Search Engine 101
How long can you sustain a business if no one knows that it exists? You can’t. It doesn't matter what industry you're in; people need to be able to find your brand's presence. This is where search engines come in. On the most, basic level search engines are a tool that helps internet users, or in your case, potential customers, find your business online by scanning your page for keywords.
A real-life example involves your potential customer going through these key steps.
Step #1
Going to a search engine.Step #2
Typing in a few keywords as to what they're looking for in your product assortment. For example: “Brazilian Kinky Straight Hair.”Step #3
Receiving a list of web links videos or other content sources that contain these keywords at their destination.
The big takeaway from this is that your site would need to have these keywords. That is the only way they will pop up anywhere on the list that the search engine provides to your potential customer, also known as a search engine results page.
As a business owner, it is your job to make sure that all of the keywords that pertain to your hair business are on your site. The way to do this: search engine optimization.
Keyword Strategy
Your keyword strategy can be pretty easy. All you need are the perfect keywords to fill in your site.
There is no right or wrong answer as to how you go about determining these keywords. However, if you do comprehensive keyword research, you'll be off to a pretty good start. Check out these four suggestions below on how to get your keyword strategy started.
1. Find Your Niche
Do you know what interests your audience? Find this out and then dive deeper into that.
You can do that by looking at your brand and your assortment. While you're analyzing your assortment put together a list of keywords that your customers would use to describe your products. For example, if you carry both the Vietnamese and Indian hair from private label extensions some keywords that you would use to describe your hair would be:
- Raw Hair Extensions
- Unprocessed Hair
- Vietnamese Hair
- Indian Hair
- Raw Bundles
These are a few words that your potential customers would use when describing your company and what you offer.
Once you compile a complete list of these keywords, take the next step. Search for the most common words in your niche. If your niche is raw hair extensions, then a quick way to see what people use when describing this subset of hair would be to go on Google and type in "Raw Hair Extensions."
Scroll down to the bottom of the SERP and see other keywords that people use when typing in phrases like this. Now you have an idea of the words in your niche.
Value
The tool Moz also offers the option for you to search for derivatives of your companies keywords. It puts them in a ranking so you can see how impactful each of your suggestions are. This ranking places the factors of competition and traffic into play.
Once you compile this list, it's essential for you to look at the value of each of the words. The funny thing is people, like to focus on one or two keywords because they see high-value Inn specific phrases. So they place those few keywords into their website- via product description or general copy on their webpage.
This is an okay tactic to use, but it's a little limiting.
Keyword Derivatives
To create the impact you want, use 10 to 20 derivatives of those two keywords.
These 10 to 20 words can drive more traffic and volume per month than the single two words that you are currently focusing on. It also helps you to capture more people and stand out from the pack.
If no one else is focusing on those other 8 to 18 words on their website, you can obtain the people that may not have an exact definition of what they want and may have an idea, with the derivative keywords that you're using.
This will help you to capture business that other people aren't winning.
2. Content gap analysis
The Search Engine Journal defines content-gap analysis as “the process of mapping out your customer’s primary questions, goals, and concerns throughout their purchase journey and then measuring against your current content offerings for holes.”Comp-Shop
In layman's terms, this means going to your competitor and seeing where they rank with specific keywords that you may or may not be using.
Remember, you guys are selling to the same customer, so if they have keywords on their site that are penetrating your consumer base, you need to find a way to incorporate those words onto your platform. Ahrefs is a program that allows you to find keywords that rank your competitors in the top 10. If you find that you are not on these lists, use this information to see where your website stands with the various keywords and adjust your site accordingly.
This process has a whole helps you to ensure that you are in line with your competition. Additionally, when you're looking at your competition, you can make sure the other factors are inline as well.
These factors include: pricing, the quality of your site, and the range of your assortment; look at these other factors to boost your SEO.
Beyond the Keyword Copy
It is important to realize that you can do a content gap analysis not only on your website and all of its pages but also on your social media sites.
Look at all of the places where your brand lives. It does not have to be word focused but also images. The purpose of the content gap analysis is to make sure that you cover all of your bases.
If you have a website that only shows product photos but you don't have any digital marketing photos you could be missing out! Show your customers how the hair looks on an actual head verse just the white background and that could make or break your product sales.
3. Financial return measurement
When it comes to business return on investment is a big deal.
To make sure you're getting the best return on your investment when it comes to keywords, make sure you build a content strategy around the keywords that you're putting the most focus on. Don’t just stop there. Continuously analyze and adjust that strategy.
Unfortunately, all of your keywords are not going to perform. However, you will never know which ones are performing and which ones are just sitting there if you don't regularly check to see which keywords are bringing in traffic and how those are converting to sales.
Those keywords are valuable ones.
How to Tell Which Keywords Are Working for You
An easy way to tell which keywords are generating traffic to your website is to look at how much it cost for an ad that's using specific keywords.
For example, if you realize that the keywords "mink hair" cost $0.85 and only 50 people are trafficking to your site by that set of keywords you may decide to discontinue it. Especially when you find out that "Brazilian hair" attracts a hundred people to your site and only cost $0.55. "Brazilian hair" is a better value to your hair business.
After you have figured out what keywords attract people to your site focus on the keywords that caused people to buy from you. Brazilian hair may get them to your site, but your customers may end up purchasing Malaysian hair because it's a little cheaper and they can get a similar look.
If this is what's happening to you, you may want to beef up content around the differences between Brazilian and Malaysian hair. This way you're attracting customers to your site, but also educating them about the product that they are purchasing. A tactic like this can allow you to play up the price difference and sell some sort of deal to your consumer.
It is important to realize that while some keywords generate traffic, they might not make sales. Google AdWords is something that can help you figure out the difference between the two.
4. Upward keyword trends
Keywords play a significant role in marketing. The most successful marketers are people who can recognize trends and take part in them before they take off.
For your hair business you should really take advantage of trends happening in the hair industry: new sources, different techniques like micro beading, and the different types hair that coincide with those techniques, and various other hair related topics.
Make sure the content on your website reflects those trends so that when people look up these trends in the form of keywords, on search engines they have no choice but to gravitate towards your page.
Remember trending topics get the attention. Attention is what you need to get people to where your brand is. However, don't just make the headlines. Be sure to research your topic so that the people getting the content from you can learn something. You want them to see you as a trusted source so that they can keep coming back to your site.
You can check out Google Trends for help with trending keywords.
Keyword Strategy Takeaways
SEO page rankings are very important to an online business. The stronger your SEO, the higher your page ranks on the search engine that your customers use on a daily basis.
Keywords are just one way to strengthen your SEO, and you can attack keyword strategy in so many different ways. We suggest trying one of these strategies described above and then analyzing its impact on your SEO over a couple of weeks.
If you don't think that it's working for you, try another strategy. Continue analyzing and adjusting your approach until you see a boost in both traffic and sales. What keyword strategies have you tried in the past?
Let us know in the comments below.
