Today I'm reviewing more keyword data that I collected during the 2015 Holiday Season, specifically some of my findings about search queries that contained the phrase "engagement ring."
Take note that I said the singular form of the phrase "engagement ring," rather than the plural form "engagement rings." Originally, I was going to review both variations in today's Daily Golden Nugget like I did for my diamond vs. diamonds keyword data, but the data turned up some interesting findings that was too complicated to cover in a single day. I'll show you the "ring" data today and you'll have to compare it to the "rings" data I publish tomorrow.
You'll soon realize that how a person thinks when they are searching for a single engagement ring is quite different than when they want to search for engagement rings in general.
As usual, I need to preface that the data shown below comes from my own network of retail jewelry stores that I track. I anonymize the data and group it accordingly. It comes from ecommerce and non-ecommerce websites.
Top Words That Accompany Searches for "Engagement Ring"
The first pie chart I have for you shows the top 22 words that I found in my search queries.
The top accompanying word with 9.60% of all queries was "diamond." This means that 9.6% of the queries I tracked had the word "diamond" in it. Some examples include:
- diamond engagement ring
- vintage diamond engagement ring
- sapphire and diamond engagement ring
- engagement ring with diamond accents
You'll notice that the words "vintage," "sapphire," "with," and "accents" are all included in the pie chart. Here are the top 40 keywords that I found in my data relating to searches for the phrase "engagement ring":
| KEYWORD | Appearance Percentage |
| diamond | 9.60% |
| vintage | 7.69% |
| halo | 4.88% |
| sapphire | 4.32% |
| {city name} | 3.77% |
| style | 3.44% |
| with | 3.03% |
| round | 2.90% |
| design | 2.78% |
| accents | 2.59% |
| {designer name} | 2.58% |
| {state name} | 2.51% |
| antique | 2.46% |
| filigree | 2.00% |
| rose-gold | 1.78% |
| 3-stone | 1.66% |
| european-cut | 1.51% |
| stores | 1.41% |
| your | 1.28% |
| chocolate | 1.16% |
| gold | 1.16% |
| yellow-gold | 1.16% |
| an | 1.10% |
| platinum | 1.05% |
| custom | 1.02% |
| reproduction | 0.91% |
| 14k | 0.91% |
| designers | 0.87% |
| pear | 0.83% |
| white-gold | 0.82% |
| princess-cut | 0.78% |
| customize | 0.76% |
| solitaire | 0.74% |
| blue | 0.73% |
| brilliant-cut | 0.71% |
| own | 0.65% |
| grey | 0.63% |
| unique | 0.63% |
| mounting | 0.60% |
| online | 0.58% |
Descriptive Words
The next grouping of data shows the common descriptive words I found. Take a look:
The most popular single descriptive word in my data sample was "vintage," as in "vintage engagement ring." The percentages shown above are only a measure of the popularity between this group of keywords rather than the popularity within my entire group. Here are the primary examples of how I found these keywords used:
- vintage engagement ring
- halo engagement ring
- antique engagement ring
- filigree engagement ring
- solitaire engagement ring
- simple engagement ring
- channel set engagement ring
- gothic engagement ring
- classic engagement ring
- art deco engagement ring
- thin engagement ring
- basic engagement ring
Do any of these phrases surprise you? While many jewelers will say that vintage and antique are the same thing, it's apparent that 13% of the people in this group search for the keyword "antique" instead of "vintage." Somewhere on your website you need to have information to attract both phrases.
Similarly, the words "simple," "thin," and "basic" might have the same connotations, but since everyone thinks differently, the only way to attract these people to your website is to have those words used in phrasing on your site.
Gold Types
This next one might surprise a few of you. Take a look:
Rose gold certainly takes the lead as the most searched for type of engagement ring, as in "rose gold engagement ring." How does this reflect the interest in your own store?
Even though many retail jewelers will tell me they don't sell yellow gold successfully in their store, I've been tracking the increasing popularity of searches for "yellow gold" over the last 5 years. Amanda Gizzi, with Jewelers of America, has even reported the increasing popularity of yellow gold in her trend seminars during 2015 JA shows. Additionally, I've spoken with a few jewelry designers who say that they are tired of working in yellow gold since it made a comeback... Yet retail jewelers continue to report low interest.
It seems to me that this is a matter of merchandising. Retail jewelers would probably attract more customers interested in yellow gold engagement rings if they carried them in the store and included them on their website.
In tomorrow's Nugget, you'll see a completely different chart for gold types, which simply has to do with the different point of view when searching for and "engagement ring" vs. groups of "engagement rings."
Custom Design Related Keywords
I put this next one together for everyone involved with making custom engagement rings. Take a look:
This pie chart shows the 5 keywords I was clearly able to identify as relating to the custom design process. The query "custom engagement ring" was most popular. The 40% you see there also includes the query "custom design engagement ring."
Queries including the words "unique" and "ideas" were leading people to the custom design information.
The queries for "hand made" and "tailor made" seemed to be associated with people who are searching for custom jewelry for the first time, but are not yet familiar with the "custom design" nomenclature that's common in the industry. The 13% you see there includes queries for the two word phrase "hand made" and the single word "handmade."
Design Your Own Ring Online
Since I entered the jewelry industry in 2003, retail jewelers have been asking me to install some type of website widget that would allow customers to design their own ring online. Several website companies have created ring builder systems that guide users through the process, allowing the end result to be purchased online, saved and sent to the store, or even printed and brought to the store. This entire concept was popularized by BlueNile.com.
Answering the retailer's call, several ring vendors created their own ring builder widgets. Over the years, I've been trying to figure out if those widgets are worth the monthly subscription cost to have them on a website, and it seems like I finally have my answer.
I captured more than 100,000 phrase permutations that included "engagement ring" and "engagement rings." Within all of that data only 0.054% of the searches included the word "builder."
From that, I can conclude that the general public simply is not aware of the idea of a ring builder, otherwise there would be more searches. I have two suggestions for those of you paying a monthly subscription for such a widget: either cancel the service and save your money; or advertise that you have such a feature on your website.
Different Diamond Shapes
What is the most popular diamond cut that you sell? As I worked through my data, I realized I had enough information to group and report on the different diamond types. Here's what I found:
Remember that this shows the queries that contained the phrase "engagement ring" and each diamond type shown. The percentages shown in the chart are how the number of searches relates to one another, not to my entire data set.
How does this look compared to your own sales? Do you even sell the Old European Cut diamonds in your store? If not, perhaps you should at least mention it on your website. I was also surprised to see the popularity of the pear shaped diamond overtake the princess cut.
Compare your own and let me know.
Those in Financial Need
I could not help but notice a few other price related phrases pop up in my research. The numbers weren't big at all, but they were just enough to get my attention. A combined total of 0.98% of "engagement ring/rings" phrases had these words:
- no credit check
- affordable
- layaway
- sale
- cheapest
- cheap
- discount
I realize that most of you reading this probably don't discount, and as for buying an engagement ring without a credit check, well, I'd invite the person to use their credit card. Anyway, if any of these words fit your business model then you should be using them on your website. Those of you with layaway options should also be mentioning them on your website and in your advertising.
Conclusions
The data in this Nugget should be very important for anyone selling engagement rings. Remember that everything I gave you today was related to the singular version of the phrase "engagement ring." In order to attract more business with any of the keywords shown above, you must include each word adjacent to the phrase "engagement ring" on a few pages of your website.
Although the data will look similar, in tomorrow's Nugget you'll see the subtle differences with how differently people search for the plural version of "engagement rings."
