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In order to be successful and be positioned in the first few results of a Google search, it is essential to know and use keywords correctly. This will allow your target audience to find you and will ensure that you will be able to compete with other rival businesses offering similar products or services.
To get an idea of the importance of this, let’s take a look at the following example. I create an online perfume shop and optimise my pages and content with the keywords “get cologne on the internet”. At first glance this may seem like a good keyword but we’ll have to further investigate the market and we’ll soon realise that “buy perfumes online” attracts much more traffic and is much more sought after by my potential customers than the previous attempt. In the long term, I would have invested time and money in positioning a keyword that could have up to 50% less traffic (and consequent sales) than the other.
To avoid this situation and others that might arise, we will show you a series of tools with which we can analyse and search for keywords. All this is intended to correctly focus our SEO strategy and establish our goals right from the start.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a Google tool that, as its name suggests, displays different search trends around the world. On the main page we can see a few snippets of interest that the system shows us, but to analyse a specific keyword, we will have to look for it at the top of the page.
Once the search is done, a graph will be generated with the search trend and the monthly volume that that term has had. You can configure the different filters and adjust them in order to provide really useful information.
Following the example above, we could compare “buy perfumes online” with “get cologne on the internet” and “online perfume shop”. The result is an overwhelming superiority in search numbers for the first term (in blue). In fact “get cologne on the internet” has almost no searches, so focussing our efforts on this keyword would have accomplished very little.
Google AdWords Keyword Planner
This tool is used to plan and create Google AdWords campaigns. However, it can provide a lot of information that may be useful in creating the SEO strategy for your website. One drawback is that Keyword Planner recently stopped showing the exact searches for each search term for those who do not have currently active campaigns. Instead, it now shows figures like 1 m – 10 m which makes it less accurate in its presentation of the data.
With this tool you can filter the data much more thoroughly, set negative keywords, specific keywords to be included and search by geographic area or the language of the results. In addition to the keyword data you are looking for, you will also be offered suggestions for keywords related to what you have searched for.
A particularly useful feature for those who have an online store with different categories is the search by subject. For example, we can select the theme of beauty and hygiene and we will only be shown keywords included under that general category.
Keyword Explorer de Moz.com
Moz is one of the top companies in the SEO tools sector. You can use the Keyword Explorer to perform keyword searches up to five times a day for free. This is a tool especially designed for Search Engine Optimisation and is particularly easy to use. The way it shows data is also nice and simple, and it is easy to use when it comes to analysing information.
To use it, simply enter the search term that you want to analyse. You will then be shown the results. In particular, you will be offered an estimate of the volume of traffic to be expected (much more specific than in Google AdWords), an indicator of the difficulty of positioning that keyword, an opportunity index that refers to the importance of organic results (ahead of map results or AdWords ads for example) on the search results page and a score of 0-100 of the potential of that keyword, taking into account the above data.
Additionally, an expandable list of related search terms and an analysis of the URLs and domains that appear on the first page of the search results is offered, by typing in the keyword in question into Google.
With all this information, you can get a pretty accurate idea of how valuable the keyword in question actually is or how difficult it is to use.
Semrush
This is one of the most frequently used tools in the world of search engine positioning. Access to all the functions requires the purchase of a licence for approximately $100 per month. However, there are some functions that can be used for free.
Basically, the free semrush options allow you to get the same information as you would with the Moz.com Keyword Explorer. One unique thing about Semrush is that it offers keyword suggestions with its “phrase matching keywords” (closely- related keywords that use the same semantic nucleus as the search term being analysed) and “related keywords” which are other suggestions for keywords that are used within the same sector.
In addition to this, it offers the organic search data and the number of results offered by Google when querying a term in your search engine. This is something similar to the previously-mentioned tools.
After reading this post, you will have seen the importance of these tools when it comes to correctly choosing the keywords which you’ll want to use with your online store. You should look for the right balance between potential searches or the volume of searches and the difficulty of positioning the keyword in question. However, you can use the tools that we have covered here for just that job.
It is worth noting that there are also countless similar tools. They all have different features, but at the end of the day they should include certain fundamentals in order to be of use to you: they must be reliable with regard to displaying data and they should also be able to help you in the search for keywords involved with the products or services that you want to offer. The way the data is presented, or other secondary factors, may vary and are a matter of personal taste. It is always advisable to investigate all those that are available to you and to choose the one you think is most appropriate to your needs and your level of knowledge.
Finally, don’t forget that you have a similar post on SEO tools at your disposal, where we analyse the tools that will help you best understand and optimise other elements that also contribute to your online store search results.
