Less popular keywords may be more cost-efficient

Retailers should look beyond popular category terms when attempting to increase the visibility of keywords, says Scot Wingo, president of ChannelAdvisor Corp., a company that helps retailers sell through multiple channels.

Popular terms such as “plasma TV” may attract more hits but they’re also more expensive, Wingo says. By selecting a product-specific term, such as a Pioneer Elite Plasma 200, the retailer may get fewer searches. But those who do search using the product-specific term are “pretty interested in that particular model,” he says.

“One of the keys of the paid-search world is there is not going to be a ton of people competing for Pioneer Elite Plasma 200,” he says. “So it’s actually going to be a less- expensive-per-click term that converts better. It’s going to be one of your most economically beneficial terms.”

Adding subcategories under category heads and using multi-phrase terms—such as “power compression drill”—also will help improve search results, Wingo says. “Flushing out the category tree just gives the search spiders more content to index and thus you’re going to have more hits,” he says. “And typically, multi-phrase terms convert better because the level of specificity is higher.”