The home page, category pages, and priority content pages are frequently optimised by ecommerce companies as part of their on-site SEO strategy. In fact, they frequently commit so much time and effort to these high-funnel pages that ecommerce product page SEO is relegated to the background.
The reasoning behind this is that products are often excellent instances of long-tail keywords in and of themselves. It also requires less work to get them to rank for their own product name naturally.
While this is correct, it also results in a missed opportunity. A well-optimized product page attracts highly-targeted, conversion-ready visitors from the bottom of the funnel (BoFu). That kind of traffic, the kind where your buyer already knows exactly what they want, is priceless.
It's not nearly as simple as "set it and forget it." Here's how to ensure that your product pages get all of the high-quality organic traffic they deserve.
The Basics of SEO for Ecommerce Product Pages
Before we get into the more technical aspects, I'll go over the fundamentals. Read our executive's guide to search engine optimization for a high-level overview of SEO.
Points to Remember
- Bottom-of-the-funnel shoppers who already know what they want are attracted to a well-optimized product page.
- In URLs, title tags, meta descriptions, and product descriptions, use your chosen keyword(s).
- Use product photographs and videos to make your message more vivid.
- Reviews, product suggestions, and mobile optimization can all help to improve the digital consumer experience.
Keyword research for ecommerce product pages
Because keyword research is relatively simple, people frequently underestimate the difficulty of ecommerce product page optimization. However, here is where completing your homework pays off big time.
If you believe your product is appropriate for one and only one search query, you'll miss out on lower-volume keyword chances. Long-tail keywords are so valuable that we developed an entire post about them.
Don't rely on the product name to generate the greatest results, and fill in your title tags manually. Instead, conduct keyword research on that product and create a seed list that includes every potential name your buyer might use to find it. You might be shocked to realise that customers use a variety of search terms to find your product. If certain keywords have a lot of searches, you should include them in your page's optimization approach.
Even if you use multiple variations of the product name in your keyword strategy, you'll probably be able to target more long-tail inquiries for that product page.
Keyword samples for product pages
Brown leather sofas, for example, are available from an international furniture retailer such as Article. According to Ahrefs, "brown leather sofa" receives 1,800 Google searches each month in the United States. It's not bad. However, a quick search reveals that "brown leather couch" receives 3,100 monthly searches. "Tan leather sofa" receives 1,200 points.
Consider your options as thoroughly as possible. What would someone search for if they weren't looking for your brand ("Article leather sofa") but for your product? Consider adjectives, attributes, features, colours, the value proposition of the product ("cheap leather sofa"), or the problem it solves.
Use keyword research tools to find these descriptive terms. You may discover a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to target a new consumer in the "awareness" phase who is also on the verge of making a buy.
URL of an ecommerce product page
The product page URL should be your first stop once you've determined your target keywords. Include SEO-friendly urls that are obvious, straightforward, and relevant as much as feasible.
Including a keyword in your URL is recommended. It's even more crucial to ensure that the URL clearly states what the consumer can expect. This usually indicates that the product name will be the URL handle. You might need to change the product name to make the handle more user-friendly, which is fine. What exactly isn't acceptable? Product numbers, auto-generated nonsense, extremely long URLs, and URLs that don't make sense for the product are all examples of URLs that aren't appropriate for the product.
Aim for "speaking URLs," which inform the user exactly what to expect when they visit that page. Tiffany provided the following example:
Title tags for product pages
We said before that you shouldn't just auto-populate your title tag with the product name and move on. Setting the website to auto-populate the tag with the product name, or integrating a naming convention into a spreadsheet, is still a terrific method to cover a lot of ground quickly. It's also preferable to having no tags at all (which would be very bad).
Auto-populating keeps the pace going for websites with thousands of products. From there, you may fine-tune each tag based on its priority.
What distinguishes a fantastic title tag? A title tag, on the other hand, should be descriptive for search engines and intriguing for customers.
It will almost certainly feature the product name first and foremost, but there is more flexibility for extra keywords. You can use that priority real estate for a different keyword if folks aren't searching for the complete product name or past a particular level of specificity. Consider what would happen if Tiffany's clients didn't search for "Tiffany atlas watch" in the first place.
While it's difficult to write for clicks when space is limited, don't overlook conversion opportunities. Incorporate pain point keywords into the title tag of your goods. Alternatively, to increase click-through rate while keeping your keyword aims in mind, employ attractive adjectives.
Consider altering "Italian Leather Handbag" to "Chic Italian Leather Handbag" if "Italian Leather Handbag" is in your title tag. This helps you to keep the keyword integrity and give the customer a more interesting picture. It also achieves this without taking up a lot of extra space in the title tag.
Meta descriptions for product pages
The meta description, on the other hand, provides far more versatility than the title tag when it comes to writing for clicks. Here are some simple click-through-rate-improving tips:
- Keep it as short as possible.
- A brief description of the product
- Make a strong case for your product.
- Tell us about the problem that the product solves.
- Consider who the customer will be when they wear or utilise the item.
Because the meta description isn't a direct ranking element, too many SEOs overlook it. Please don't forget to fill it out. Keep in mind that this is similar to your ad copy. Write for the sake of getting clicks! Google will write a meta description for you if you don't specify one. Here's an example of what it might look like:
Given that Google produced the description, it could have been far worse. However, if a human had done it, it would have been far better.
Product image alt text
Google is really good at recognising photos. But why take chances with your life? Image alt text is a fundamental SEO best practise for improving photo SEO. Make sure that the alt tags on each of your ecommerce product page photos are descriptive.
Overviews and headings for products
Your H1 will continue to follow the trend of telling the user exactly what they'll get (the specific product). Here, too, write for clicks, using warmth and brand personality whenever possible.
A product overview or "brief description," followed by a lengthy overview with more information, is fairly popular on ecommerce websites. While it's critical for your text to shine in all of these areas – employing your brand voice and convincingly presenting the goods — the brief description is where you should truly try to lure the customer. Make it very clear what the buyer will receive and why it is ideal for them. Mention the product's most unique or intriguing features. You can go into further depth in your long description, but the first step is to ensure that the customer wants to read on.
Make your own product descriptions.
Duplicate product descriptions are often the bane of an ecommerce site's life for a variety of reasons. This is especially true when there are thousands upon thousands of goods with minor differences. Some instances are as follows:
Consider how many different SKUs you'd have to generate merely to get through every bolt you provide if you're a home improvement retailer with an online store like Lowe's.
You'll have even more fun if you're a major auto parts shop with an online store that offers parts that change depending on the make, model, and year of the automobile.
When possible, write extensive, original descriptions for all product pages as your first and best line of defence.
If you copy and paste manufacturer descriptions, your page will look almost exactly like thousands of others. As a result, you miss out on a chance to distinguish your brand or offer a distinctive digital customer experience.
Write for the persona you want to reach.
If you want your content to connect with customers, you must first learn about them. Learn about your different audience segments and design a buyer persona for each one. Check out these in-depth buyer persona examples for ideas on how to create more tailored content.
Tell your target audience about the history of your items. What is the purpose of your brand? What sets your items apart from the competition, and how do they fit into the lives of your customers?
You should also give any technical data that would help the buyer make an informed selection, presenting the material in an orderly, clear, and user-friendly manner. You'll want to include a call to action that encourages them to buy not just the product, but also your ecommerce business. Oh, and you'll want to accomplish it all with the appropriate brand voice.
So, as much as ecommerce SEO, unique, descriptive product descriptions are about ecommerce marketing and storytelling.
But what about when that's not the case? Let's go back to Lowe's for a moment.
Is it really essential to provide an entirely different product description for the 12-inch x 10 inch threaded bolt versus the 12-inch by 8-inch threaded bolt? Most likely not.
Do products require their own landing pages?
If you have several landing pages for comparable products, consider whether customers search for those items differently. You can use a template in that instance. You should, however, strive to make your page's content as unique as possible. With your wording, mimic how customers search for each unique product.
However, there are situations when the product version does not require its own landing page for SEO purposes.
This is most often the case with clothes sizes, colour variants, a slight variance in a model number, and any other variety that the client would not normally look for when searching for the parent product. In that instance, you can focus all of your SEO efforts on the main product and make the variants available as alternatives.
What if clients would rather see the variant on its own page? With rel=canonical tags, you'll need to consolidate your SEO mojo. As a result, the parent page becomes the canonical URL.
There's a lot more to learn about this subject. As a result, we produced a separate post about the best practises for lead generation landing pages.
Content that is duplicated
On ecommerce sites, duplicate material is sadly common. Even if you make every attempt to produce distinct product descriptions, it can happen. Duplicate material can be caused by a variety of factors, including:
- Faceted search
- URL parameters for pagination on ecommerce category pages
- URLs with uppercase and lowercase letters
Duplicate material that isn't fixed properly harms ecommerce SEO. It causes Google's algorithm to be perplexed as to which URL should be served to consumers. Link equity is also diluted by several versions of the same URL. Because referring domains and backlinks are so important to SEO, neglecting duplicate content concerns can have a significant negative impact on your organic search results.
Using both crawling tools and human eyes, an SEO audit will be able to check for each instance of duplicate content one by one. Adding the right URL canonicalization is often all that is required.
Check out these resources for a more in-depth look at frequent issues:
- Checklist for SEO
- How do you do a content audit?
Images of high-quality products
It's time to get back to selling once you've gotten out of the weeds with duplicate material. Because online shoppers can't see your things in person, photographs on your product pages are essential.
Your customers will view the product and form an opinion about it in a fraction of the time it takes them to read and process content. Make a strong first impression with a set of professionally photographed, high-resolution product photographs. Up close, from a variety of perspectives, in use, and as part of a scene Allow the customer to zoom in on the item as well.
Look to Harley Davidson for inspiration. There's a mix of artful, helpful close-up views and more exciting and action-oriented pictures of the motorcycle in use for each motorcycle. The latter is crucial for Harley Davidson to connect with their clients and the lifestyle they want to live.
Videos of products
Showing the product in motion can also be a very effective technique to demonstrate how the product will fit into the consumer's life. Videos allow you to elicit emotion through more than simply imagery. They can also be purely functional, demonstrating how to use a product to an individual.
Determine whether or not product videos will help people understand each product or your brand better. Also, establish a strategy for implementing and optimising the content. Apple makes product videos a seamless element of the page, with the most prominent video flowing into the following piece of material.
Product recommendations that are similar
After you've completed the most important tasks, don't forget about the small yet effective additions. These can improve the usability of the product page, its conversion rate, or your website's average order value. A "Customers Also Viewed" or "You Might Also Love" feature that displays similar products is one such option.
This not only improves the consumer experience, but it also allows you to add useful internal links!
This function is used by ASOS to direct customers to similar styles at the bottom of each product page.
Furthermore, Amazon's "Customers Also Viewed" function constantly crunches real-time data about what each consumer is looking for next. Apple even has a tool that allows you to compare different models and get a high-level overview of their primary features.
This tool is a terrific method to let your client discover something they weren't even looking for, whether you auto-generate related product ideas or manually chose them based on your customer's style or the add-ons they might like to buy. It's a technique to increase ecommerce sales while simultaneously delighting customers.
Customization possibilities
Make sure that any product variants or customization options you provide are user-friendly, bug-free, and visually appealing. Is it better to use a faceted navigation, a checkbox, or a drop-down menu? It's the finest option for you if it's the simplest option for your customer. Make sure that everything that has to change, including the price, product images, pertinent data, and URL handle, changes when the customer clicks on the new variant. Manually click on each variant during the page editing or QA process to debug any probable issues.
Product evaluations
Product reviews are useful for more than simply ecommerce SEO. They're also quite beneficial to folks. Allow customers to leave detailed reviews. If applicable, include photos. Also, don't be hesitant to ask for additional information that may be useful to other customers.
Customers on Rent the Runway, for example, can (and frequently do) include their height, weight, measurements, clothing size, age, the occasion for which they wore the dress, and a photo in their review. Customers of Rent the Runway will benefit from this enhanced user experience, as they will be able to look for customer reviews from people with bodies similar to their own.
They'll also have extra background to help them assess whether they'd be annoyed by the identical problem the consumer said. For example, the definition of "too short" may differ depending on whether the consumer wore the dress to work or on a night out.
Allowing consumers to identify online reviews as beneficial, asking customers to score comparative items on a specific set of features, or taking out and emphasising the most helpful positive and negative reviews are all excellent ways to aid customers in navigating through a huge number of reviews.
Vibrant snippets
Don't let all of your positive feedback go to waste. To display review information right in the SERP, use rich snippet markup. This makes each product stand out in the search results and/or takes up more space.
To guarantee you get the most out of your rich snippet implementation, use Google's Structured Data Testing Tool.
Page loading time
Because your product pages are likely to include specific functionality, they're also likely to execute scripts that slow the site down. Test the speed of each product page template separately, as well as more generically before and after any large-scale adjustments. You're not exempt if you're using an out-of-the-box ecommerce platform with plugins or apps. You'll have to accomplish that part on your own because these apps are often developed separately and haven't been verified for speed.
Don't miss out on our in-depth guide to reducing page load time.
Optimization for mobile
Use Google's mobile-specific page speed testing tool. You can also measure the commercial impact of a speedier site by using the Google mobile testing tool.
Another area where product pages should be reviewed for functionality is mobile search engine optimization. Validate the appearance and usability of each product page using cross-browser testing. Each product variant can be accessed by clicking on it. Make a comprehensive test buy and test every clickable piece.
Google has a tool that will tell you if your site is mobile-friendly in general. You may also look at your site's Google Search Console Mobile Usability Report.
The structure of an ecommerce website
The architecture of your ecommerce site is the method of organisation that directs both users and search engines to the appropriate pages at the appropriate times. Each level can be compared to a desktop folder or subdirectory. You'll partition a category folder into subfolders if it becomes too difficult to navigate. The hierarchical organisation of your website is used by search engines to assess how authority and relevancy are assigned to each page. Higher-level pages are given more weight.
As a result, the SEO community has a rule of thumb: clients should be able to access your products in no more than three clicks.
However, the amount of things you sell has a big impact on this. Getting the customer to the product as fast and rationally as feasible is a better rule of thumb. If it takes you more than three clicks to organise your goods into the appropriate category and subcategories, trust that the user-friendly experience is ideal for your SEO.
Use internal links and breadcrumbs.
Don't abandon the search engines and clients once they've arrived at their destination. Give them the ability to view the path that led them to the product, regardless of whatever route they use to get there. Also, the opportunity to return to any higher-level category on that path with ease. Breadcrumbs are an important part of internal linking best practises since they improve your website's crawlability and usability.
Your URL path should also be user-friendly and represent your architecture. It should resemble the user's journey to the product. URLs like www.example.com/mens-novelty-sloth-socks are less useful than URLs that are consistent and readable, such as this:
www.example.com/mens/mens-socks/mens-novelty-sloth-socks
Make sure that each "level" in the URL corresponds to the hierarchical level of your product. (The URL www.example.com/product is troublesome since it is in the middle of a high-level category.)
Seasonally manage product pages
Do you want to run a sale or put together a seasonal collection? Put each product on its own seasonal page. This will help you to more effectively use SEO and PPC ads, email blasts, and merchandising spots on your website to bring customers to the sale pages or collection.
For example, the hero graphic on Main Depot's home page is changed to reflect the current promotion:
They also include a link to the page, as well as various different filtered alternatives.
Madewell, on the other hand, has its own page dedicated to their summer collection rather than a promotion. This serves as a good reminder that well-curated seasonal or themed collections don't always have to be sales-driven. Occasionally, curation removes a significant barrier for the customer and assists them in finding what they were looking for.
Target follows a similar strategy, presenting gift suggestions for various occasions regardless of whether or not every item in the collection is on sale.
When you do decide to add seasonal pages, make sure to publish them as soon as feasible. The longer the page is live, the more likely you are to get better organic search results. In other words, in the spring, launch a product page for the summer collection. There's no need to wait till summer.
Additionally, make a plan for what you'll do with the page once the season or promotion is over. There are two primary alternatives available to you:
1. Remove the page and redirect it.
You can delete the page and 301 redirect it to a comparable page or a higher-level category once the season or promotion is complete. This provides an option for users who, for example, click on an old link contained in an email. What you don't want is for visitors to locate it in the search results, click on it, and end up on an outdated, expired sale page.
2. Update the page's content
If the offer is going to be repeated, you might want to keep a static page up. People will be able to refer to the promotion at any time. You can also keep your team from having to reinvent the wheel the next time the offer is running. If you choose this option, make sure to share any updates at the top of the page. "This promotion is currently over," for example, if the promotion is over. But don't worry, it'll be back shortly! To be the first to know about it, join our email list."
You can also offer a link to a static sale page if your site has one. Then tell them to have a look at the rest of your offers. That's an excellent technique to convey the information the buyer requires. Give them another task to complete on the website. It also allows you to increase the page's SEO worth over time.
There are situations when a third alternative may be appropriate:
3. Keep a static page with "evergreen" information up to date.
If the offer is going to be repeated, you can create a static page with all of the details. Whenever the promotion is active, you'll be able to connect to it from all marketing collateral. For example, Kohl's has a static page dedicated to their periodic Kohl's Cash campaign. This, once again, allows the page to increase its SEO worth over time.
Conversion testing and optimization
Product pages are ideal for testing because of their lower stakes location in the site structure. Run A/B tests on your product pages using a tool like Optimizely, VWO, or SiteSpect, experimenting with fresh message, highlighting different perks or customer pain points, modifying the graphics, and experimenting with different call-to-action buttons/language. The length of the information on the page, as well as the different types of content, should be tested.
Run each test for long enough to get a large enough sample size to get useful information. Maintain as much control as possible. Change one thing at a time, rather than twenty. When it comes to conversions, there is sometimes a clear winner between the two pages. Set that page as your new control and compare it to a separate modification. With each new product page, try to outperform your controls.
Maintain a strong SEO strategy for ecommerce product pages to guarantee that each product on your site receives the attention and prominence it deserves.