, Position, Previous position, Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty & CPC)
- Paste into the Ranking Keywords tab in your spreadsheet
That’s it! You now have all the data regarding your Shopify store’s organic keywords. You can view the position they’re ranking for in Google, the keyword’s search volume, the keyword difficulty and the CPC.
STEP 3: Analyze your Competitors
Now it’s time to analyze your competitors. You need to get all the keywords you share with them, as well as their unique keywords (the ones you aren’t ranking for and they are). Here’s how to do it:
Shared Keywords:
- Log into SEMRush
- Select Keyword Gap
- Enter your URL and your competitors URLs
- Select Organic Keywords
- Click compare
- Select Shared
- Export as an Excel
- Open the Excel file
- Copy the information
- Paste into the Gap Analysis tab in your spreadsheet
Shared keywords allow you to see strengths and weaknesses in your store’s keywords rankings compared to your competitors.
Missing Keywords:
- Log into SEMRush
- Select Keyword Gap
- Enter your URL and your competitors URLs
- Select Organic Keywords
- Click compare
- Select Missing
- Export as an Excel
- Open the Excel file
- Copy the information
- Paste into the Gap Analysis tab in your spreadsheet
Missing keywords are the ones your competitors are ranking for but you are not. You can use them to discover new opportunities.
With this information, you can analyze the keywords gaps inside your store, see which are your strongest keywords and take note of the keywords that could use a boost.
STEP 4: Research other keywords you want to rank for
Inspiration is everything when it comes to keywords research. Be sure to look for keywords that you want to rank for or are interested in. They could be:
- Related search terms
- Topics you are interested in tackling
- Anything that increases your store’s EAT (Expertise – Authority – Trust)
- New products you plan on launching
Once you have a basic idea and some topics written down, it’s time to find the relevant keywords:
- Log into SEMRush
- Select Keyword Magic Tool
- Type in a keyword
- For a more complete search, click Advanced Filters
- Add broad match keywords to your search
- Export the relevant keywords into an Excel file
- Open the Excel file
- Copy the first 7 columns (Keyword, Volume, Keyword Difficulty, CPC (USD), Competitive Density, Search Results and SERP Features)
- Paste them into the Keyword Pool tab in your spreadsheet
- Write down the keyword’s Category (Keyword + Broad Match)
The first part of your keyword research it’s done. Now it’s time to select.
If you need a bit more inspiration finding keywords, you can always go into your Google Search Console and look for your store’s relevant search terms. If you don’t know how to do this, here is our full Google Search Console setup guide for Shopify.
As an extra tip, be sure to include long-tail keywords in your research, since they tend to have a click-through rate 3% to 5% higher than generic searches.
STEP 5: Read the numbers (SEMrush Tutorial)
In order to select the keywords you want to target, you need to know how to read the numbers in SEMrush. Lucky for you, we’ve made this easy as pie.
- Position: this is where your site is showing up in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for a specific keyword
- Search Volume: The average monthly number of searches for a specific keyword
- Keyword Difficulty: Estimate of how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword on a scale of 1-100 (with 100 being the hardest)
- Cost-per-click (CPC): A keyword’s cost per single click. This is useful for finding PPC campaign keywords.
- Competitive Density: Estimate of how competitive the bidding is among advertisers for a specific keyword
- Search Results: The number of results that show up on Google’s organic search result pages (ads not included) when someone searches for that specific keyword
- SERP Features: Any result on Google’s Search Engine Result Pages that is not the traditional snippet.
For SEO keyword research, you only need to consider two of these:
- Search Volume: it tells you how “popular” a certain keyword is.
- Keyword Difficulty: it tells you how competitive/difficult it will be to rank for that specific keyword.
Zima Tip: Keep an eye out for SERP features! Ïf you see that a keyword has Video showing up in SERP features, you can take advantage of it and shoot a video to target it as well!
Here’s how to do it:
- From your Keyword Pool, select keywords that are relevant to your business, have a high Search Volume and (if possible) low Keyword Difficulty.
- Copy the selected keywords into the Keyword Selects tab.
- Rank them as follows:
- Level 1 – High Search Volume, high Keyword Difficulty.
- Level 2 – High Search Volume, medium Keyword Difficulty.
- Level 3 – High/medium Search Volume, low Keyword Difficulty.
STEP 6: Plan your content
Now it’s time to take all this research into action! If you were wondering why we made you assign a number to your selected keywords, here’s why:
- Level 1 Keywords: they’re the MONEY keywords you want to shoot for, but will take more time. These are very sought after keywords, but very competitive ones as well.
- Level 2 Keywords: these are keywords that you can start planning into your content strategy and keep in mind for your next blog articles.
- Level 3 Keywords: these are the keywords that you can start ranking for RIGHT NOW! Be sure to include them into your immediate SEO optimizations.
And that’s it. You have successfully run an SEO keyword research for your Shopify store. Easy. As. Pie!
Bonus! Get a present…
We want your keyword research to be the best possible. That’s why we want to give you the keyword research template we used in this tutorial, absolutely FREE!
Be sure to download it here and start making the most out of your Shopify’s SEO research. Happy Shopify keyword research!
2 Responses
This was an incredible read. Thanks so much for writing it.
Yes, you are right. We should keep an eye on SERP features. It’s the most important to gain rank. The one should follow the rules. For example: If you target the wrong intent with your content, you’ll have a difficult time ranking and, even if you do, any traffic that arrives is more likely to bounce, which has its own negative impact. That’s why we should follow the right way to grow.