Quick Guide to eCommerce SEO

Get your products discovered

Your products are unique and amazing, right? Let your customers know that by making your product descriptions original and unique. If there’s a feature, benefit, or material that makes your product stand out, this needs to be communicated to your customers.

Let’s say you’re selling a shirt made from ethically sourced organic cotton. These important product details need to be included in the product title and description to narrow down search results. In doing this, it’ll be easy to target longtail keywords as often, the longer the search term, the higher the buyer intent will be. The customer knows exactly what they’re looking for, and you’re giving them the details they need to make an informed buying decision.

If you’re sourcing product information from suppliers or manufacturers, don’t take the easy route by copying the product description you’re provided with.

First off, the way search engines work means they don’t like duplicate content. Secondly, this gives you a chance to apply your brand tone of voice and personality to your product descriptions.

When it comes to your keywords, make sure they’re placed where they need to be. For example:

•   In your title tag
•   One in the product title
•   Once or twice in the product description
•   One in the image alt tag
•   Once in the meta description

Give your customers confidence

Your product descriptions need to instil confidence in your customers. To do this, you need to include rich, accurate, and quality product data coupled with keyword research.

With speed and ease being so important, customers should instantly be able to know what they’re going to get from the product. This is where you should focus on the features and benefits.

Outline what the key features are, and how the customer will benefit from the products you’re offering. Again, if we’re looking at the ethically sourced organic cotton shirt, the description might be as follows:

“This ethically sourced organic cotton shirt is lightweight and will keep you cool in the hot summer months. The quality organic cotton is machine washable and fast-drying, so it’s an ideal holiday accessory.”

From the get-go, the description outlines the product features and what that ultimately means if they buy it.

Very high-resolution images can sometimes hurt your page load time. Because this is an important ranking factor, make sure your PIM or DAM has an auto-resizing functionality built-in as standard. Failing that, you should use re-sizing apps. This means you won’t compromise the quality of your pictures, and you’ll be able to conserve precious bandwidth.

Here are some bitesize tips to increase the SEO health of your images and digital assets:

• Give your image files descriptive and SEO-friendly names. Include keywords related to the products.
• Always include alt text. Providing a textual description of the image is important for accessibility and SEO. Use keywords as naturally as possible.
• Compress images to reduce file size without compromising on quality.
• Videos are a great way to increase the length of time spent on your website. This will help increase your overall SEO authority, another very important ranking factor!
• Provide keyword-rich transcriptions or closed captions. This enables search engines to index the text across search results.

Top tips and tricks for product page super SEO

Structured data

Search engines love structured data, so you need to make sure your product categories and attributes are on point. This will help your customers find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.

Your site’s structure should be reflected in your URL slugs (the exact address of a page on your site) and it needs to be something your customers will understand (so not just random symbols!). Defining unique URL slugs for your product pages also gives you scope to include your target keywords, which will improve your SEO ranking.

Examples of structured data for eCommerce SEO vary. Typically, it includes product schema markup (product name, description, product brand, pricing, product description), customer reviews and rating schema.

In addition, Google’s bots will crawl and index your web pages looking at breadcrumb schema, organization schema (things like company name, logo, and contact information), and any promotions your business is currently offering.

Enriching each element of structured data will present Google with machine-readable product content. As a result, Google will better understand your product listings. Google will reward you by ranking your products higher. It’s a win-win.

Page structure

Trustworthiness and familiarity will be something else your customers (and search engines) will be on the lookout for. Customers expect to see a familiar product page layout when they land on your site. Here’s a great example from our customer, FurnitureBox:

Everything the customer needs to know can be found in one place. From price, shipping, and delivery information, to reviews and product recommendations with a clear call to action.

If your product page has a familiar feel to it, you’re less likely to get bounce rates. Importantly, the fewer bounce rates you have, the more authority your site will have from the search engine’s perspective.  Think of it as a reciprocal relationship.

Meta titles & descriptions

These are going to be the first bits of information your customers will see. They need to be clear and concise, so customers know exactly what to expect when they click through on your product page. Use your keywords in the meta title and longtail keywords in the description to guarantee a higher click-through rate.

Here are the fundamental tips for optimum meta titles and descriptions:

• Keep it concise. Meta titles should be between 50-60 characters. When it comes to meta descriptions, the sweet spot is 150-160 characters.
• Use relevant keywords in both the meta title and description. Place important keywords closer to the beginning.
• Be descriptive. Accurately describe the content of the page with features and benefits where possible.
• Be unique. Each page on your eCommerce website should have a unique meta title and description to avoid being penalized for duplicate content.
• Consistency is key. Ensure both the meta title and description align with the content of the page. You want to create a cohesive customer experience.
• Limit the use of special characters to avoid making your listings look spammy.

User-generated content

This is another one of Google’s ranking factors. Get your customers to leave reviews as it’s super beneficial from a ranking perspective (as well as a sales perspective!).

Customer reviews give your customers a true representation of the product and will improve the user experience.

In addition to this, it also means your customers build a more personable relationship with your brand and products.

 The benefits of super SEO

Product information management platforms like Pimberly enable you to easily create and manage enriched product content. Because all product information and digital assets are stored in one place, your SEO teams have a central hub to work from.

Make SEO work for you and enrich your product data to achieve:

•   Better product discovery
•   Improved conversion rate optimization
•   Increased click-through rates
•   Lower bounce rates
•   Amazing customer experience