On today’s episode we discuss keyword research, link building and the power of search and discoverability in your marketing funnel.

If you want to learn more how Search Marketing (paid and organic) has impacted eCommerce in the last decade, tune in to this week’s interview with the Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer of the leading SEO keyword research tool, SEMrush.

Dive in as Kunle and Eugene discuss competitor research, market analysis, keyword research, and some of the most effective hacks to optimize your Amazon listings.

Covered Topics:

On today’s interview Kunle and Eugene discuss,

• The SEMrush Growth Story
• Keyword Research
• Hacks to Optimize Amazon Listings
• Competitor Research and Market Analysis

Podcast Show Notes:

• 01:48 – Join the 2xEcommerce Facebook Group
• 03:21 – What to Expect from Today’s Episode
• 04:54 –  Easily Grow Your Business With A Powerful Marketing Automation Platform! Check out Klaviyo
• 05:45 – Get the easiest way to backup your Shopify or BigCommerce store and undo unwanted changes with Rewind.io… Mention you heard about them at 2x eCommerce Podcast and get a ONE MONTH FREE TRIAL
• 07:43 – Introducing Eugene Levin
• 09:46 – Eugene’s Background
• 14:30 – SEMrush’s Growth Story
  • Started with PPC Advertising and SEO Optimisation
  • From 2008 SEMrush grew organically.
  • 2012: Focused more on growing SEMrush
  • 2015-2016 – Rapid expansion of SEMrush via social media and content marketing
  • Invested in research & development, global marketing, and building the sales team
• 19:24 – Marketing from a SaaS company’s perspective
  • Not very transactional
  • Heavy investments on customer retention and customer expansion
  • Upfront investments on channels that earn the customers’ trust
  • Consistent presence is required to build brand recognition.
  • “It’s more on branding exercise and relationships and networking than marketing channels. But if you start building it for years, it will start paying off one day.”
  • “In Saas, it’s a very very long-term game than in eCommerce.”
• 22:34 – Advice to eCommerce businesses in terms of competitor research and market analysis in terms of growth and entering new markets
  • Growth: “How much people already know about your product?”
    • Listing Optimisation, On-page Keyword Optimisation, Page Quality, and Internal Link Building
    • You have to have keywords that are a little less competitive than what your competitors are using but still have a lot of volume.
  • Entry to New Markets:
    • Build a content strategy. Create more content around your listings.
    • Create content that people are looking into and then move them to the direction of your product.
    • Perform a Keyword Research Gap Analysis.
    • Leverage keywords from similar topics with relatively high volume to promote your product category even though it is not directly relevant to your brand.
• 28:04 – Expanding to the Amazon ecosystem
  • A/B Testing for Amazon listings
  • Improving rankings within the Amazon space
  • Driving external traffic to Amazon listings
  • Amazon is ultimately just another checkout handling your logistics and delivery.
• 30:25 – Easily Grow Your Business With A Powerful Marketing Automation Platform! Check out Klaviyo
• 33:13 – Suggested channels for driving traffic to Amazon listings
  • Search Traffic
    • You can buy Traffic from Google Ads.
    • Build links to promote your Amazon listings.
  • Email Listing
  • Customer Reviews
  • YouTube Videos
• 36:17 – SEO Metrics to Optimise for Brand Name Search
  • Generic keywords are the first part to a customer’s purchase journey.
  • Brand search is a good indicator of how well you’re doing as a brand.
  • A lot of people today are using Google as a navigation for different search queries.
• 40:36 – Search Volumes
  • Niche keywords make more money than generic keywords.
  • Long-tail keywords are much closer to a customer’s purchase intent than generic short-term keywords.
• 43:55 – How SEMrush is doing amidst the Coronavirus crisis
  • The Coronavirus situation has in so far accelerated digital transformation.
• 45:35 – Changes and Trends in Search Volume during the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Increased traffic in almost all product categories
  • A slight increase in CPC due to the increased amount of time that people spend online
  • Major shift to eCommerce
• 53:05 – Final thoughts and advice
• 54:55 – Join the 2xEcommerce Accelerator Mastermind Facebook Group

Topic Takeaways:

• Brand presence increases brand equity to which eventually people will naturally gravitate towards.
• Long-tail keywords are much closer to a customer’s purchase intent than generic short-term keywords so they convert better.
• Niche keywords make more money than generic keywords.
• Find keywords that are a little less competitive than what your competitors are using but still have a lot of search volume.
• Leverage keywords from similar topics with relatively high volume to promote your product category even though it is not directly relevant to your brand or product.

Tweetable Quotes:

“In SaaS, conversion is just the beginning and then the real story begins.”

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