Over in the Shopify forum, Joshua808 asked a great question about ranking his (newer) Shopify store and products for some keywords.
Here’s an excerpted version of his question, read the full question here (link).
My website is: www.metahuman.com
We want to be visible on the first page of google for search term “Metahuman” – can someone help me with this?
I also really want some other keyword searches related to our products – to get our products to show on google searches!!!!
For example: Search terms like “vitamin gummies” (thats just an example)
‘Vitamin Gummies’ is a great example search term and an understandable one to want to rank for as Metahuman sells CBD Gummies.
Alas, that term — vitamin gummies — is way too competitive for their store to rank for at this time.
How do I know that? Two things:
- There are big competitors here. If you Google the term (link), you’ll see the top ten sites ranking there are large, established brands (Amazon, Healthline, Walmart, CVS, Target, Nature Made, Walgreens, WebMD, CleavelandClinic.org, Costco.com). These larger competitors have a ton of links, content, and SEO experience. (They’ve been growing here for years.) I describe them as having a ‘defensible position’ in Google, which just means that MetaHuman won’t easily outrank them right now.
- They don’t have enough links to outrank those competitors. Looking at the number of links pointing to MetaHuman’s site, they’ve got ~4 unique sites linking to them. That’s a good start, but it is quite low. To rank for a more competitive term (like Vitamin Gummies) they’ll need (a lot) more links pointing to your site.
So what are they supposed to do?
- Give up?
- Ditch SEO for paid ads?
- Wait until they get a ton more links?
Na. What they (and you, dear reader) want to do is focus on more niche keywords for your products/collections/store.
For example, instead of ‘Vitamin Gummies’ MetaHuman might try to rank their gummie product page for the ‘keyword Buy Organic Full Spectrum CBD Gummies.’ That longer, more specific keyword is less competitive, easier to rank for, and more resonant with the CBD product they’re selling.
Looking at the sites ranking for that search , you see a mixture of:
- Larger brands (e.g., Healthline)
- News sites
- Smaller brands (e.g., Corn Bread Hemp)
There still is some competition here and these competitors are established, but it’s much less competitive than ‘Vitamin Gummies.’
But how are you supposed to find these more niche keywords? That’s a very good question!
Part of the process is looking at the page (be it a product, collection, or homepage) you want to rank, looking at the content, and getting very specific about what the page is representing.
The other part of the process is keyword research. For that, you can use one of my favorite freemium tools — Keywords Everywhere — to get insights on keywords + suggested related keywords right in Google. Excellent tool for keyword research, I think you’ll love it.
Hope this helped you, dear reader! If you’re still scratching your head about ‘why isn’t my site ranking for this keyword’ or ‘how do I outrank that competitor,’ drop me an email (kai@doubleyourecommerce.com) and I’ll see what I can better explain.
BTW, I send out a regular newsletter with Shopify marketing and growth tips like this one. Want to get the next letter in your inbox? Drop your email address in here: https://doubleyourecommerce.com/newsletter/.
Excelsior!
Kai