Official Yahoo! Store Blog tips and tricks for ecommerce success

Tips on Mining Converting Keywords

March 21, 2006 | In Best Practices |

Today’s Y!Store blog is a guest column by long time Yahoo! Store owner and developer Rob Snell of Snell Brothers. Rob posts regularly in his blog about all things Yahoo! Store, is the author of the upcoming book, “Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies,” and is conducting Yahoo! Store marketing workshops beginning this spring in California.

Howdy! Looking for tips on converting keywords (the search words your customers use to find your store and buy the products you sell)? You’ve come to the right place. In this article I’m going to tell you what converting keywords are, why these specific keywords are so important, and where you can find your converting keywords inside your Yahoo! Store Manager.

When I first started marketing Yahoo! Stores way back in 1997, I noticed the same types of keywords showing up again and again as the referring keywords in orders on many different types of stores. More generic terms like wallaby supplies might drive more traffic, but more often than not the converting keywords in the Rev-Share URL or Referrer would be much more specific terms like acme wallaby pouch organizer or soothing wallaby tail cream. The more I optimized my sites for these specific terms, the more sales increased.

Converting keywords are somewhat more obscure than generic search terms, too. Fewer searches for specific keywords result in less traffic, but that makes these keywords better for you - much less competitive for search engine optimization and sponsored search ad bidding.

Shoppers searching on these more specific terms convert at a much, much higher rate than generic Web traffic searching on more generic terms. For every 100 people visiting the average online store, 97 or 98 won’t buy anything. Frustrating, I know, but I’m not particularly interested in these folks. However, I am extremely interested in the two or three folks who actually put something in their cart and bought something. If you can attract more visitors like the folks who buy, you obviously have a better chance of increasing your sales.

As Paul mentioned in an earlier post, you can find your converting keywords in your orders themselves, but here are several different places where I collect converting keywords:

Merchant order e-mails: I like to look at each order e-mail as it comes in and see what the customer searched for, what engine they came from and what they bought. Around half of my orders have Rev-Share URL or Referrer data, and I just click on the link to see what my customers saw on the particular search engine to find my store.
Export orders: You can export up to 3000 orders at a time and get Referrer data and Entry page (no Rev-Share URLs, though) out of the Orders.csv file. This is an easy way to get started organizing your converting keywords when you have a store with a lot of order history.
Sales reports: One little known feature of the Store Manager’s Sales report is the ability to see all the orders for a specific product in a given date range. When a product has around 50 (or fewer) orders in a date range, the quantity field (number of orders) becomes a link to all the orders for that product. If you have more than 50 orders for that product and want to use this feature, simply shorten the date range to a smaller number of orders. This feature is important because you can see one product’s Rev-Share URLs and Referrer data in one place which is very helpful to see product-specific trends and patterns with converting keywords. Sometimes it’s easier to work with one product at a time than dealing with all your converting keywords for hundreds or thousands of products.
Yahoo! Search Marketing conversion rate tracking: If you have a Sponsored Search account with Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) or another search marketing company, you can see which keywords converted into sales by activating conversion tracking on your account and adding a little bit of JavaScript code to your Order Confirmation page (this tool is called “Conversion Counter” in a Yahoo! Search Marketing account); adding the JavaScript is not necessary if you enable Conversion Counter or Marketing Console tags with Store Manager. Once a month I do a keyword report on my Yahoo! Sponsored Search account and add these converting keywords to my list.
Third-party analytics software: Third-party software vendors like KeywordMax, ClickTracks, or Indextools offer tracking software that collect some converting keyword data that the Store Manager just doesn’t seem to grab. You just put their JavaScript code in your Head-tags field (under Variables) and on your Order Confirmation page, and almost like magic you get all this extra data. You do have to pay extra for this service, but since I get anywhere from 20-25% of my converting keywords from these third-party tools, it’s worth it to me!

Knowing your converting keywords is crucial to your online success. Once you know what these converting keywords are, you must do everything in your power to make sure your store comes up in both the free search results (by optimizing your website) and the paid search results (through sponsored listings) for these very important keywords. In a future installment, I’ll give you some very specific things you can do to help you rank well for these valuable phrases in the free search results as well as the paid search ads.

Rob Snell
Guest blogger for Yahoo! Small Business

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I found this very helpful. Excellent definition of converting keywords. I don’t think I really understood this before.

Comment by Linda Lupold — March 21, 2006 #
Great Article. I knew to look at a references for my store for keyword ideas but did not realize it was most beneficial to focus on references that resulted in sales. Thanks for the tip.

Comment by Linda Lupold — March 21, 2006 #
Great Info

Comment by Tom Case — March 21, 2006 #
Rob, Nice article. Knowing your converting keywords is really key. But there is a easier way to increase your sales. Your existing customers already know your store and love your products. Many of them would love to get one of your products as a gift on their next birthday, Graduation, baby shower, wedding, etc. But how do they let their friends know about your store? Easy. Add a gift registry service. They register your products and the next thing you know all of their friends are looking at it. Not only is this a great way to increase your sales but now you’ve got your customer’s friends looking at your store as well. The fact that one of their friends have registered your product is a great endorsement. Furthermore, now that you know your customer’s birthday, graduation, wedding anniversary, send her an email on each of those dates with a discount coupon. Remember the easiest sale to make is to an existing customer.

Comment by Hans Xu — March 21, 2006 #
need time to really review, but would be interested in following through and using converting keywords.
nicely done.
thanks

Comment by Nancy — March 21, 2006 #
Rob,

Thanks for the information. I know it will be very helpful. I’m still in the process of deciding what product I’m going to market. Decisions, decisions! This is harder than I thought. I’ve subscribed to Chris Mata’s Dropship Directory and am still looking for that niche market.

Bruce

Comment by Bruce — March 21, 2006 #
Rob,
Congradulations on the upcomming book. Can’t wait to pick up one. Reading your post here makes me realize that I have a LOT to learn if I want to have a oneline store agan as I once did. Maby with your book in hand I can make it work this time

Mike

Comment by Mike — March 22, 2006 #
Wow, who new there was so much involved with getting a Yahoo Store successful. I must say I had to read this post a few times to fully understand the technical jargon. Looks like you have to optimize for keywords constantly to continue to make a sale. I guess it is not enough to do a keyword search when you open the store, you have to continually adjust for what the customers are looking for. A never ending game with the SE’s.

Comment by Bob — March 23, 2006 #
Great information Rob! I heard about a 2 day class for yahoo store merchant solutions users. Does anyone know when & where?

Comment by Scott — March 29, 2006 #
Good topic Rob. There is definitely a need to understand the use of keywords. Your article touches on this piece of the pie for drawing in sales traffic.

glenn

Comment by glenn — April 12, 2006 #
I am new to Yahoo stores, and after reading this article I went back and looked at my converting keywords. I was amazed at how those keywords didnt show up that much on my site. It will be interesting to see how this will affect my sales.
Thanks Rob

Comment by Matt — October 18, 2006 #
The longer I am in the internet retailing business, the less I know! This is a great article and points out something that should be obvioius, but somehow isn’t. I was embarrassed to realize how many of my converting keywords were nowhere on my site…and here I thought I needed to focus on my non-converting keywords.

Thanks Rob!

Comment by Michele — November 9, 2006 #
Great Info Rob. I am new to yahoo store and it’s very insightful.

Comment by Darrick — November 19, 2006 #
As always, fantastic information. Thanks to Rob, we are in full optimizing mode, continully improving our site. I wish I had known of Rob’s amazing tips five years ago when we started our Yahoo Store. Keep ‘em coming Rob!

Comment by Chuck — December 5, 2006 #
Great information, I am glad I found this. I am always looking for ways for people to find my site and this information will help a lot.

Comment by John — December 28, 2006 #
Hi
I like what I see with clicktracks - but the software download (vs paying the monthly hosting fees) is not compatible for MACs. Do you know of a similar mac-friendly resource?
Thanks!

Comment by cp — January 29, 2007 #
[…] Estos servicios permitirán al cliente ahorrar tiempo y mejorar los links internos de descripciones de producto y optimizar las páginas con convertidores de claves. […]

Pingback by Yahoo! Stores en Yahoo! Site Explorer — September 12, 2007 #
I am very interested in improving traffic to increase the sales of the many types of motorcycle helmets and accessoeies we offer.

Comment by John Daniele — September 25, 2007 #
Great resources. Thanks for the information.

Comment by Paul Dumas — March 9, 2008 #
Very interresting, and I think still applicable today. I just started looking at our comverting keywords and am using Google Analystics as well as sources mentioned in this article. Thanks!

Comment by Joan — June 23, 2008 #

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Tips on Mining Converting Keywords

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