How can I pick keywords and target them with my ecommerce site?

hi guys, so i've got my first 'real' website that will serve a purpose, i'll be selling laptops, phones, etc electronics.

I'm using opencart which has some built in seo thing, which basically lets me make my links like mysite.com/this-is-the-seo-url, as well as providing the same for categories and etc. I'm not actually sure what the point of this is but i'll just assume it's good.

Now I've had a look at the main small competitor on my main product (android tablets) and they seem to target words like cheap android tablet, budget tablet, 7 inch tablet, etc words.

How do I go about choosing the words that will lead to best conversions, and then how will I 'use' them? i have no clue about any keyword research tools, and the one every site/article recommends (seomoz) is insanely priced for a broke student such as myself.

I also had a sinister thought of copying that sites keywords and then buying bad SEO gigs for them from fiverr to kill their site and i'll take their place, that may sound unethical and it is, but it seems to be something on the table (someone else suggested it to me)

please help me reddit seo gurus!

[–]deyterkourjerbs 

You could setup an AdWords campaign with the root keywords as phrase match or modified broad match to see what variants get traffic/clicks/conversions. Google's AdWords Tool isn't going to give you accurate figures.

But failing that, just search for keywords using AdWords Tool and including "Android Tablet" or whatever to give you words closer to your keywords.

You could use a tool like Market Samurai which has a semi-useful "SEO Competition" function (it looks at how many webpages in the Bing database have the keyword in the title). Or a tool like LongTailPro that does the same for Google. Not as big a deal as you'd suspect because Bing's index is probably the same size as Google's.

LongtailPro gives you something like this (KW: Android Tablet, less than 250 UK searches/month, less than 800 pages in Google with the keywords in the title (as written).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApRBgNqvo_PbdG8yZldJUEMxN0FwbmZURTZUMVNkZEE&usp=sharing

[–]qaiszer0[S]

thanks for the list, are the green highlighted ones your recommended ones? (i've tried market samurai before and it is ridiculously slow, longtail doesn't seem to do much if you don't have an seomoz account to put in or maybe i use it wrong)

[–]el_perro_del_mar

Seriously bro don't even bother starting a site in that niche. You will be outperformed tenfold

[–]qaiszer0[S] o

does it really matter? i just want to get a small piece of the pie, i hope for cheap android tablets to be my main selling point, and maybe shifting the odd high ticket item if i can get the big name suppliers in the UK. i think my domain name is pretty good too..

[–]ChickenNuggutz

You SHOULD set up a gadget blog, make posts such as "Top 10 Laptops for teenagers" then link your products along with some amazon products linked to your affiliate link. You'll be making money either way! :) Plus top 10s/lists are usually highly trafficed. Utilize social media.

[–]tonyhoang [score hidden]

SEO Process 1 website

Market research and keyword selection

Establish business goals: SEO is a tool to achieve business goals.

Understanding the market: What are the trends, what opportunities for you?

Study their competition is doing, SEO keywords, SEO strategy?

Keyword research: what customers search on Google for the keyword you do?

Optimize your website (on-site & on-page)

Optimize your overall website and the elements within each site.

Optimized external website (off-site & off-page)

Building links within the site

The link with the outside world

Links from social networks

Measurement, evaluation and adjustment

Measuring business performance, increase or reduce traffic, keyword rankings on Google, alexa rank, number of links, resources put links, keyword trends, competitors have to change anything, since it you will make adjustments accordingly.

The first step is the most important because it affects the final outcome of the SEO campaign. The process is repeated continuously throughout the SEO process. Keywords can vary depending on the market. How do can change depending on your performance evaluation. Related Posts : http://102.bz/2zotHX

[–]mapleleafr

please don't use negative SEO on their site, work hard and good things will happen you don't need to be lazy

[–]farting_flowers 1 point 1 day ago

I like to use a word generator. Basically it's a piece of software that makes shit up and then you target that shit.

For example, Moz and Searchengineland are both excellent shit generators. They make shit up, they post the shit to their blogs and then people give them money in exchange for the made up shit.

It's a very profitable business.

[–]qaiszer0[S]

i'm not quite with you on the shit generator part, can you elaborate please?

[–]deyterkourjerbs

He's being an arsehole. Basically.

[–]farting_flowers -1 points 1 day ago

can you elaborate please?

I can elaborate on that shit but it'll cost you U$ 2500 consulting fee per minute.