5 Tips for Dominating Your E-Commerce Keyword Research

Inheriting an e-commerce account can be a nightmare. If the previous account manager did a half-decent job setting it up, it’s probably already targeting all of the basic product-based keywords, meaning it’s tough to build things out much further.

The good news is, there’s always room for expansion. According to Google, 15% of searches are completely unique and have never been searched for before! So, how do you find these unique e-commerce keyword combinations? I turned to one of our in-house PPC experts, Nic D’Amato, to learn his secrets for building out retailers’ keyword lists.

 

That’s Nic, the brains behind these genius tactics.

Next time you need buildout inspiration, turn to these five clever e-commerce keyword research tips:

#1. Dig Through Your Dynamic Search Ad Queries

Sometimes it’s tough to think outside of the box, so why not commission Google to do the work for you? Rather than operating like traditional, keyword-based campaigns, Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) leverage the power of Google’s organic web crawling technology to determine when to serve your ads.

 

Creating a DSA campaign is a cinch. Technically, you can add DSAs to a search campaign that is set to all features, but we recommend creating standalone DSA campaigns. All you need to do is set up dynamic ad targets, which are based on your site content. AdWords will use this data to identify a list of product categories. If a site is well-indexed, there are typically plenty of categories to choose from. If you want to focus your campaign on a specific product category or brand, you can get more granular and set ad targets for specific webpages. This allows you to create your own category based on a URL, page title, or page content.

You can then create ad groups to target specific categories or sections of your site. Next, create description lines for your ads (AdWords will add in a dynamically-generated headline and landing page), sit back, and let AdWords run the show.

Keep in mind, if you’re running additional search campaigns, you may wish to set your existing keywords as negatives for DSA campaigns. This ensures that you’re not cannibalizing your current keywords and are only leveraging DSAs to find brand new terms.

So…where are my e-commerce keywords?!

You may be wondering, how the heck can these keyword-free DSA campaigns be leveraged to find new keywords? AdWords actually provides a list of all of the search queries that your dynamic ads are matched to. Head to the Auto Target tab > See Search Terms section to check it out. This list is a goldmine for e-commerce advertisers. Not only will it help you identify obvious terms that you’ve forgotten to include in your account, you’re also likely to find new terms that you never would have thought to bid on.

 

#2. Riff off Your Shopping Feeds

Nine times out of ten, the e-commerce clients that you inherit will already have Shopping campaigns up and running. The feeds used to manage these campaigns are a treasure chest worth of e-commerce keyword ideas. Take the top products from their feed lists and plug them into AdWords’ Keyword Planner. From there, you can get a good sense of the search volume for these items and identify other terms related to them. Just be sure to set geo-targeting for each search, to ensure you’re getting accurate traffic estimates.

 

#3. Spy on Your Competitors

 

There’s nothing wrong with a little good-natured spying, in the name of client success. While you can’t directly access their account details, there are a few crafty ways to identify e-commerce terms they’re likely to be bidding on. The best part is, you don’t need to be a hacker to find these.

One sneaky tactic is to hit up the Keyword Planner, which has a feature that lets you drop in a URL to see which terms people are using to land on the site. AdWords’ expectation is that you’ll use it for your own site, but you can actually input any URL. So, plug your competitors’ landing pages into the “Your landing page” section and go to town. The tool will provide you with sets of keyword ideas and ad group ideas, all featuring terms that your competitor is probably bidding on.

 

You can also scout out competitors’ terms using WordStream’s Competitive Website Crawler. Just plug in your competitors’ URL and we’ll scrape the site to identify prominent terms that they’re likely to be bidding on.

 

#4. Hit Up Pinterest’s Promoted Pins

 

This tactic is actually the brain child of SEO pro Clay Cazier, which we learned a few months ago and have become huge fans of (check out his original article here). You can use Pinterest to get a solid understanding of the semantic phrases people are using to discuss your clients’ products and, because it has more of a sales/retail focus than other social media sites, it’s a great venue for conducting e-commerce keyword research.

If your client has a Pinterest for Business account, try using Promoted Pins to discover new keywords. Clay recommends initiating a Promoted Pins campaign and selecting the pin that best represents the one of your head terms. From there, plug in a term related to the pin. Pinterest will then spit back a list of related themes that can spark excellent ad group/keyword ideas.

 

This tactic is useful because it does not solely provide semantically-related variations of your seed keyword. It also includes terms that users associate with this word, giving you great insights into what your audience is interested in. Do a little brainstorming on these terms and you’re guaranteed to come up with some unique new keywords!

#5. Turn to Your Shopping Search Query Reports

 

Here at WordStream, we’re huge advocates of using Search Terms Reports to generate new keyword and negative keyword ideas. In fact, we even have a tool that helps you do this task more efficiently! You can certainly use this tactic to build out existing ad groups, but when it comes to e-commerce PPC accounts, Nic recommends paying extra special attention to your Shopping Campaigns’ search queries.

Remember, Shopping Campaigns operate solely based on a product feed, rather than keyword groupings. However, Google does track a list of queries that trigger the ads. Check this list regularly to identify their best performing search queries. Then, plug the top terms into the Keyword Planner to confirm that they have sufficient volume. If so, they’re probably worth adding to your search ad groups.

This list will certainly give you a leg up the next time you’re faced with doing keyword research for a new e-commerce client. What other tried and true tactics do you use to build out retailers’ keyword lists?

About the Author

Erin Sagin is a PPC Evangelist and Community Manager at WordStream. She was named the 3rd Most Influential PPC Expert of 2015 by PPC Hero. When she’s able to take a break from paid search, you’ll find her practicing her hula-hooping skills or planning her next trip to Latin America. You can follow Erin on Twitter and Google+.

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Canvs Raises $5.6M To Help TV Networks Track Viewers’ Emotions

Canvs is a startup measuring emotion on social media, but CEO Jared Feldman insisted that we shouldn't think of it as a social sentiment company. He said that's because existing tools for measuring sentiment have earned something of a bad reputation. Where those tools are usually limited to classifying social media posts as good, bad or neutral, Canvs can classify a statement into… Read More

Instagram Makes It Easier To Share From Boomerang

Right before the holidays, Instagram snuck in an update for its most second-most popular spun-out app, Boomerang. The app currently sits in the top 250 on the App Store’s free apps. The changes, although subtle, will probably make its users super happy. The premise of the app is to make little clipped-together videos, similar to an animated GIF or an Apple Live Photo. It feeds into… Read More

3 Crazy New Ad Tests Being Spotted in the Wild

Can you remember the last time a friend or relative popped out of the woodworks to scare the bajesus out of you? That’s how I feel when I see new ad tests on the SERPs. Nerdy, yes, but PPC and SEO people who spend their days analyzing the SERPs can likely relate.

If you’ve been too busy collecting all of you Cyber Monday shipments to notice the crazy ad tests that have been running on Google and Yahoo this week, don’t fret, I’ve got the 411 for you. The tests spotted over the last few days have proven what we already know to be true, the SERPs are constantly changing! Without further or due let’s dive into the three tests that have left me spooked this week.

Test #1: 4 Paid Ads Above the Organic Listings on Google

Wait, what now? More competition? No thank you. Those with solid organic listings are not psyched to hear this news. For the last several years the max amount of paid ads above the fold has always been three, but this week Jennifer Slegg reported seeing four when searching on Google.co.in.

 

According to Slegg there’s no need to adjust your strategy just yet. “It does seem a limited test at the time,” she wrote earlier this week. “It is only showing up on Google India and not all searches trigger the four ads above the fold, even when there are multiple ads to display.” However, as of today the test is showing up in the US too for about 1% of keywords.

So, what does this mean for advertisers? If four ad slots are made available, it means more opportunity to rank in the top spots, so PPCers would likely be pleased if this test is ever released across all of Google search. 

Test #2: Full-Screen Video Ads on the Yahoo SERPs

Yah, you heard me. Scary, right? Yahoo has always had an interesting approach to search, but this test really takes the cake. Yahoo began testing a full-screen size autoplay video ad which basically engulfs the entire search engine results page. Yikes! Even though the videos starts on mute, the searcher must scroll down to pause or stop the ad from playing.

 

When scrolling down, the ad also includes ad text, the website URL, and a “Learn More” button directing to the advertisers landing page.

I’m guessing the majority of both advertisers and searchers are rolling their eyes at Yahoo. Is this level of obnoxiousness really necessary?

 

Slegg agrees, “This is a whole new level for in-your-face advertising on organic search results from a major search engine. Yahoo is making a big push for some of the in demand ad dollars…but you do have to wonder if this move will start alienating those hard-fought searchers who might jump ship to Google or Bing as a result.”

Test #3: Compare Mortgages Ads

Google’s Jerry Dischler has been spreading rumors about new ad formats for specific industries since the Google AdWords Livestream in May, and now we’re seeing them come to life in the financial industry. Google is testing a sponsored mortgage comparison feature, similar to the credit card comparison tool.

 

According to Moz’s Dr. Peter J. Meyers, “Listings appeared to be paid, but details of this program are unknown at the time.”

The SERPs continue to change faster than the seasons in New England, but luckily we’re here to keep you updated. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these new ad tests in the comments below!

About the Author:

Margot is a Content Marketing Specialist at WordStream with a background in PPC, SEM, content and digital marketing. Margot is passionate about writing and is also a regular contributor to Search Engine Journal and Social Media Today. Margot was recently named the 25^th Most Influential PPC Expert in 2015 by PPC Hero. She enjoys running, sleeping on the beach, and eating ice cream during her free time. Follow her on:

Twitter: @ChappyMargot

Google+: +Margot da Cunha

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/margotdacunha

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Site Optimization: 2 strategies to consider when trying to increase conversion

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Online shopping is a favorite hobby of mine, mainly due to the convenience factor.

Recently, I was shopping online for a new coffee table and found myself with a dilemma. I found a website that had a great assortment of coffee tables: different sizes, shapes and every color you could think of. They had it all. After navigating through the website for a few minutes, I realized finding the right one was going to be difficult. I was having trouble sorting through the different styles and began to feel overwhelmed and frustrated.

I had great tables laid out on the page in front of me with no way to organize them how I wanted. Not only was I having trouble with the layout of the page, but there was also a pop-up continuously asking me to sign up for the newsletter and for my personal information.

I quickly became annoyed and overwhelmed, and I left the page.

This made me think of a concept that we teach at MarketingExperiments’ parent company MECLABS: the inverted funnel.

The inverted funnel

Marketers usually use the funnel as an analogy for customers moving through the sales process. What many marketers don’t realize, though, is that their customers are not falling into the funnel — they are falling out. Our Managing Director and CEO at MECLABS, Flint McGlaughlin, has instilled in our company a customer-centric logic. With this logic, we realize that the funnel must be inverted.

By flipping the funnel to illustrate customers climbing up the sides of it, we change the way marketers think about the funnel. Marketers need to realize that their customers are being powered up by decision; if the funnel is not inverted, it is uncontrolled. There is a sequence of micro-yes(s) that a customer must make in their journey up the funnel that will, in the end, lead to conversion.

Personally, I was a customer that fell out of a funnel when looking for the right coffee table. I was having a hard time finding the style I was looking for. After hitting too much friction on the page, I instead found myself making my purchase from a different website. The website I purchased from had everything laid out on the page clear and concise. I was able to sort through the different tables by size, color, brand, etc. This made it easier for me to find exactly what I was looking for with less anxiety.

Today, we’re examining two strategies to consider when trying to increase conversion and power your customers up the funnel.

Strategy #1. Fight the friction

The first concept to look at when trying to power customers up the sides of the funnel is the friction on the page.  At MarketingExperiments and MECLABS, we define friction as the psychological resistance that interferes with a customer making a purchase.

Friction is psychological; it does not exist on your webpages but rather in the mind of your customer.

The website I was shopping on could have easily avoided losing me as a customer if its website had been simplified a little. I continuously ran into walls when trying to find the right coffee table. A marketer should always put themselves in the mind of the customer.

From our research here at MECLABS, we have learned that “difficulty friction” can weigh heavily on a customer’s cognitive conclusions about a purchase.

One factor we as marketers need to focus on is the eye path on a page. Ask yourself these questions:

• Where will your customers look first?
• What are they looking for?

Getting to know your customers and being able to provide a page that shows them exactly what they are looking for is an easy way to decrease friction and help push a customer up the funnel.

 

Strategy #2. Alleviate anxiety

The second concept to look at when trying to prevent customers from falling out of your funnel is their anxiety. At MECLABS, we have found that anxiety — a psychological concern that interferes with a sale — also weighs heavily on a customer’s decision to make a purchase.

In my own personal example, I began to experience anxiety with the pop-up. It continuously asked me to give them my personal information for their newsletter. Not only did I not want the newsletter, but I also didn’t want to provide my personal information.

It is necessary to think about the customer when you decide to place something on your webpage. Ask yourself, what will make them feel safe? You can add certain cybersecurity features to make them feel secure in giving you their information, such as security seals, credibility indicators and testimonials.

Being able to decrease the anxiety of the customer is another way to increase conversion and move customers up the sides of the funnel.

We have now reviewed two strategies to consider when you are trying to prevent someone from falling out of your funnel. Once you have controlled the friction and eased the anxiety of a customer, it becomes easier to push them up the sides of your funnel, thereby increasing conversion.

As a customer shopping for furniture, I encountered a lot of friction on the website, unable to sort through to find the furniture. Most marketers forget they should focus on the customer’s eye path and thought sequence to try to create a fluid flow on the page.

We also discussed how anxiety can cause a customer to fall out of your funnel. For me, this happened with a pop-up. I was already frustrated from the layout of the page, and on top of that, I was experiencing concern with a pop-up that continuously asked me for my personal information so that I could receive a newsletter.

When marketers begin to use customer-centric logic, they will more clearly see when an ad or pop-up or even a question evokes anxiety from their customers. As we discussed, imputing certain features to help reduce customer anxiety will in the end increase conversion. From our research, we have found that when we focus on the customer and how they make choices, we can increase conversion and move customers up the sides of the funnel.

 

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Facebook should be able to handle names like Isis and Phuc Dat Bich

Facebook has a well known "real names" policy, but what if your name turns out to be a bit too real for Facebook?

Take the experience of Isis Anchalee, a San Francisco-based engineer, also known for kicking off the #ILookLikeAnEngineer campaign earlier this year that promoted women in STEM.

See also: BMW's front-wheel drive sedan concept redefines 'ultimate driving machine'

On Tuesday, she wrote on Twitter that Facebook had closed her account. Anchalee suggested the reason was because her first name is the same as the shorthand for the Islamic State — ISIS — the group responsible for the recent Paris attacks, among other atrocities. Read more...

More about Facebook, Australia, Social Media, and Us

3 Mind-Blowing Hacks to Leverage PPC for Facebook Ads

During my junior year of college, as I licked the cheese off of my Dorito decorated fingers, I came to the realization that I was letting myself go. After polishing off a carton of Ben & Jerry’s for breakfast, something in my brain awakened, and I started running.

One mile eventually turned into two, two into three. My newly found running habit boosted my energy and confidence, and I was seeing results! Yet, upon graduation I was still at somewhat of a standstill weight wise. The 20 lbs I had packed on throughout the four years filled of binging on Dominos and beer just wouldn’t kick rocks, so I decided to sign up for a half marathon. At the time, the idea of running 13.1 miles seemed nearly impossible. Today I have successfully completed eight half marathons and two full marathons, and I’m just getting started.

 

That’s me sitting on a duck after completing the Boston marathon.

What does this anecdote have to do with paid search and advertising on Facebook? You turned to paid search to grow your business. You’ve seen results that you’re pleased with, but just as I failed to shed the 20 pounds until I pushed things farther, you’re failing to convert a pool of visitors that previously came in through search. You’re also likely ignoring a huge scope of qualified leads. If you’re limiting your business to only advertising on paid search, you’re not even coming close to reaching your full potential. 

Why Social Media?

Nowadays one of the first things an infant learns is how to swipe and unlock an iPhone. It’s insane to watch my 14 month year old nephew open various apps before he’s even able to form full sentences. Between our phones, desktops, and iPads people are constantly connected, and according to BI Intelligence, Americans spend more time on social media than any other Internet activing, including email!

But, what about your audience? Well, let’s look at the numbers. As of August 2015:

Facebook has 1.49 billion monthly active users.

Twitter has 316 million monthly active users.

Google+ and Instagram each have 300 million monthly active users.

LinkedIn has roughly 97 million monthly active users.

Facebook is bigger than the largest country on Earth! Your audience is there, but with so many users, how do you find then? Strategically using ads on Facebook is a guaranteed way to get in front of the right people when they’re ready to buy.

But Why Should I Pay to Play?

Good question. Back in the day Facebook was just a place for college students to connect, plan parties, tell jokes, and share photos. Nowadays, the space is cluttered with parents stalking their children, singles looking for love, and businesses promoting their products and building their brands.

Having an organic social strategy is critical for the times when loyal customers are looking to further engage with your brand, site visitors are looking for more information or investors are trying to better understand your business. Unfortunately, none of these scenarios account for the person that hasn’t had exposure to your business or the distracted shopper that has forgotten about your products or offerings they previously discovered through search.

Since the space is packed, posting organically and praying for results won’t get your social strategy off the ground. Think about it, if you’re posting about your new clothing line on Facebook, your un-tapped audience won’t see your ads unless you appear in their newsfeed, which will only happen organically if one of their friends happens to like your brand or engage with a post on your page (and with over 1 billion active users, this is unlikely!).

 

Moral of the story is that there is a huge opportunity to expand your audience and re-connect with past visitors with ads on Facebook to entice them to convert, but…

Where to Start?

Between Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, SnapChat, Instagram, Periscope, etc. where in the world should you start?

There’s one thing we know for sure: your customers are clicking on Facebook ads. With 22 billion ad clicks per year, Facebook is providing businesses with the biggest advertising opportunity since search. At WordStream, 85% of our new customers are already advertising on Facebook or plan to start soon. Not to mention Facebook has an insanely granular level of targeting capabilities, remarketing functionality, and other tools to connect with the exact right people at the exact right time.

 

But, what about Twitter? Whilst the advertising capabilities are similar on Twitter, Facebook attracts roughly 7x the engagement that Twitter does, according to BI Intelligence.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t advertise on Twitter, because several businesses (including WordStream!) have seen great return from adverting on the platform. The problem is, “if you don’t know what you’re doing you could end up wasting a ton of money,” says WordStream’s Paid Acquisition Coordinator Brett McHale. Check out Brett’s step-by-guide to using Twitter ads here.

How Much Should I Spend on Ads on Facebook?

When getting started with advertising on Facebook it can be difficult to determine budget allocation. The good thing is that ads on Facebook tend to cost less than other forms of online of advertising (such as search ads on Bing and Google). But, how much should you spend? This question is hard to answer since it varies per industry, audience size, and goals. Rather keep these tips in mind to determine proper budgets for your business.

• Budgets are based on campaign. Set higher budgets for the campaigns of highest priority.
• Start small to test out the effectiveness of each paid social ad campaign.
• When enough data is gathered, double-down on the campaigns that out-perform the others.
• Get rid of any non-performing ad sets.
• Starting at $15/day for each campaign typically works to test the waters, but keep in mind budgets are audience size-specific.
• The larger the audience, the larger the budget you’ll need.

To shed some insight on budgeting I spoke with Brett to understand how he determined budgets. “I ran a remarketing Facebook campaign for my sister’s small business and $5 a day was sufficient to reach 200 people that had visited her site in the past week,” says Brett. “Her prospecting campaign however was targeting over a couple thousand people and I put $20 a day for that.”

3 Mind-Blowing Hacks to Leverage Your PPC Data for Advertising on Facebook

So, you’ve built a Facebook page, agreed to Facebook’s Terms of Service, and set up your billing, but what now? Between choosing which content to promote, building compelling ads, determining how to properly allocate your budget, and putting your ads in front of the most relevant audience, Facebook ads can be more challenging than a Rubik’s cube.

 

One thing you can do is leverage your paid search data and apply a similar strategy to advertising on Facebook. Check out these 3 hacks to get started:

#1: The VIP Socializer

Quality Score is to search as relevance score is to Facebook. Poetic, right? If you’ve been in the paid search game for some time now, you are well aware that maintaining higher Quality Scores is insanely beneficial to getting better results for less money. Quality Score in the mystery metric that takes into consideration factors such as an ad’s click-through-rate and relevancy (keywords, to ad text, to landing page) to determine a score on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest. If your Quality Score is above 5, you end up getting a discount for each click. For instance, with a Quality Score of 9, you could end up in position 2 but still paying less per click than the advertiser below you in position 3 or 4. So you get more visibility for less cost!

Facebook’s relevance score works the same way! Just as CTR plays a significant role in determining an ad’s Quality Score, post engagement (think likes, shares, and comments) plays the largest part in determining an ad’s relevance score.

 

So, the hack is to become a “VIP Socializer” on Facebook by stealing the highest CTR ad copy and creative from your paid search/display ads and re-purposing it in your ads on Facebook. If you create derivative ideas based on the ads that resulted in your highest CTR’s in paid search, it’s more likely than not that strategy will work across other platforms, such as Facebook, leading to higher relevancy scores and better ROI on social. It’s a great place to start!

#2: The Savvy Social Stalker  

PPC search clicks add up! Especially the ones that don’t convert into customers. The number one reason marketers get fed up with paid search is because they’re spending all of their budget on a handful of clicks that never turn into customers, but the issue is not paid search; rather, the problem lies in that they’re not taking measures to push these leads that come in through search further down the funnel.

Someone clicked on your ad and visited your site. This is a good sign. We know they’re interested at some level, BUT they need a bigger nudge. There’s thousands of marketing messages being cluttered into their tiny brains, so give your PPC leads a push by remarketing to non-converters on search through social.

I like to call this technique “The Savvy Social Stalker,” because remarketing is creepy, but it can become even creepier (and more relevant and effective!) when done through ads on Facebook. Don’t remarket to every person who visits your site, but rather a smaller percentage that’s most likely to buy.

Social remarketing differentiates itself from remarketing through Google’s Display Network (GDN) in that you are able to get much more granular with your targeting capabilities. For instance, you can remarket to visitors that came in through search in a certain age range with specified interests, job titles, etc. Facebook’s remarketing through customer audiences allows to get more precise to go after visitors that are much more interested and likely to buy your products.

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#3: Cloning the Cream of the Crop

Who wouldn’t want to clone their converters? You probably didn’t think it was possible to expand your audience even further, but the power of lookalike audiences on Facebook ads makes this possible. Lookalike audiences allow you to reach more people who share similar traits with your current customer base (think age, gender, and interests).

By “cloning the cream of the crop” you can combine the power of lookalike audiences with your customers that have already converted through search to find demographically similar people to target. How do you do this? By using the conversion pixel from your PPC landing pages, you can create a lookalike audience in Facebook to expand your reach to a new audience that has a higher likelihood of converting, since their clones have already converted.

 

Moral of the story: don’t be the leisurely 3-miler, but rather become the marathon runner of your industry and start converting more leads into customers by combining paid search with ads on Facebook to create a money-making marketing machine.

About the Author:

Margot is a Content Marketing Specialist at WordStream with a background in PPC, SEM, content and digital marketing. Margot is passionate about writing and is also a regular contributor to Search Engine Journal and Social Media Today. Margot was recently named the 25^th Most Influential PPC Expert in 2015 by PPC Hero. She enjoys running, sleeping on the beach, and eating ice cream during her free time. Follow her on:

Twitter: @ChappyMargot

Google+: +Margot da Cunha

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/margotdacunha