How Good Is Your Keyword Targeting?
With content being the driving force behind any eCommerce marketing strategy, choosing the right keywords is the key to its success.
While all marketing managers do keyword research, not all of them achieve satisfactory results. Keyword targeting is the foundation of both SEO and PPC campaigns. A mistake made at this stage could ruin the entire strategy and burn a hole in any marketing budget.
Let's take a closer look at keyword targeting to find out if you are doing it the right way.
Key Signs Your Keyword Targeting Needs Work
Even if you follow all the rules and create a seemingly effective keyword list, it may still fail to generate the desired results. Here are a few signs to watch out for when evaluating your marketing strategy.
High Bounce Rate and Short On-Page Time
While a bounce rate isn't a ranking factor, you can use it to see how well your content and ads are performing. If your webpage has a high bounce rate and a short on-page time, something needs to be changed.
More often than not, you are using the wrong keywords in your ads. When consumers click on them, they expect certain information, which they obviously don't get when they load your website.
These two metrics can also help you understand the relevancy of your on-site content. Most likely, your visitors don't spend enough time reading it because it's not relevant to what they are looking for when conducting a search.
Low Organic Rankings
Organic rankings are a direct reflection of your content strategy. If you are working hard on your content quality and implementing effective marketing tactics, your visibility on search engines should be growing.
If this isn't happening, keywords may be at fault. Google's algorithms are extremely good at determining the relevance of your content to the keywords. So unless the competition is so fierce that you simply can't get high organic rankings, you should be climbing the SERPs ladder.
Pro tip: If you are trying to optimise your content for highly competitive short-tail keywords, it could be the reason you are failing. Consider using long-tail keywords that closely describe what you are trying to sell.
Low Click-Through Rates
While many factors can affect your click-through rates (CTR), one of them is poor keyword targeting. Here are two things to watch out for:
Keywords don't match ads — if you don't use keywords in the ad text, you are unlikely to get many clicks. If the keywords you are using can't be implemented in the ad text, you are targeting the wrong terms.
Too many keywords per ad group — having too many keywords in the ad group could mean that the ad copy doesn't match the keywords the user searches for as close as it should.
Remember, low click-through rates are only bad if you aren't getting conversions. If a big percentage of consumers who click the ad end up making a purchase, your keywords are likely to be in good shape.
Common Keyword Targeting Mistakes
If you are noticing the warning signs of a poor keyword targeting strategy, check if you are making any of these mistakes.
1. Not Enough Focus on Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are your opportunity to rank higher and become visible to specific segments of your target audience. If you are in a highly competitive niche, trying to rank for short-tail keywords can be close to impossible.
When conducting keyword research, focus on relevant long-tail keywords. Simple tools like Google's autosuggest, Related Searches, and AnswerThePublic can help you do it for free.
Optimise both your ads and your content for these keywords to ensure higher engagement, ranking, and click-through rate.
2. Ignoring the Competitive Keyword Gap Analysis
Competitive analysis is one of the pillars of proper keyword research. If you aren't analysing what the competition does with its keywords, you are reducing your chances of succeeding.
By conducting a competitive keyword gap analysis, you can figure out which keywords the competition ranks highly for, while you don't. This can help you identify new keyword opportunities and find high-volume terms that need more attention.
3. Forgetting about the Search Trends
While your initial keyword research may be stellar, it's likely to become outdated. Continuing to use the same list of keywords for years could lead to a significant drop in rankings and CTR.
Keywords rise and fall in popularity over time. That's why it's imperative to watch out for search trends and keep an eye on the competition. Consider reviewing your keywords at least once a year.
4. Targeting Plural Keywords
It may seem natural to target the plural of a keyword because you are selling many products instead of one. However, when the consumer searches for an item, they rarely use the plural form simply because it takes longer to type.
When optimising category pages, don't use plural keywords. While Google is pretty good at understanding that singular and plural are related, the search results for these two keyword forms are often different.
5. Optimising Multiple Pages for the Same Keyword
When you optimise several pages of your website for the same keyword, you aren't improving your chances at higher rankings. You are succumbing to keyword cannibalisation.
If you are using the same keyword on different pages, you are reducing the quality of your content, losing solid internal linking opportunities, and facing low conversion rates.
While you are optimising each page for a different keyword, don't forget to add related terms. For example, a piece of content about "keyword targeting" should also contain "keyword targeting tools."
Improving Your Keyword Targeting Strategy with This Side Up
Keyword targeting is anything but straightforward. To achieve high spots on the SERPs and better ad conversion rates, it's imperative to single out the right terms. By catching the warning signs and avoiding common mistakes, you can streamline your keyword research tactics and improve your eCommerce marketing strategy.
Would you like to optimise your approach to keyword targeting? We are here to help.