How to Effectively Use Keywords in Product Titles and Descriptions

Since the early days of the internet, keyword strategy has always played an important part in online content with many citing the phrase ‘content is king’ to highlight its importance. Keyword strategy has had to develop over the years as Google has become more intuitive and more able to recognise keyword spamming. This article aims to provide further information on the use of keywords within content, and this article will show where you can find out information related to keywords and which ones to use.

Why are keywords important for online search and shopping?

In its most simple form, a keyword tells the user (and the search engine) what the product is. This means the user can make an informed choice whether to firstly click on an ad or organic search result, hopefully leading the user to a purchase on your site. It also enables website crawlers to understand what the page is about, so it surfaces the page to the relevant search query.

If you view the products below are you able to easily identify what the product actually is?

· Noble Health Hair Care Panda

· Most Luxurious Mink Eyelash Kit MK04

Your answer is likely to be no. However, if we add some simple keywords as illustrated below, it immediately becomes clear what the items are:

· Noble Health Care Panda Vitamin Supplement — 60 Vegan Gummies

· Most Luxurious Mink False Eyelash Kit with Magnetic Eyeliner MK04

A search engine is similar to a user in the sense that they crawl (or in effect read) the data and need the keywords in the above examples so they understand the data and can then surface this appropriately.

There are numerous different search results a user can see when they type their search term into google, however these are all influenced by keywords.

When a result is shown in the shopping carousel or in the paid ad position this is called an impression. For those not familiar with the search result landscape, they differ in why they show however for both methods keywords are vital.

For shopping ads, the search engine will crawl the data submitted to them by the retailer, determining relevancy to the search query and surfacing the result if it is deemed relevant. Even for free shopping ads google still needs to see the data in a feed so they can understand it and show results as appropriate.

Paid search ads differ to shopping ads as the retailer sets specific keywords and match types so the ad only displays when a user types in the exact keyword or relevant variation. The keywords need to relate to the landing page so relevance and therefore on-page keywords and content are a huge factor. There are lots of other factors involved for shopping and paid ads from budgets to competition and competitiveness however content and keywords are crucial so the ads are matched with the search query.

If someone clicks on the advert this is defined as a click and the click through rate (CTR) is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.

The organic results are more dependent on the search engine optimisation (SEO) of the page. There are countless ways to optimise a page for SEO but quality content and relevant keywords again play a vital role.

The use of keywords within titles and copy doesn’t just affect external search results, but it also affects search results on your site itself. If we take the example used above ‘vitamin supplement vegan gummies’ we can see that results surfaced on the Fruugo site include a number of these keywords.

It is worth noting that the one thing to avoid is keyword stuffing. This may have been effective in the early days of the internet but it is something that can now lead to site penalties. If you use the same keyword multiple times in a non-natural, spammy way then this is also jarring for a customer who may even be put off by this.

Google gives the following examples of keyword stuffing:

· “Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value.

· Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for

· Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, for example: We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com.”

Content should be free flowing and read naturally but at the same time tell the user what the item is. If you focus on the user intent, quality and descriptive text then keyword stuffing and density should not be an issue for you.

Types of Keyword: Longtail Search Keywords

You may have heard the term head and long tail referred to in discussions about keywords. The demand curve graph is a popular way to view head v. long tail queries as it clearly shows less searched for keywords (i.e. those with low search volumes) on the ‘long tail’ of the graph accounting for a higher number of search queries but a lower search volume than the head phrases. This is illustrated below using HDMI cable as the head search term:

Generally long tail keywords have more words/ a greater word count and include more details for example ‘HDMI Cable’ is a head term. It has 60,500 average monthly searches in the UK and is highly competitive. ‘Best HDMI cable for Samsung tv’ would be a long tail keyword as it is far more specific. In terms of searches it has far fewer (10 average monthly searches in the UK) but if a user does search for this keyword, they know what they want and are therefore further down the path to conversion, and therefore more likely to click and convert.

The search results differ for these two searches. This clearly shows how Google better understands the search intent behind the long tail phrase as we can see searching for the head term surfaces an explanation of what an HDMI cable is:

Fruugo research from 2020 would support the view that long tail search terms are more likely to lead to a click. We saw that as the search term word count increased so did the click through rate (CTR):

And, that there was a direct link between the conversion rate increasing and the word count increasing:

It is worth noting there may be some exceptions to this general rule and a one-word keyword may have low search volumes and be very specific.

Studies suggest that the majority of keywords in Google are in fact long-tail queries and the pie chart below shows that of 1.9 billion keywords analysed in the Ahrefs US database 94.2% had ten searches or less per month showing the true extent of long tail search queries.

Long tail keywords are therefore of huge benefit to your content and as they generally include a head term too this covers all eventualities.

Semantic keywords are also worth considering as they help to give further context, meaning and understanding to copy. A semantic keyword in essence is a ‘similar’ or ‘related’ keyword to the original keyword. The infographic below from Moz illustrates this with the example of ‘White House’ as the keyword with semantic keywords being President, Washington and Government:

Google places large importance on quality content and semantics so it should always be a consideration. Google Algorithm updates often focus on data quality and site content, with semantics being a key consideration in the Bert update.

In October 2019, a new algorithm update called BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) was rolled out, being cited as one of the most important updates in the last 5 years. Strictly speaking this update didn’t focus on websites, but rather on the search intent of the user and the specific meaning and nuances behind the query. For example, a word may mean something different in two different areas, so BERT provides the algorithm to understand this and show different search results. However, this means that the site content and keywords used need to be relevant and specific so BERT surfaces the right results based on the specific search intent and meaning of the user’s query.

When a retailer launches with Fruugo we always recommend that they have the best data possible at launch and that they optimise it by ensuring titles and descriptions include relevant information and keywords. As a global marketplace, Fruugo then translates this into the required languages for each country of shipping so retailers products can be seen across the globe.

For further information on the benefits of selling with Fruugo view our Fruugo B2B site or complete our registration form to apply to sell on Fruugo.