Now, we’re going to do the first phase of Search Engine Optimization or SEO. We are going to research keywords where we will be optimizing each of the pages in our store around.
Akeyword is a string of words that you type in on Google to search for. So if you go to Google and type in doctor mugs, this phrase doctor mugs will be called a single keyword even though it’s actually two words.
And if we do a search of the keyword doctor mugs, we’ll find that a flex store doing Aliexpress dropshipping and print on demand store is apparently ranking number 2 for organic ranking results for this keyword.
The page that’s actually ranking for this keyword is actually a category page featuring different mugs aimed at doctors.
So for each of the main pages of our site, we’re going to choose a keyword for each of them and then optimize those pages around that keywords. We’re going to choose a keyword for each of our product pages and were going to choose a keyword for each of our category pages, and a keyword for our homepage.
To do this, we are going to use the MOZ Keyword Research Tool.
To access it, you usually need to purchase a MOZ Medium subscription. MOZ has a cheaper subscription you can sign up for but you can only do 150 keyword searches which are unlikely not going to be enough for us. The chances are we would end to be doing around 300 to a thousand keywords searches by the time we’ve identified our keywords so we will need the medium subscription which has up to 5000 searches per month.
Medium subscription is expensive so I recommend you take up the Medium subscription 30-day trial and find the keywords that you need and then cancel your subscription before they bill you.
When we complete our keyword research, we are going to prioritize keywords that have low competition. Low competition keywords have fewer websites competing for the keywords or the websites that are currently ranking for the keyword are not well optimized around it. We want to choose low competition keywords because it gives us the chance to optimize our pages better than our competitors so that we can outrank them. The more difficult the keyword, the longer it going to take to rank for them.
The metrics that we want to focus on are the monthly traffic volume and the difficulty score. Our ultimate goal is to find keywords with traffic that have difficulty scores below 40.
This site Mugdom is not well optimized but it’s still getting SEO traffic. Why? Because it’s trying its best. So just putting any effort into your SEO at all already puts you in leaps and bounds over your competition.
The lowest search volume we will choose for a keyword is a volume of 11 to 50. This means that MOZ predicted to have 11 to 50 each month search for this keyword. This may look small but keep in mind that most people use long phrases that we call long-tail keyword. Long-tail keywords make up the majority of traffic around 70%.
** keyword searching
*** homepage / store
Let’s start by picking a keyword for my tutorial store – Brewed Treats. So let’s go and find the keyword for it!
Once logged in to your MOZ account, come and click on the Keyword Explorer research tool.
What you want to do for your homepage is to try to choose a keyword that matches the types of items that you’re selling in your store. So for Brewed Treats, coffee mugs would be a good keyword to start with. We also sell gifts for coffee lovers, so coffee gifts would be another keyword.
Type in your keyword in the search bar and make sure to choose the US, then click the Search icon.
I’ve clicked on funny coffee mugs and here’s the data that it shows. We are not going to use this keyword because not all our coffee mugs are funny and the difficulty score is high. We want to stick to 45 and below difficulty.
So let’s go back to the results and choose another keyword to check. I’ve chosen unique coffee mugs. I would choose this keyword over the other one because the difficulty score is good and the monthly search volume is high.
Let’s check another keyword – coffee glass. This one is much better. The monthly search volume is high and the difficulty is really low. So we are going to stick with this as our primary keyword for the homepage.
Next, we will do research for each of our product category pages. We have three categories in Brewed Treats – Coffee Mugs, Travel Mugs, and Coffee Spoons. We now have to find keywords for each of our product categories.
Repeat the same process we did for finding the keyword for the homepage. Just keep in mind that we want keywords with high monthly volume and low difficulty score. Also, don’t forget to look at all the suggestions from MOZ as you might find some keywords that might be useful.
After we’ve chosen the keywords for the product category pages, we now need to choose keywords for each of our product pages. Our goal is to look for the lowest competition keyword we can find that is still relevant to our item and also get traffic.
I’m going to show how I complete keyword research for my two products– Coffee Spoons and Camera Lens Travel Mug.
Let’s start by searching cat coffee spoons. As you can see, great difficulty but horrible monthly volume search traffic. So let’s look at the suggestions.
The monthly search volume of the suggestions doesn’t look good as well and we really don’t have much to choose from. This is a very niche keyword.
So let’s try cat spoons. As you can see, the difficulty is good but monthly volume traffic is not that high. But this is okay as we are using very a niche keyword. We will definitely go for this keyword here.
Now, we are going to look for a keyword for our Camera Lens Travel Mug. Let’s try to search for a camera lens travel mug. As you can see, it’s not looking really good. The difficulty is high and the monthly search volume isn’t so great.
Let’s load up the suggestions and let’s see what MOZ has for us. Let’s try camera lens coffee mug. The monthly search volume is high but the difficulty is still a bit high. So let’s try another keyword – camera lens mug. The results show that it’s a more challenging keyword with a difficulty score of 50.
So let’s keep looking until we find the right keyword. Let’s try the camera lens thermos. As you can see, the difficulty score is 46 which way better than 50. And the monthly search volume is good. There are also some long-tail keyword suggestions that we can use. We are definitely going to use this for our Camera Lens Travel Mug.
Keep in mind that you have to go through multiple keywords to find the best one. Sometimes it’s going to be a bit trickier and you have to go through multiple keywords.
There you have it! Go ahead and find the keywords for your homepage, product category pages and each of your product pages.
