Performing Keyword Research

Take a look at any SEO guide and you’ll see keyword research at the top. Why? Because it gives direction to all the other SEO implementation you’re about to do. Your website might have an amazing layout, great products and an attractive design. But if it doesn’t target any keywords, it’ll not rank anywhere. So, you should start with finding the right keywords for your baby products’ store.

Use Keyword Tools

You must have an idea of your targeted keywords already. For example, if you sell baby lotion, then you’ll want to rank for ‘buy baby lotions’ or ‘best baby lotion’.

If you don’t already, it would be better if you took some time to write down a list of keywords or phrases related to your business. Now that you have a general idea of what you want to rank for, you can get concrete ideas for the same. There are multiple tools available in the market which can help you get keyword ideas that actually work:

Google Keyword Planner:

Google’s own Keyword Planner is a widely popular tool, which you should definitely include in your SEO strategy. You will have to enter the term you want to rank for and the tool will then show how popular it is. Check the ideas section and you will relevant terms along with their recent traffic. This tool is essential because it shows how many search queries have been made for the particular term. Therefore, you can understand whether the keyword is worth ranking for or not.

Ubersuggest:

Ubersuggest is an incredible tool. It is present on Neil Pate’s website and it is free. Like GKP, you’ll have to enter the term in the search bar and the tool will show you how competitive it is. It also shows you a number of keyword ideas you can use for your business.

Google Autosuggest:

A surprising tool is Google Autosuggest. Just open a new tab and enter the term you want to rank for. You’ll notice that Google offers some suggestions itself. These suggestions are actually 'phrases' people search for. Include these terms and phrases in your SEO strategy. Another important tool is Google’s Related Searches. Apart from the search results, Google also shows you some related searches for the key phrase. You should include them in your strategy as well.

Check your Competitors

Learning from the competition can be very rewarding. They might have done all the research on moms and dads. You can leverage their effort and use it for your own benefit. Here’s how:

• Copy the link of your competitor’s site
• Go to SEMRush.com
• Paste in the search bar
• Select the area you’re in
• Hit Enter

SEMRush will show you the keywords your competitor is ranking for, the places it is getting links from and how well it ranks on the internet. You can use this valuable information and update your SEO strategy.

Verify them on Google Trends

By now, you must’ve already gathered a compilation of exciting keywords. Before you start using them, you should check if they are any good for the future. For this purpose, you’ll have to use Google Trends. Google Trends shows you how popular a particular term or phrase is in a particular area. You can check to see how popular a term has been and whether its popularity has increased or decreased. This data lets you understand if the keywords you’re targeting are worth using or not. Because if the popularity of the terms is fading, targeting them will not yield a good ROI.

Improving Metadata

The metadata of your site tells the search engine crawlers what your site is about. Metadata includes title tags and Meta descriptions. Here is how you should approach them:

Title Tags:

The title tag is the text which appears on top of your website’s tab in browsers. But more importantly, it is the text which appears for in SERPs. You’ll want to create accurate and descriptive titles for your web pages. Also, make sure that you add a keyword, preferably the primary one, to your page’s title.

Meta Descriptions:

The meta description is the text which appears below the link of your website in SERPs. To write good Meta descriptions, you should focus on keeping them engaging, attractive and optimized.They should not target more than two keywords. And, keep them below 155 characters. Suppose you want to write a Meta description for baby’s milk bottles. You will write one like: “Buy chemical-free, safe, durable and affordable milk bottles online. Your baby will love the generous touch. Find out more.” The description has few characters, contains a key phrase (affordable milk bottles online), and has an engaging tone. Search engines analyze both title tags and Meta descriptions to find out what your content is about. It is essential that you target the right keywords in these sections. Also, keep the Meta tags of your site as accurate as possible.

Improving Site Structure

Your website should have a clear structure. It shouldn’t be a cobweb, full of different turns and intersections.Otherwise, it’ll make things difficult for the search engines and the people. A simple and easy to understand site structure shows the search engines that your website provides a better user experience. And search engines are all about user experience. They know the internet is full of content and websites. So they only choose those sites which offer a better user experience and relevant solution. Here are the things you should consider:

Use Categories

What are the chief pages of your baby products website? Every site has these three:

• Home
• About Us
• Contact

Yours might have a few additional pages:

• Products
• How it works

But if you have many pages (or a few but congested ones) then you should start focusing on improving the categorization. Note down the primary pages you need and check which ones you have right now. Do you need a dedicated page for your company’s vision? Are you planning on starting a blog? Ask yourself such questions and you will find categorization an easy process. Have sub-categories in your website too. Don’t hesitate in using them because they simplify your website’s navigation.

Have Easy Navigation

If a person, who doesn’t know much about the internet, stumbles across your site, will he/she find it easy to use? If your answer is no, then you should check the navigation of your website. Make sure that accessing a page from the other ones doesn’t require too much effort. 2-3 clicks should be sufficient for going from one page to another. You can add a navigation bar solely for this purpose.

Optimizing Product Pages

Your baby products might look cute but a poor product page can ruin their appeal. A good page will generate more sales and drive you more revenue. Optimization of the page is important for the SEO of your parenting site as well. Here’s what you have to do:

Add Visuals:

People love images and videos. They are great for catching the attention of the user. They are also great for describing your product or service properly. Make sure that you add a large number of visuals to enhance your product description. According to this post on Crazy Egg, here a few things you should keep in mind regarding the images you upload:

• They should be HD
• They should stick with the context
• They should catch the attention

When the parents on the web visit the product pages on your site, the visuals should do catch their eye. Otherwise, they might exit because they’re already busy taking care of a baby.

Write Engaging Descriptions:

Although every marketer tells people to write good product descriptions, for a parenting e-commerce site, you’ll need to follow a more specific approach:

Be Caring:

Show empathy. Relate to the problems your parents face and address them directly. Don’t hesitate. Connect with them. Let them know that you understand what they go through. It’s about building an emotional connection. When your product descriptions will address the parents’ problems and present your product as the right solution, it will certainly help you get more sales. After all, that’s your ultimate goal, isn’t it?

Avoid Jargon:

You don’t know how many young moms and dads will be visiting your website. They might not be aware of technical terms like the Ehlers-Danios Syndromes. Keep things simple and easy to understand. Use the language your audience uses.

Include Keywords:

Use keywords in the alt text of the pictures as well as in the product descriptions. Search engines can’t check the content of the images and so, they rely on the alt text you provide. Don’t add too many keywords because it makes you look spammy. Use one or two. For product descriptions, keep two or three direct keywords in mind. Use them naturally in your descriptions.

Simplify Buying

People abandon carts and this costs a lot of money. In fact, it costs the marketers around 2 to 4 trillion dollars per year. Why do people leave their carts? Well, according to the statistics on Annex Cloud:

• 61% of people left the transaction because of high processing fees (like shipping)
• 27% of carts were abandoned because of too many complications
• 55% of carts are left because of additional shipping cost

The takeaway is, you should concentrate on simplifying your website’s checkout page. Don’t keep any hidden charges because the eager parent might click the ‘X’. You can add an extra offer in the checkout such as an upsell or an additional item, but don’t complicate things too much. Also, make sure that the process is secure. Clearly, state that you use secure payment methods and there are no hidden charges. It will help you keep the people on your site for longer durations and increase the sales. Google and other search engines check how long people stay on your site and rank you accordingly. So, this simple trick will not only boost your revenue but also your site’s SEO.

Create Relatable Content

To boost the rankings of your parenting website, you should focus on creating quality content. It doesn’t mean you have to be ‘Parent’ or ‘Reader’s Digest’ for this purpose. You can create engaging and value-providing articles on this topic. Here are a few points to keep in mind:

Write Valuable Content

Your website’s content should solve your audience’s problem. If it will not provide any value, why will anyone read your posts? Creating valuable content doesn’t take much effort. You only have to find the problems your audience faces and present solutions for the same. As a parenting site, you can create resource pages on the best paediatricians in your area or create a guide for sleep training.

You can also create videos on how to use your product or create a podcast. There are many ways to do content marketing these days. You should choose one according to the requirements of your audience. With great content, you will get backlinks from other websites as well.

Don’t forget to Add Keywords

When you’re generating content, adding a few keywords here and there wouldn’t hurt. Remember the keyword research we mentioned earlier? Take the keywords present in the list and try to include 3 or 4 in your content. Add them naturally, however. And don’t use too many keywords because it seems unnatural. Here a few points to keep in mind:

Use Keywords in Headings:

Search engines analyze the heading tags of your web pages. So, be sure to use the keywords in your headings and sub-headings. This also means you’ll have to use many sub-headings. Don’t create a huge block of text. No one will read it and you will not be able to rank as well. Use headings and sub-headings to make your content easy to skim and add keywords to them.

Don’t Overuse Them:

Overuse of keywords is called keyword stuffing and it is a bad SEO practice. Search engines penalize the websites which perform keywords stuffing. So, never ever overuse the keywords.

Keep Context in Mind:

Semantic search has made Google more powerful than ever. It can now analyze your content and understand whether it is relevant to the user’s search query or not. How does Google do that? Google uses LSI (Latent Semantic Index) keywords for this purpose. These are synonyms of the popular keywords your audience might be using. For example, if your targeted audience is pregnant women, your LSI keywords would be pregnancy, womb, infant, new parents, etc. Like the primary key phrases, you shouldn’t add LSI terms forcibly. Instead, keep them in mind when you’re creating your content and use them naturally.

Leverage Social Media

79% parents say that they use social media to get valuable information. In fact, 32% of the parents ‘strongly agree’ to getting information from these channels. This means you should use social media platforms too. They can help you get connected with the parents and help you find out what they want. The traffic and engagement from social media platforms will boost your parenting site’s SEO as well.

Getting traffic from social media channels will be easier for you in the beginning. And you will be likely to get a head start. Depending on the kind of products you sell (cradle, sleep alarm, baby monitor, etc.) you can choose the right social media platform to use. The best ones to start with are Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

Summary:

Optimizing your parenting site should no longer be an issue. Creating good content, connecting with parents and taking care of the technical aspects of your site can give you a great start. Remember, parents, are always searching for something that can either make their life easy or make their child’s life better. If you have any questions, let us know. If you have a parenting site and you need SEO help, feel free to get in touch. We’d love to help.