How Keyword Research & Website Architecture Result in Increased SEO Ranking

In the continually evolving world of SEO, it is easy to get behind on your game and feel out of touch. This post will take you back to some essential basics to show you how to think about and implement a forward-thinking and data-driven SEO strategy before you even launch your website.

In October, I wrote a resource article about how to use keyword research to make your website more user-friendly and increase organic rankings. I’m back now to show you the results of that strategy – the evidence that research and creativity in the early phases of building a website go along way toward positive SEO results after launch.

In my original post, I referenced a strategy that we developed for Fetch Eyewear, a fantastic company that makes designer glasses for an affordable price and donates all proceeds to animal rescue. During our keyword research phase prior to designing the website, we discovered that many people were searching for glasses with terms related to face shape, eye color, hair color, and complexion and how to find the right glasses for them.

Based on this information, we architected a section of the Fetch website called “Find Your Fit” to help answer those questions for users and provide them with clear pathways through the site to help make perfect matches between user and glasses.

The Power of the Long Tail Search

The site has been live for four months now—and the results of this strategy are overwhelmingly in support of this strategy. We improved organic rankings for “Find Your Fit” related search terms. 

As of January 31, Fetch ranked in the top 20 in Google for more than 600 keywords relating to the Find Your Fit section. Of those keywords—113 were top 10 rankings. These keywords result in a combined national monthly search volume of 47,231. Considering this is a site that has only been live for 4 months with a new domain, these rankings are very encouraging.

Even though many of these keywords have a low monthly search volume on their own, combined they have the potential to bring in a great deal of traffic.

From October through January, the Find Your Fit section (including all subpages) had more than 16,000 unique page views coming from organic search, with a steady increase in organic traffic each month. Additionally, 6,700 visitors entered the Fetch site on these pages in the time since the site has been live.

What Does It Mean

Optimizing content with a targeted keyword strategy is a great way to get people into the website. The next step is ensuring they stay on the site by constantly adding to and updating the section to provide valuable content

This also highlights the value of the long-tail. Base keywords, like “designer glasses” or “retro designer glasses” are great, but the added traffic that comes from niche searches like “best color eyeglasses for blondes” or “glasses for square face” adds another flow of traffic that can only be captured by containing valuable content in this area.

This also brings traffic that is further down the sales funnel. For e-commerce sites, searches like this show that users are actively searching for glasses that look good on them and fit their features. Capitalizing on long-tail keywords bring in the exact type of traffic we are looking for – people who are ready to buy once they “find their fit.”

However, just because the section of the site has proved to be a central portion of the SEO strategy doesn’t mean our work is done.

Over the next six months, the goal will be to analyze the data in analytics to determine how we can improve the section for increased time on site and ultimately conversions. Considerations include updating the page design to test the user interface and guide people through the Find Your Fit process more seamlessly. Additional considerations include A/B testing elements on the specific Find Your Fit pages to discover the best path toward increased conversion rate by monitoring click through to product pages.

How can you implement a similar strategy?

Perform extensive keyword research

Determine how people are searching for the products in your marketplace. Be sure to be creative and think outside the box for how people might start the search process. The keywords don’t necessarily need to be directly conversion related – you want to introduce your brand to people as early in the purchasing process as possible.

Provide content that serves a need

Take the findings of your research and develop a section of your website that answers the questions people want answered. Give them valuable, useful information and provide them with pathways to your products.

Use data to continually hone and tweak this section of your site

Never be satisfied with positive results because without constant monitoring, the results could turn sour and go stale. Use the amazing amount of data at your disposal to determine the best ways to improve and expand on the concept.