One of the simplest things you could do to take your ecommerce business to the next level is to make sure you’re using the correct keywords to attract the right audience, and stay in the know on what’s happening in your industry and what keywords your competitors are using.
We put together some online tools that combined we feel can give you an advantage and a load of information on your business and others in your space. Some are free and others offer premium services, but together they make up a great recipe for keyword research and your first step in SEO.
Google Alerts
You can use Google Alerts to receive emails on specific keywords that pop up on the web. You can set up alerts to receive news specific to your own brand of course, but also the products you’re selling, ecommerce in general, or even competitor related news. If you’re not using Google Alerts yet, we recommend you set it up right away, and stay in the know about developments that might affect your business, what keywords others are using, and most of all get notified of your business presence on the web.
Google Adwords
Even if you don’t have the budget to advertise, you can still use Google Adwords to research keyword traffic and analyze the best keywords to use for your SEO initiatives. It is handy because you can easily narrow down your search to the areas that are relevant to you by using URLs or specific categories. This tool can also help you estimate the average amount being paid per click by your competitors for their ads. Use their keyword tool to get global and local search volume for specific keywords and make sure you’re targeting the right keywords. Once you’re comfortable and have a budget to advertise you would be in the know on what may get you better results.
Open Site Explorer
Are you really aware of how well your domain name is doing with regard to search engine rankings? Open Site Explorer allows you to keep track of your domain authority, linking root domains, and total links to your site. They also offer a great anchor text analyzer to see what keywords others are using to link back to you. You can even compare your own domain to others in your industry to see how well you’re doing. It’s free for some information, but the pro version allows you to analyze the social stats as well, and with social now deeply linked to SEO, such information is priceless in determining how your progress over time.
SEO-Book
A great place to learn about SEO, but they also offer many free tools to help you get started. Analyze your robot.txt file, generate meta tags, even compare your pages to other domains to see what keywords you’re missing out on. Their premium service are also very worth while, like checking for duplicate content, and competitive research on others in your industry.
SEOmoz
Our favorite monitoring tool hands down. It’s robust and gives a lot of info, but it is not cheap! With plans starting at $99 per month, it may not be the best tool for starters, but you should consider the investment if you’re serious about keeping track of your SEO initiatives and social media. They also offer articles on their blog and resources page to help you learn SEO. If you’re new to this, we suggest reading their beginners guide to SEO, it is loaded with information that will be very helpful to you.
There are many other services out there that can help, do you have any that worked for you? Please share them in the comments and help others.
Stay Tuned for upcoming SEO features in Wazala that will help you optimize your online store and take you to the next level! Exciting!!
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We got the cool image from Bigstock! Get yours from here keywords.
