Today's ACTION ITEM is to find out what keywords people are using to find your website, and then to make sure the content on your website is suitable. Not only that, but we'll show you how to find important keywords that other jewelry stores are not competing for.
First you need to navigate over to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
This is Google's public location for their AdWords Keyword Research tool. If you have an AdWords account, you should log into that instead and go to your Reporting and Tools tab, then the Keyword Tool option.
Once you get to the Keyword Tool, you will find a form at the top where you can type in a "Word or phrase" or a "Website." To start this exercise let's type "www.jamesallen.com" into the website field. If you're using the public keyword tool, you will need to answer the CAPTCHA word challenge too. Press the large "Search" button to see the results. (NOTE: results seem to be better when you use the www. of a domain name so be sure to include it.)
Before you look at the words you need to scroll down to the bottom and change the "Show rows" form 50 to 100. This is very important, so do it.
Looking now at the top of the keyword list generated by the www.jamesallen.com search we see "settings with side stones" first. The green Competition thermometer is completely full, which means many jewelry stores are paying a lot of money because they believe this keyword phrase is valuable for them. However, the table also shows there are only 880 people per month that search for that term. How could it be so valuable if the number of people searching for it monthly is so low? That's a question we're not actually going to answer right now.
Instead we want you to look for valuable keywords that people are searching for but few jewelers have realized how to use them.
Take a close look at the setup of the screen. There should be 5 columns of information. In the first column are check boxes. The second column has the Keywords. The third column shows green thermometers to represent the AdWords Competition on that term. The Forth column shows the number of Global Monthly Searches, and finally the fifth column shows the number of searches for your Local selection. By default, the local selection will be your country.
Google doesn't make this keyword research process easy, and you're going to need to use Excel (or another spread sheet program) to look at the final research results. But first you need to follow these steps.
Step 1:
Click the word "Keyword" at the heading of the 2nd column on the page. This will sort the keywords.
Step 2:
Click the empty check box at the top of the 1st column to select all the keywords on the page.
Step 3:
Click the word "Keyword" at the heading of the 2nd column again to sort the keywords in a different direction.
Step 4:
Click the empty check box at the top of the 1st column again to select all the words on the page.
As we said, Google does not make this process easy. You will have to repeat Step 1 through Step 4 a total of 3 more times for each of the other columns (Competition, Global Monthly Searches, Local Monthly Searches) in order to select as many keywords as possible.
Once you've finished selecting the keywords, you need to download them. Look for and click the little [Download] button above the 1st column. In the dropdown, you will need to click the "Selected 123" option. It will probably be a higher number than 123.
A popup window will appear suggesting a download format of "CSV for Excel," so just click the Download button. Since we don't know what browser you are using we can't advise you on the next step. You just downloaded a file and now you need to open it in Excel. So do that.
Inside Excel, you're going to find all the keywords you just downloaded. Sort it by the Competition column (lowest to highest) and also by the Local Monthly Searches (highest to lowest).
Within this list you need to look for keyword phrases that have the lowest competition with local search values of 4000 or more.
This is your phrase gold mine, literally. The goal here is not to pay for AdWords using these phrases, but to use these phrases in the content writing and product description writing on your own website. Some of the phrases might be clunky, like "appraisal jewelry" instead of "appraisal of jewelry," and you should avoid those clunky phrases.
In this example, we suggested you use the James Allen website, but you can just as easily use Blue Nile, the website for your local jewelry competitor and then, of course, your own website.
This strategy is tedious, but very important for the upcoming Holiday 2011 Season. Visitors to your website are not searching for specific items or phrases, they are instead searching in very human ways as if they are asking their best friends for advice. This keyword research strategy will help identify the types of phrases your customers are using now.
As a jump start here're some keywords we collected after analyzing a handful of random jewelry websites. Feel free to use these and skip the research on your own. We'll have a more complete list in the Holiday 2011 Run-Up eBook when it's ready soon.
1 carat size
appraisal for jewelry
appraisal of jewelry
average engagement ring price
average price for an engagement ring
average price of an engagement ring
best wedding rings
birthstone for
black pearls
buying an engagement ring
buying engagement rings
charms from
choosing an engagement ring
designer jewelry
designs bracelet
designs for bracelets
diamonds and diamonds
diamonds are forever
diamonds center
diamonds clarity and color
diamonds in my chain
diamonds jewelers
earrings with
engagement help
engagement jewelers
engagement ring average cost
engagement ring average price
engagement ring jeweler
engagement ring pricing
engagement ring with wedding band
engagement rings wedding band
engagement rings with wedding band
engagement stores
expensive diamonds
find a ring
find a watch
find diamonds
fine jewelry in
gem and stones
handmade earrings
handmade jewelry
jewelers wedding
jewelry and gems
jewelry and watch repair
jewelry appraisal
jewelry catalog
jewelry designer
jewelry international
jewelry watch repair
meaning of gem
most expensive gemstone
movement swiss
my diamonds
pearl shopping
prices for diamonds
ring finger wedding ring
vintage jewelry
watch repairs
wear engagement ring
wedding band with engagement ring
white gold with diamonds
your ring size
