Keyword Strategy for an E-Commerce Site

[NiallTom]

I've seen this touched on in other posts but have read conflicting answers and am hoping to get some clarification.  What should my keyword strategy be for an e-commerce site in an industry that has moderate to high competition for it's short-tail keyword phrases?

Should I try to optimize my homepage for the highly competitive, short-tail keywords, while going after the long-tail, and less competitive (but less traffic, too) on my product pages?  What's a good rule of thumb as far as the number of keyword phrases to target per product?

Thank you

[brandfield]

By SEA I mean paid search in general.

I would pick Google AdWords and use search query reports combined with conversion data.

[NiallTom]

Rick, by SEA I'm assuming you mean Adwords, right?

[NiallTom]

Thanks, Ryan.

[brandfield]

"It is challenging enough to climb to #1 for an exact keyword or phrase. The next challenge would be to rank for slight variations of that phrase such as the plural version or a more clarified version."

To find out which keyword you should start with, use Google AdWords and an unlimited budget to find out exact search volumes for a list of possible keywords.

[brandfield]

In my opinion you should be testing keywords with SEA first to find out which words are the best in terms of 'search volume' and 'revenue'.

For example: for our own webshop I se-up a list with keywords I thought that would work. After that I tested them using Google AdWords. I also found out exact search volumes, which no other tool will tell you. When my results were significant, I picked the combinations te optimize using SEO.

Another advantage of SEA is that you can test several different ads. This way you can test several styles and phrases to find out what works best. This will learn you what to use in your SEO descriptions (and titles).

[RyanKent]

In a competitive market you should only target one keyword per page. Once you earn the # 1 ranking for your target keyword, then you can consider broadening your reach. Until then, you are climbing the ranking mountain. By adding additional keywords you are weighing yourself down and making it harder to make that climb.

Try searching Google.com for "sacramento real estate" and comparing the results to "sacramento california real estate". Intuitively you would expect the results to be the same, right? They are not.

Now try again searching for "childrens book" and compare the results to "childrens books". Again, the results are different.

It is challenging enough to climb to #1 for an exact keyword or phrase. The next challenge would be to rank for slight variations of that phrase such as the plural version or a more clarified version.