Ecommerce keyword research: how to find what buyers search

What is ecommerce keyword research?

Ecommerce keyword research is the work of finding the queries that lead shoppers looking for products like yours to a store, and deciding which page should answer each one. The Search Central guide to getting started with Google Trends defines keyword research as identifying the words and phrases your audience uses to search for what you offer.

A keyword is a word or phrase people type into a search engine, also called a search query. Shopify’s guide to adding keywords uses a simple example: someone searching for blue shoes in Canada, where both “blue shoes” and “Canada” count as keywords.

For a store, the job is narrower than for a blog. You want the keywords that come from people ready to buy, and you want each one to land on a product or collection page that sells.

Why does keyword research matter more for a store?

Because every product page is a bet on one search. Pick the wrong words and the page ranks for nothing a buyer types, however good the product is.

Bigger is not always better. Shopify’s help center warns that the more traffic a keyword gets, the more competition your store faces, so it may not show near the top. A smaller keyword with clear buying intent often suits a store better than a big, vague one.

If you have rewritten your product copy and still see little traffic from search, the effort was not the problem. The words usually are. A list from a keyword research tool is a guess about someone else’s buyers until your own data confirms it, and a keyword strategy built on guesses fills the wrong pages.

What makes a good ecommerce keyword?

Four things: the intent behind it, how many people search it, how hard it is to rank for, and how close it sits to what you actually sell.

Search intent

Search intent is what the person wants to do. Shopify’s SEO overview names four kinds, and each points to a different page:

Search volume

Search volume is how often a keyword is searched, usually per month. For Keyword Planner, the Ads help center says the average monthly figure covers the keyword and its close variants, averaged over 12 months by default. A seasonal product can look smaller or bigger than it is in any given month.

Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty is an estimate of how hard it is to reach page one, and it comes from third-party SEO tools, not from Google. Keyword Planner’s Competition column measures something else: how many advertisers showed ads on the keyword, relative to all keywords. It says nothing about ranking without ads.

Relevance to your products

Shopify’s advice is to prioritize keywords that are specific to your products and business and that people also search for often. A relevant keyword brings potential buyers. A keyword that brings visitors who cannot buy anything from you is traffic, not sales.

Where should Shopify keyword research start?

With the data you already own. A store that already sells has keyword lists no outside tool can see, and they come from real shoppers.

The queries that already find you

The Trends guide says it plainly: if you are not sure which keywords to start with, check the Performance report in Search Console. Its queries tab shows terms you already rank for and terms people click when visiting your website.

Sort by impressions and look for the queries where you show up but rarely get the click.

“there are many different ways to write the same query”

Moshe Samet, Product Manager Lead, Search Console, Introducing Query groups in Search Console Insights

That is why Search Console now groups similar queries on larger sites. For a store, it is a reminder to treat variations as one target, not five.

The words shoppers type into your store

Shopify’s behavior reports include Searches by search query, which lists the search terms visitors type into your store’s own search bar. A second report lists the terms that returned no results: what people were looking for and could not find. Both run up to 72 hours behind.

The words customers use

Reviews, emails and questions before purchase are keyword research too. When customers describe a product in their own words, those words are often the keywords a new buyer types.

How do you do ecommerce keyword research, step by step?

In seven steps, starting from sales and ending with sales. You can follow them with zero SEO experience, because the order matters more than the tool, and a keyword strategy should follow the money.

1. List products and collections by revenue. Shopify’s Total sales by product report shows where the money already is. Research those first.
2. Pull your own keyword data. Export queries from Search Console and terms from Shopify’s store search reports.
3. Expand the list. Type each main term into Google and note the autocomplete suggestions, the People also ask questions and the related queries at the bottom of the results.
4. Check volume and seasonality. Use Keyword Planner for estimated monthly volume and Google Trends for how interest moves through the year.
5. Check intent on the results page. Search the keyword yourself. If the results are mostly products, it is a product keyword. If they are guides, it needs a guide.
6. Give each keyword one page. One main keyword per product or collection page, written into the title, the heading and the text.
7. Track clicks and sales. Watch the target queries in Search Console and sales from Google in Shopify, month by month.

This is the Get Found stage of The Traffic to Sales Method: products and pages showing on Google without paying for ads.

Which free keyword research tools are worth using?

Free tools cover most of what a store needs. Each one answers a different question:

Google describes Keyword Planner as a free resource for advertisers, but its help page says you must enter billing information and finish account setup to get keyword suggestions. Trends scales interest from 0 to 100 rather than showing counts, so use it to compare search terms, not to size them.

“valuable insights into what people are searching for on Google and YouTube”

Daniel Waisberg, Omri Weisman and Hadas Jacobi, Google Trends team, Search Central Blog, September 12, 2024

Paid SEO suites add difficulty scores and competitor data. Treat their numbers as estimates: Google’s guidance on third-party SEO tools says they do not have access to its internal ranking data. More in which Shopify SEO tools are worth paying for.

How far should you trust search volume and keyword difficulty?

As a rough guide, not a forecast. Both numbers are estimates made far from your store.

Take this article’s own topic. People in the US search “ecommerce keyword research” about 390 times a month, according to Google (September 2026).

That number is an average for one phrase. It says nothing about how many of those people are buyers, or what they would buy.

Trends has its own blind spots. Its data FAQ says low-volume terms appear as 0, and that it filters out queries made by Google products, including internal ones made by AI Mode and AI Overviews.

Difficulty needs the same care. Before you trust a score, search the keyword and look at who ranks.

A page one full of marketplaces and big brands is a hard target for a small store. A page one full of thin category listings is a real opportunity.

For a store, a keyword with modest volume and clear buying intent often earns more than a bigger, vaguer one. Judge the result by sales, not by the volume column.

How do you map keywords to product and collection pages?

Give each page one main keyword, and give each keyword one page. Two pages chasing the same keyword split the signal and confuse the buyer.

Close variants belong on the same page. Google’s guide to optimizing for generative AI search warns that creating separate content for every variation of a search, mainly to manipulate rankings, breaks its scaled content abuse policy.

Where do Shopify SEO keywords go?

Shopify names four main places for keywords: page titles, meta descriptions, image alt text and the page’s body content. It also uses the title you enter to generate the page’s main heading, so the product name itself should carry the keyword.

Keep titles to about 60 characters, use the keyword in readable sentences, and never repeat it for its own sake. Google’s spam policies define keyword stuffing as filling a page with keywords to manipulate rankings. See how to write a Shopify meta description, product description examples and Shopify product page optimization.

What if dozens of your products fit the same few keywords?

Give the shared keyword to a collection page, and give each product the detail that sets it apart. The broad term belongs on the page that lists every option. Each product page wins the longer search for its own size, material, use or style.

If you have 50 similar products and every tool keeps handing back the same handful of phrases, it can feel as if the research has run dry. Part of that is the tools. Keyword Planner’s help page says keywords with very low search volumes are not discoverable there, and those small, specific searches are exactly where similar products differ.

1. Put the shared term on the collection. “Hiking backpacks” is one collection page, not the main keyword of twelve products.
2. Name each product by what sets it apart. A 40L waterproof pack and a 20L daypack answer different searches, so each title leads with its own detail.
3. Mine your own reports for the long tail. Search Console queries and the words shoppers type into your store’s search bar include phrases too small for any tool.
4. Merge near-duplicates into variants. If two products differ only in size or color, Shopify lets one product carry them as variants, so one page collects the searches instead of two splitting them.

Where two listings still overlap, let one page lead and link to the other from it. That keeps each keyword with one page, the rule from the section above.

Are long-tail and near me keywords worth targeting?

Yes, when they match what you sell. A long-tail keyword is a longer, more specific search, such as a product type plus a size, a use or a place. Each one is searched less often, but the intent is clearer.

“users are asking longer and more specific questions”

John Mueller, Search Relations, Google, Search Central Blog, May 21, 2025

He was describing AI search, where questions keep getting longer. Product pages that answer the specific questions win those queries.

If you deliver or sell locally, “near me” searches are keywords too. On the store in the case study, four “near me” buyer queries in its target metro went from outside the top 100 on August 17, 2026 to #1, #2, #2 and #2 on September 11:

What that does not prove: rankings change by location and by day, and the first check came after the work began.

What does the first keyword check on a real store find?

Usually a gap between what the store sells and the words on its pages. Two stores checked in September 2026 show the shape of it.

One store sells at a counter and online, with one target city. At the start of the work, the site already ranked for 126 keywords, and 0 of them were local searches. The city it serves was mentioned 0 times on the site.

The fix was catalog work rather than a keyword tool: every one of its 124 products was given a search title and a meta description, along with a product type and image alt text. Source: the store’s data report of September 18, 2026 and its work record of September 17. What it does not prove yet: Search Console had 18 days of data at that point (August 30 to September 16), so there is no after to report.

On a second store, one buyer price question moved from an average position of 9 to 4 after the page title and description were rewritten on August 17, 2026. Source: the store’s search progress report of September 12, 2026.

One query on one page is a reading, not a rule. Average position moves with the day and the searcher’s location, and a better position says nothing about clicks on its own. Both stores point the same way as the steps above: the words buyers use have to be on the page before any tool can measure them.

How does AI search change ecommerce keyword research?

It widens each keyword into a set of related questions. Google’s guide to generative AI search describes query fan-out: the AI runs several related queries at once to build one answer.

The same guide says AI systems understand synonyms and general meanings, so you do not need a page for every phrasing. What you need is a page that answers the follow-up questions a buyer asks: size, fit, use, care, delivery.

Measure it, too. As of September 2026, the generative AI performance reports in Search Console are open to all websites, after a rollout Google completed on August 31. They show which of your pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

See how to rank in AI Overviews and what gets a store named in ChatGPT.

How do you know if your keyword research is working?

When the target queries bring clicks, and the clicks bring orders. Rankings and traffic to your website alone do not pay.

• In Search Console, filter the Performance report to your target queries and watch clicks, impressions and average position over months.
• In Shopify, watch the Google rows in Total sales by referrer. That is where keyword research turns into revenue.
• For new buyers, use the branded queries filter in Search Console, where available, to separate queries for your store’s name from everything else.

On the store in the case study, Search Console clicks went from 45 a week (the week of July 27, 2026) to 213 (the week of August 24). In the latest week there were 178. The pages were rewritten around buyer keywords and the best sellers published to Google in the same weeks, so no single change gets the credit.

For the reports, see which Shopify reports show where sales come from. The wider picture is in ecommerce SEO: how an online store gets found.

What does good keyword research look like for a store?

Every page that matters has one keyword it is built to win, chosen from your own data first and checked against intent. The queries in Search Console start to match the words on your product pages. The Google rows in Shopify’s reports grow, and more of that growth comes from people who had never heard of the store.

That is ecommerce keyword research done for a store rather than for a spreadsheet. It is part of the Shopify SEO work shown in the case study. To see which keywords your store already earns, and which it is missing, run the free Traffic to Sales Check.

The proof, from one store

Straight from the case study, with the source and what it does not prove. See all five results.

Does this sound like your store?

If it does, the service that fixes it is Shopify SEO, done for you. You can see the before and after on one store in the case study.

Want an ecommerce SEO agency to do the research and the fixes? Shopify SEO services. On one store, a month of sales from Google went from $354 to $5,418 in about 90 days. I work remotely with Shopify stores across the US.