Ahrefs is an all-around fantastic SEO tool. It can be used for keyword research, competition analysis, backlink building, and much more.
Let’s focus on how to use it to conduct eCommerce Search Engine Optimization keyword research fast and easily.
Put your URL into the Site Explorer search field after you’ve signed up for an account. Select “Organic search” from the drop-down menu…
You’ll see all the terms your site ranks for if you scroll down and select “View full report” under the Top 5 organic keywords area. There are far too many to go through one by one.
Fortunately, you can narrow down the results to find exactly what you want. I’m looking for my low-hanging fruit, which are the terms I can rank at 5-10 position.
Because you’re currently on the first page, these are low-hanging fruit, which means you should be able to rank higher with effective on-page SEO and possibly some link building (more on that in the on-page SEO and link building sections).
To find them, use the Position filter, which has a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 10.
By clicking the Traffic column, you can arrange this by traffic in descending order. You can also set a minimum traffic filter, such as no less than 200 searches per month, if you like.
Now, use the “Export” option in the upper right to export your low-hanging fruit keywords to a CSV file, and copy-paste them into a new tab in your spreadsheet. (I refer to this tab as “Low Competitive Keywords”)
Let’s now take our competitor’s keywords.
This time, use the site explorer tool to find a competitor and navigate to the same Organic Keywords page. Apply the following filters to find gold nuggets:
Position maximum of 20
KD maximum 15
Volume minimum 200
This will show you all of your competitor’s low-difficulty, relevant keywords that they are ranking for!
Isn’t that incredible?
If you don’t obtain enough results, remove the volume minimum — some niches won’t have a lot of search volume. I just use this to limit the number of keywords to those with the highest potential and to keep the total quantity manageable.
Okay, I know you’re probably drowning in keyword suggestions right now, but here’s another: The gap filler for content.
This handy tool displays all of the keywords that your competitors rank for but you don’t. In the top three fields, type three (or more) competitors, and your website in the bottom field.
Then select “Show keywords” to be flooded with possibilities! Simply use the filters we used before to identify the best ones, then export and copy-paste them into your spreadsheet.
So, now that you’ve come up with tonnes of key term ideas, how do you decide which ones to use?