Evaluating Product Lines for Your Site
If you have a product oriented site, you obviously need products. There is an interesting way you can use keyword research to help you evaluate the products that are going to sell.
Assume I decide to open up a fashion site. Now that my friends have stopped laughing, I need to take the important step of figuring out what I want to offer in the way of different designers and such. I go ahead and find out my options. I get catalogs of the clothing available. All I have to do is choose, but how do you know what will sell versus what will not?
Keyword research can be a tremendous help in figuring out which product lines are going to do well on the web. The first step is to research the brand. Yes, you are interested in the total number of searches for the brand, but you need to take a second step. You need to look at the keyword phrases being used to search for the designer that contain product names. If you see a lot of searches for Calvin Klein jeans, shirts, etc., you have a good line. If you see a number of searches for an individual product, you have found an excellent series of products to put on your site.
So, what happens if you don’t see much interest in the brand when you do the research? Does it mean you should move on to another product line? While it doesn’t look good, you can’t be sure until you do more research. Many product lines are known by a name other than the brand. Fans of Toyota 4Runners tend to search by the phrase “4Runner”, not Toyota. You need to identify any such names in the line you are considering and do research on it. If you find a lot of searches, you have struck it rich. Most people don’t take this step, so you can optimize the pages of your site for the products and get top rankings pretty quickly.
Now, there are a couple caveats I have to mention about this approach. First, you need to make sure the product company will allow you to use their name in the keyword phrases. Most do, but check your reseller agreement to be absolutely sure. Second, this process takes a lot of time. Depending on your niche, it can take weeks. You have to stick with it. If you find that particular line, you can absolutely clean up.
