Considering the large number of pages an eCommerce website can have, a long-tail keyword strategy is key to driving the most qualified traffic to your online storefront. With each product owning its own page proper long-tail keyword research and implementation is effective for two main reasons:
1. Provides better opportunity to rank for more relevant keywords.
2. Drives extremely qualified traffic to specific pages.
Long-tail keywords are longer keyword phrases that are descriptive versions of a general root keyword. They’re easier to rank as less websites are optimizing their site for them because of how unique each one can be. Reduced competition makes it easier to target these keywords and rank higher in search engines.
Long-tail keywords will inevitably have much lower search volume, but visitors finding your website after performing a long-tail search will be highly qualified. Remember, it’s not just how much traffic you can get to your website – it’s what actions they take. Qualified visitors are much more likely to become leads and consumers of your products.
As I mentioned above, eCommerce websites can have a lot of pages since each product should have its own page. Each of these pages is a new opportunity to rank for a unique long-tail keyword. Added together, all of the long-tail keywords your website ranks for can drive in large amounts of qualified traffic. The true opportunity for eCommerce websites main pages in the long-tail comes from these category and product pages. (eCommerce blogs should also focus on the long-tail which will be covered in a later blog post.)
Category and product pages can be optimized with long-tail keywords to represent your stores unique value propositions and offerings. What makes you a better, more viable option than your competition is what should drive your keyword research. Let’s take a look at an example.
Imagine that your eCommerce shop sells baseball bats. If you tried optimizing your websites pages for the keyword “baseball bats” you’d be competing with the giants of the baseball bat industry including Slugger and DeMarini as well as Amazon.com.
Your eCommerce store probably has a more specialized line of products. Following the baseball bat example imagine you have a category of wooden baseball bats. Furthermore, you have specific wooden bat collection you can sell at a discount and want to optimize this product page for the long-tail keyword “cheap wooden baseball bats”.
Although this SERP (search engine result page) contains some of the big players in the industry there is a much more diverse collection of eCommerce shops with the ability to gain valuable traffic. By targeting the long-tail, these eCommerce websites with less authority than industry leaders were still able to rank for relevant keywords. More importantly, any visitors captured from ranking for this keyword would find a page extremely relevant to (if not exactly) what they’re looking for.
Now's the time to implement your own long-tail keyword strategy. To learn more ways you can optimize your eCommerce website to generate more business attend our live eCommerce website analysis webinar.
Photo Credit: Search Engine People Blog
