Research and Leverage High-Volume Keywords for Walmart SEO Optimization

Any good SEO strategy designed to sell more products on Walmart is rooted in mining for more high-volume keywords. This involves using the best Walmart keyword research tools and leveraging those keywords through specific, well-crafted content. Walmart SEO shares many commonalities with Amazon SEO, but they aren’t the same because the two platforms operate.

Understanding the similarities and differences is important, so you don’t waste time on activities that don’t matter. Instead, you spend time where it does matter to get the biggest possible return on your investment. First, it’s important to know how the Walmart SEO algorithm works and it’s also a good idea to use a listing optimization tool to make sure you are going in the right direction.

You first need to research the different types of keyword categories within your product’s ecosystem.

There are six types of keyword terms that you need to research:

1. Brand terms
2. Product terms
3. Competitor terms
4. Substitute product terms
5. Complementary product terms, and
6. Audience terms

Brand terms are self-explanatory. These are terms associated with your brand’s name and how these terms are used in your content. When people search for your brand, specifically, on any eCommerce platform, including Walmart, they are showing intent to purchase.

Think about it. No one searches for a product with a brand name attached unless they intend to purchase that specific product brand. We don’t casually search for something with a brand name. That type of search shows intent.

So, while brand terms searches may not happen all that often, the keyword search volume may be somewhat lower; searches using brand terms will almost always convert at a higher rate than non-brand product searches.

Product terms explain who your product is for, what it does, and the problems it solves. On average, product terms may convert less than brand terms. Still, the overall keyword volume here should be much greater, especially if you offer a variety of products on Walmart to potential buyers.

Substitute product terms include secondary descriptions for your product. For example, if your primary product is blue shoes, you would also want to consider bidding for ‘blue shoes’ so there’s a chance you can win the exact match and the broad match for the product.

When you’re isolating these substitute product terms, think of all of the ways that you could search for a product in a keyword research tool and research those terms for volume and competitiveness to determine if they’re worth the fight.

Complementary product terms are terms people would naturally search for along with their search for your product. For instance, if you were selling sunglasses as your primary product, people may also search for sunglasses cases, sunglasses cleaner, and so on.

Take the time to think about the complementary products that naturally go along with your primary product. Who knows, you might even come up with some new opportunities to package products within your Walmart store to create bundles that people are already showing you that they’re interested in by how they search!

Audience terms cover the full spectrum of words that people in your universe of potential customers are using. Unfortunately, this spectrum of terms is very broad, so any chance of conversion is relatively slim.

Audience terms are typically used to place individual advertising units on website content rather than in generalized search or prepping for pay per click. But you should still explore them because you never know when you might find a needle in the haystack!

Once you’ve worked through all of these terms, the next thing to do is develop a seed list.

Because there’s a limit on the number of words that you can reasonably rank for when it comes to eCommerce SEO, it’s valuable to do some refinement before you work on optimization. This is why it is important to get in the mind of your potential customer.

You now have a decent notion of what words they’d use to search for your product in the major search engines like Google. Take that one step further and put yourself in their shoes. Are there some keywords on your seed lists or preliminary lists you can reasonably eliminate? Are some of those terms more boring or less descriptive than others?

Take a little time to pare down your list and then do some deeper data analysis, including:

1. Keyword categories – Focus only on the types of keywords most closely related to your product(s) and audience terms. If there is a category that’s a stretch, don’t hesitate to scratch that one off the list.
2. Competitive analysis – It’s never a bad idea to take one last look at the competition as well. Ensure that your keywords have a moderate level of competition and a reasonable keyword search volume. Also, go through your lists carefully to see if there’s a hidden gem that you didn’t previously notice!
3. Search Landscape – Search for the keywords you isolate through this analysis and do a few searches using them on the Walmart website. Since semantic results are a part of their search engine, you may be surprised to see some products you may not have expected. Are these products closely related to yours? Are the keywords you isolated properly descriptive, or are they a little off base?
4. Semantic Groupings – Grouping keywords semantically means to group keywords that have a similar meaning or would be naturally used together in spoken or written language. If you have a strong idea of how your customers talk – and the words they use when searching. Go ahead and kick out the semantic keywords with low search volumes, as they likely won’t be worth your effort!

Image Courtesy: Wondershare

When most people think about high-volume keyword research, the first tools that come to mind are Ahrefs and SEMRush. That’s understandable. Both tools are very powerful and can help you perform the type of in-depth keyword research that keeps you ahead of the curve in planning content and outlining your product pages.

Both tools can also be very expensive! Many of the most powerful features of tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush exist behind expensive subscription paywalls. If you’re looking to stay on a budget with keyword research – or are digging into it in earnest for the first time – two free tools are very powerful and too often overlooked: Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends.

To use Google Keyword Planner (GKP), you first need to sign up for a Google Ads account. The more seasoned Walmart sellers of you reading this already have Google Ads accounts, as you’ve likely experimented there at one time or another. If not, sign up for one to get access to Google Keyword Planner.

Keyword Planner lives under the “Planning” section of the Tools header within Google Ads.

Within GKP, there are two primary tools available, Keyword Discovery and Keyword Search Volume & Forecasts.

For the sake of discussion, we’ll assume you’ve already done a lot of the keyword research and listing we mentioned above and are coming to Google to double-check your work and make sure volume numbers match up with the other tools you’re using. Or, in some cases, to get an initial idea of volume to double-check on paid tools later on.

Keyword Search Volume & Forecasts is especially valuable if you want to search for a large list of keywords at the same time to pull back forecasted search volumes. Enter your list and click on Get Started to pull back the numbers.

Google will provide you with an estimation of how many impressions and clicks you would receive for the keywords you enter. It also pulls back estimates of how expensive clicks are for these keywords if you do CPC campaigns. This estimation is a nice snapshot to help double-check your work against the data you receive from paid tools.

The initial list of keywords you receive from this search is raw data. However, Google offers a few filters to help you hone in based on the data you need. For example, you can filter down the raw data by Locations, Language, Search Networks, and Date Range.

Beyond these initial filters, you can also make some determinations on exact match versus broad match by filtering everything down further for the keyword results you receive to exactly match the term you’re interested in, or to be more general and not an exact match.

Play around with these filters to see if the keywords are more popular in some places than others. Then, find out if your efforts would best be spent on specific search engines to drive traffic to Walmart. And also, if any of the keywords were related to a product trend that’s no longer relevant, and therefore won’t be worth your time! Did we mention you should be using a keyword research tool? 😉

There are endless steps you can take to refine your Walmart SEO by leveraging your high-volume keywords through design, placement, timing, and more.

But, for now, let’s take a look at the ten best practices which are agreed upon by seemingly everyone who writes on Walmart SEO:

1. Make your product headlines unique to Walmart.
2. Thoroughly research keywords you use in product descriptions.
3. High-quality images make all the difference for your listings.
4. Make your key features section impactful, but get to the point.
5. Be fair in your pricing and tweak it often.
6. Always offer free 2-day shipping.
7. Keep your product stock replenished
8. Make third-party, rich content a priority.
9. Lean in on customer service

The most important thing here to think about is making the algorithm’s job easy. You should add as many relevant keywords as possible for the algorithm to monitor within your product description while still ensuring that the product description makes sense. It’s easy to go overboard and “stuff” your product description with too many keywords to the point it becomes nonsensical.

Be careful to protect that balance so your writing doesn’t come off as robotic.

A great way to find more keywords to add to your product descriptions is to search them natively on Walmart. Type in your primary keyword and see what keywords the predictive search algorithm sends to you. It’s reasonable to assume Walmart has patterned this predictive search feature against what Google offers, so it’s fair to be confident the keywords you’re given are worth using.

Also, pay close attention to the “Related Keywords” that surface when you do these native searches on Walmart.com. They might signal a handful of good keywords to use as long as they make sense for the nature of your product and how you typically position it otherwise.

There’s a scenario here that should make you cringe. Someone finds your product through a search on Walmart.com. Your product description has them hooked. You did a great job with the key features and wrote compelling copy, which leads the potential customer to add the product to their cart to check out. But, as they click, they get that fateful message, “This item is currently out of stock.”

This scenario – and the damage it causes not only to your brand’s reputation but your bottom line – is avoidable, but it takes some planning and consideration.

Make sure your best-sellers are always fully stocked, so there’s no chance someone ready to buy can’t. If you don’t, there’s a substantial risk Walmart will punish the search position of your product, and the algorithm will hamper your ability to earn more casual purchases in the future.

If you’ve read the 4,400 or so words preceding what you’re reading right now – and bless you for reading this far – you’re probably sick of reading words on a page and would like to see something else to keep you engaged.

The engagement pieces we use to keep people locked in and continuing to read are called “rich content.”

Rich content can include:

• Infographics
• Charts
• Videos
• GIFs
• Visual Comparisons

The idea of rich content pieces is to provide a visual element to the description you’re building around products or your brand. If you have the time and technical know-how to create these in-house, it’s a great idea.

You’re the best person to build supplements to your product listings etc., that match your brand’s visual identity. If you don’t, that’s fine. There are plenty of talented third-party firms and agencies out there which can help you build rich content.

Make sure the work they do fits the bill, however. The last thing you want to do with rich content – especially if you’re paying for it – is confusing potential customers when they’re becoming educated about a product you offer.

There are a few more things about keyword rankings that support high-volume Walmart keywords to make them even more impactful:

1. Proper Leveraging of Artificial Intelligence Tools (Such as DataHawk’s keyword tracking tool)
2. Active Backlinking Practices, and
3. Knowing When to Make Micro-Pivots

There are so many good Artificial Intelligence-driven tools out there now to help Walmart sellers optimize their workflows that it’s hard to know which one to choose. Of course, we’re a little biased here at DataHawk and think our AI-driven tools are as good as any on the market and give sellers a wealth of data to use in making decisions, but we’re certainly not the only player on the market.

Take some time to research AI tools out there and see which one makes the most sense for you, given your current goals, budget, and preferred way of working. Working with a tool that provides complementary information to help you make better decisions is a great ally when you’re struggling with what to do next!

Many eCommerce sellers – including Walmart sellers – see backlinking as a purely passive process, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The common mindset is that it’s great to get the occasional link back to your product listings if a product is added on a “best of” or “holiday gift ideas” list and linked back to you. But that this is the only way to get links. It isn’t!

When you shift your backlinking practices from passive to active, a new world of possibilities opens up. For example, instead of waiting to land on lists, reach out to people who have written lists and explain why your product should be on the list rather than a competitor’s. Or use a link checker to find broken links on someone’s high-ranking list and offer your product as an alternative, so they link to active products with responsive sellers.

Also, if you have a separate website for your brand, ensure that the brand website is linking to your product listings on Walmart as often as possible and vice versa. This practice is a great way to pass SEO value back and forth, giving each of your keywords a better chance to rank not only within Walmart search but externally as well.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This axiom holds in trying to sell on Walmart. If your products just aren’t selling, and you’ve tried everything we’ve outlined in this article to properly position your high volume keywords, and drive awareness to your brand, sometimes the best thing you can do is make a micro pivot.

A micro pivot allows you to try something new that’s closely related to your current product and still within your niche, but enough of a separation that it’s an experiment. To identify a product for a micro pivot, find something related to your current product mix that wouldn’t require a full strategy overhaul.

Try listing that product for a while and running some campaigns around it. Then, if people are biting, give it a bigger presence on your website, or feature the product listings. You have less invested when you do a small pivot like this; therefore, you have less to lose. And if it goes well, you may have found a new opportunity that will allow you to make a full pivot later!