Services
Keyword Research.
The searches worth going after.
Not every search is worth chasing. We find the searches your customers run before they buy or get in touch, sort them by what the searcher wants, and show which ones are realistic for your site to rank for.
Content, service 04 of 10
- Searches by Buying Stage
- Volume Against Value
- Competitor Gaps
- Which Searches Share a Page
In plain words
What ecommerce keyword research involves.
Keyword research is finding the searches your customers type before they buy or get in touch, sorting them by what the searcher wants, and sizing each one by how many people search it, how hard it is to rank for, and how likely it is to bring in an order or a lead.
A free keyword tool hands you a list and a volume column, which isn't a plan. We use software to group the searches at scale, then go through them by hand and keep the ones with buying intent, so the plan targets searches that bring in customers rather than searches that only look good in a report.
What's included
What ecommerce keyword research gives you.
One demand map that the next year of content, site structure, and tracking runs from. Built with AI across everything you sell, then pruned by hand for buying intent.
01
Searches by Buying Stage
Every search worth targeting, sorted by where the person is: finding out you exist, comparing options, or ready to buy or book.
02
Volume Against Value
The lower-volume searches that tend to convert well, and the high-volume ones that rarely do, so the plan chases customers rather than a bigger traffic number.
03
Competitor Gaps
The searches your competitors rank for and you don't, with a view on how realistic each one is for your site and what it's worth if you get there.
04
Which Searches Share a Page
Which searches belong on the same page so they reinforce each other, and which need their own. Getting this wrong is one of the most common reasons pages stall.
05
What the Work Could Be Worth
A cautious estimate of the orders or leads each group of searches could bring in, based on current search volumes and typical click-through and conversion rates. It's an estimate to prioritize with, not a number we can promise.
06
Tracking List
The searches to watch each month, ready to drop into your rank tracker, so you can see whether things are moving without waiting for a quarterly review.
How it works
The keyword research process, step by step.
Week 1
Seed and competitor expansion
What you sell, your Search Console queries, and competitor ranking pages expanded into the full set of searches people run before they buy.
Weeks 1 to 2
Intent clustering at scale
AI groups tens of thousands of searches by meaning and by which pages rank for them; someone senior then prunes for buying intent and assigns each group a page type.
Week 2
Scoring and priority order
Each group weighed by search volume, difficulty, expected clicks, and how close the searcher is to buying, so the list comes back in an order you can work through.
Weeks 2 to 3
Roadmap handoff and tracking
The demand map becomes the content and site-structure plan, with rank tracking set up on every target group from the start.
Go deeper
What keyword research gives you, beyond a list.
Anyone can export search volumes from a keyword tool. The value is in what happens next: turning a list into a ranked plan.
01
Search intent classification
Every search is informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional, and the type of page that can rank for it follows from that.
We classify intent before anything else, because aiming a blog post at a buying search wastes the effort no matter how good the writing is. Getting the right searches onto the right kinds of pages is most of the work.
02
Seed keywords and the long tail
We start from seed keywords pulled from what you sell, your Google Search Console queries, and your competitors' ranking pages, then expand them into the full set of related searches and the long-tail phrases that convert best.
The long tail is where smaller sites win: fewer searches per phrase, much clearer buying intent, and a fraction of the competition.
03
Search volume versus keyword difficulty
Monthly search volume is the number everyone chases and the one that misleads most.
We weigh it against keyword difficulty and the strength your site has today, so the plan targets searches you can realistically rank for instead of high-volume terms that sit on page three. Raising the authority that brings harder searches into reach is what ecommerce link building is for.
04
Clustering into keyword groups
AI groups tens of thousands of searches by meaning and by which pages already rank for them, work that used to take weeks.
The output is a demand map: every group your buyers search, with its size, how hard it looks, and how close it sits to a purchase, so you can see which ones are worth starting with. Turning that map into pages that rank is the work of an ecommerce content strategy.
05
SERP evidence and keyword gap analysis
The live search results page, the SERP, is the ground truth: who ranks, which kinds of pages Google rewards, and which results carry rich snippets or AI Overviews.
We run a gap analysis against your closest competitors to find the searches they show up for and you don't, scored by your odds of catching them and how close each search sits to a purchase.
06
The tools, and where AI changes the job
Google Keyword Planner, Search Console, and Google Trends are free, and they show search volumes and the queries you already appear for.
Paid tools like Ahrefs and Semrush add difficulty scores and larger databases. We use all of them as inputs, but none of them classifies intent or weighs a group against your business for you.
AI adds the newest layer: people phrase questions to ChatGPT and Perplexity in longer sentences, so we map those too, and the same research serves both rankings and citations.
FAQ
Keyword research questions, answered.
You would get the same raw numbers we start with, since no tool gatekeeps search volume. The difference is everything that turns those numbers into decisions: which intent each search serves, which group it belongs in, how close it sits to a purchase, and which two-thirds of the list to ignore. That is a week of someone's judgment, not a software subscription.
The tool matters less than how you use it. Google Keyword Planner and Search Console are free and show search volumes from Google itself plus the queries you already appear for. Google Trends adds seasonality. Paid tools like Ahrefs and Semrush add difficulty scores, competitor gap analysis, and larger databases. We use all of them as inputs, then add grouping and judgment on top, because no tool will classify intent or weigh a group against your business for you.
Search volume is how many people search a term each month. Keyword difficulty estimates how hard it would be to rank for it. Chasing volume alone is the most common mistake we see: those terms are usually the hardest to rank for and the least likely to convert. Long-tail searches tend to be the better trade, with lower volume, clearer buying intent, and far less competition. We score every search on both axes plus how close it sits to a purchase before it earns a place on the plan.
Yes. People phrase questions to ChatGPT and Perplexity differently than they type them into Google, in longer and fuller sentences. We map both so the same content investment has a shot at rankings and at citations.
A full rebuild roughly once a year, with group-level refreshes quarterly. Demand shifts with seasons, trends, and new competitors, and Search Console keeps revealing searches you didn't know you appeared for, so the list goes stale if nobody revisits it.
A demand map: every group your buyers search, classified by intent, sized by volume and difficulty, ranked by how close it sits to a purchase, and assigned to the page that should own it. It doubles as your content plan and your rank-tracking setup.
Where this fits
Where this service fits, and where it's been used.
Runs inside our DTC SEO work, where all ten services are planned as one system.
11× monthly visitors from google, at peak. No rankings and a single-digit Domain Rating at the start. It reached #2 in the UK for its main buying search.
A plan for what your site publishes and what each page is meant to bring in. We start from the searches your buyers run before they buy, then decide which pages to write, which to rewrite, and which to remove.
When two of your pages chase the same search, neither one ranks well. We match every page to what the person searching wants, then merge or redirect the pages that are competing with each other.
Next step
Start with a free 30-minute call.
You'll talk with the campaign lead who'd run your account about your site, what you've tried, and what you want from search. You'll leave knowing whether we think we can help and roughly what it would cost.
- 30 minutes
- Nothing to prepare
- No obligation
All ten Search Offgrid services are priced as one monthly plan: $1,500, $2,000 or $3,000 a month at a fixed price, month to month, so you can stop at the end of any month.