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SEO and eCommerce

Step 1: Conduct Your Keyword Research

Keywords are what people use to search for websites. If you have a website that sells tires, then you would want people to find your website by searching for something like “snow tires”. They want what you're selling. Keyword research involves finding popular phrases that people are looking for that don’t come with a lot of competition. This is the foundation of every SEO campaign because every other technique is built on top of the keywords that you choose at this step.

The trick with keyword research is finding keywords and key phrases that you could actually rank for. Obviously, the word “tires” is a highly competitive keyword with thousands of websites already using it in their SEO. However, the phrase “Yokohama all weather tires R70-16” probably has less competition, which will make it easier for you to get a high page rank for searches using that keyword. Of course, these keywords are undoubtedly searched much less frequently than “tires”. So which one do you pick?

Higher Searches = Higher Competition

As a general rule (although there are exceptions!), the more monthly searches a keyword has, the harder it will be to rank. When doing your research, use a tool that gives you the global monthly searches and the competition for any given ranking. Google Keyword Tool is a good, though basic, tool for this. Alternatively you could use paid services like Market Samurai or Micro Niche Finder to research on your own, or a reliable company like WSI that will take care of this time consuming step for you. You want to find a keyword with: LOW Competition and HIGH Global Monthly Searches.

Below your specified keyword Google Keyword Tool will give you a list of similar keywords, and these are often the most useful part of the tool. You might notice a keyword that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise, and using this method you can slowly begin to build a keyword architecture for your site.