July 5, 2022

How to Choose the Right SEO Keywords For Your Fashion Brand

With the U.S. fashion market expected to exceed $236 billion by 2027, brands in the industry are doing everything they can to boost their website visibility, reach new audiences, and maximize conversions. 

In addition to social media and other digital marketing efforts, SEO is more valuable than ever before.

Keyword research is at the core of any SEO strategy. Keywords offer a window into how your target audience shops online and aid in crafting content to meet their needs. 

This, in turn, improves your chances of climbing the ranks of organic search to increase visibility on Google and other search engines and capture new revenue.

While keyword research can be time-consuming, it gives you a foundation to craft more quality content. The conclusions you draw from this vital process empower you to optimize your website for users and search engines, ultimately bringing more qualified, conversion-friendly traffic. 

This guide will provide tips for researching and choosing the best SEO keywords for your fashion marketing campaign.

Start With a List of Relevant Questions and Topics

A ton of work goes into effective keyword research, but composing a list of questions and topics related to your business is the best place to start. 

Put yourself in the shoes of one of your fashion customers. Once there, ask yourself the following questions:

• What would you type into the search bar to find your store’s products?
• What do you care about most when shopping for products like yours?
• What are the information gaps and common questions in your niche?
• What is your brand’s voice?
• What titles, meta descriptions, or alt text are your competitors using to entice clicks?

While these are just a few of many possible questions, their function remains the same: Understanding your target audience, what interests them, and the questions they ask. Knowing your customers is at the core of any digital marketing strategy and is especially vital when choosing keywords for an SEO campaign.

Create a List of Fashion Seed Keywords

A list of seed keywords can help you define your niche and identify your direct competitors. 

To find seed keywords for your brand, start by jotting down the phrases that best describe your products and services. This will help break down your business into general topics, letting you pick the most valuable and research-worthy keywords from each. 

Once established, you can build entire strategies around seed keywords and spin your research out into variations and long-tail phrases.

Start by looking at your website’s navigation menus for fashion SEO keywords inspiration. These might include words like “Swimsuits,” “Jackets,” “Dresses,” “Tops,” “Pants,” or “Footwear.” 

Throw a few modifiers into the mix, and your seed keywords might be “Men’s Jackets,” “Women’s Footwear,” “Women’s Swimsuits,” and dozens of other options. 

From there, you can explore some of your website’s subcategories, product filters, and company descriptions, finding even more variations for your list. While these seed keywords might initially seem a little generic, they serve as the foundation for the rest of your keyword strategy. 

Focus on Search Intent

Google wants to provide users with the most helpful and relevant results to their queries. Ideally, the more relevant a certain page is to a search query, the higher it will rank in SERPs.

If you want to rank at the top of SERPs for the keywords that matter most to your fashion brand, your revenue-driving pages must feature useful content that thoughtfully answers searchers’ questions, provides new information, or demonstrates expertise. 

As part of your keyword research, prioritize matching your keyword strategy to the intent of your target audience. Here are the three most common types of search intent:

Informational: This person is hunting for information, typically an answer to a simple question. Common fashion examples might include “What color should I wear with white shoes?”, “What’s the top print for spring?” or “What are the top fashion trends this year?” Keywords with informational intent can help to establish your brand as an industry authority, and authority is a key element of Google’s E-E-A-T Score. 

Commercial Investigation: This person is looking for a specific product, but they’re on the fence about purchasing it. In other words, they’re probably looking for reviews or comparisons first. Keyword examples for fashion brands might include “best cocktail dress,” “Gucci vs. Prada,” or “best heels for date night.” In general, these kinds of keywords help you create content that convinces potential customers that you’re better than the competition.

Transactional: This person is clearly looking to make a purchase. They already know what they want to buy—they just need to decide which brand they prefer. Fashion SEO keywords for transactional intent could include “handbags for sale” or “buy floral dresses.” These types of keywords would mostly tie into your current product line, as they’re used to optimize your product pages and local SEO content.

Important Note: Even if your fashion business is primarily e-commerce, don’t focus solely on transactional intent. You’ll build a more complete sales funnel and stand a better chance of reaching customers at every stage of the buyer journey if you create content that appeals to each type of intent.

Choose Your SEO Keyword Research Tools

Finding the right keywords means finding the right keyword research tool for your business. While there are lots of free and paid alternatives to choose from, we’ll focus on a few of the most popular choices below. 

Google Ads Keyword Planner

As one of the most widely used keyword research tools, Google Ads Keyword Planner is also one of the easiest to jump into, helping to generate a sizable list of words and phrases based on your chosen seed keywords. 

You can evaluate the data using metrics like search volume, competition, and bid ranges, then remove any negative keywords—the keywords you want to exclude from your campaign. 

By the end of the process, you should be left with a shortlist of keywords that are similar to your seed keywords.

That being said, keep in mind the data found in Google Ads is based on advertising forecasts. 

For instance, suppose keyword A has 3,000 monthly queries and keyword B has 1,000. We can’t be too sure about the accuracy of those exact numbers, but we can reasonably assume that the first keyword is likely to bring in more traffic than the second. 

While Google Ads is a powerful keyword research tool that pulls search data directly from Google, the statistics it provides are fairly basic. 

It’s also intended for advertising campaigns and is best used for transactional keywords likely to result in a conversion. You will want to use supplementary tools to assist with research for informational or commercial investigation keywords.

Google Search Console

Separate from Keyword Planner, Google Search Console (GSC) is used to discover the keywords for which your pages already rank, providing insight into the keywords and phrases people are using to find your website. 

GSC helps you establish a baseline for keyword performance. From there, you can use the data you’ve gathered on your existing keywords and separate them into two categories: well-performing keywords vs. lower-performing keywords with potential. 

While Google Search Console can help in several other ways to measure and optimize your fashion website’s performance, effective keyword research is its true strength.

If you’re able to leverage your budget for more powerful keyword research, there are plenty of popular paid tools available online including Semrush, Soovle, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, and Jaaxy. 

However, keep in mind—especially if you’re new to SEO and keyword research—you can save considerable bandwidth and get a tailored keyword strategy by partnering with an experienced, ROI-focused digital marketing agency. 

Examine the Search Volume of Your Keywords

Once you’ve compiled a list of seed keywords and pulled data from your chosen keyword research tool, look at the search volume of each keyword. This is usually measured in the amount of average monthly searches. 

Start by identifying the keywords with the highest search volume since ranking highly for these terms means more potential traffic or conversions for your business. Essentially, the higher the search volume, the greater the number of potential customers there are in SERPs. If your brand is in the top five results for one of these keywords, it could result in substantial revenue results. 

That being said, higher search volume keywords come with a caveat—they’re tougher to rank for, especially if you’re a smaller fashion brand going up against more established competitors. Because of their difficulty, it’s not advised to start your fashion SEO campaign with these types of keywords because of the time and resources required. 

On the other hand, you don’t want to go too low on search volume, as you risk creating content that fails to convert anyway since no one’s searching for it. 

The key is to achieve a balance between keyword volume and difficulty scores. You want keywords that will bring in enough conversions to drive growth without fighting an uphill battle as you work on getting your revenue-driving pages to rank.

Learn to Love Long-Tail Keywords

Remember the advice above about putting yourself in your customers’ shoes? This ties directly into a valuable trick for fashion and e-commerce marketers: using long-tail keywords. 

What are long-tail keywords? They’re targeted search phrases that cater to specific search intent. Usually comprised of multiple words, they tend to have low search volume and low competition but carry higher clickthrough and conversion rates.

This is because they communicate a clear customer need you can solve. When you understand search intent, you can create content to address very specific queries, which is key for any digital marketer wondering how to increase website visibility on Google. 

These types of keywords also have a higher commercial intent, which better positions your brand to capture conversions and revenue from these queries. 

For example, suppose a user is searching for dresses online. A query for “short sleeve dress for parties” indicates a clear intent to find a dress for an event. If you optimize your product pages with this query in mind, you could find your store at the top of SERPs for someone ready to buy a party dress. 

On the other hand, someone searching “dresses” or “short sleeve dresses” is much less clear. They could simply be checking out what’s available or searching out of general interest. 

Long-tail keywords serve to establish some sort of intent, which is key to reaching users at the right phase of their buying journey. Whether you’re targeting someone passively shopping or someone ready to make a purchase, long-tail keywords are key to matching your product pages with their search intent.

Research Your Competition

Investigating the competition is crucial when researching fashion SEO keywords. 

You’ll likely compile an extensive keyword list during the process, so it only makes sense to explore every avenue before prioritizing certain terms. 

Your strategy might include targeting high-volume keywords your competitors aren’t currently ranking for, or you might focus solely on terms your competitors are ranking for—it all depends on your goals, resources, and overarching strategy.

The first strategy is ideal when you want to take advantage of your competitors’ missed opportunities. Meanwhile, the second is a more aggressive strategy that can potentially set you up to compete on SERPs where other fashion brands are already enjoying success.

Work With the Fashion Digital Marketing Experts At VELOX Media

Effective keyword research is key to boosting website visibility and capturing new revenue in the fashion industry. By developing a keen understanding of your core audience, you can set actionable SEO goals and build on them over time. 

But for many fashion brands, finding the bandwidth to manage an organic search campaign in-house can be challenging. 

That’s why businesses that need results trust VELOX Media, the ROI-focused fashion marketing agency.

Our New Revenue Model goes beyond basic keyword research to show you the revenue contributions you can expect from any given keyword and ranking. Our campaigns leverage PPC, SEO, and technical optimizations to boost your website’s visibility in SERPs to help you scale your business.

Contact VELOX today to learn how a targeted, ROI-focused campaign can help elevate your brand to grow your market share and drive revenue.