In the complex world of eCommerce, effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not just beneficial, but a necessity for every brand. Focusing on product page optimization is one such critical aspect often neglected by many businesses. This article covers the significance of product page optimization and gives practical tips eCommerce stores can do to start driving more traffic and getting more sales from Google.
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Why Is Optimizing Your Product Pages Important?
It may seem like common sense, but a lot of eCommerce brands overlook product page optimizations when setting up their stores, preferring to rely on default product descriptions and standard information. In doing so, they can lose significant traffic that Google reserves for brands with well-optimized eCommerce sites.
For the past several years, Google and other search engines have prioritized product pages in their search results, carving out special sections in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) to feature popular products when people conduct product-related searches.
Google’s Shopping tab, which acts like a marketplace where eCommerce brands can rank and sell their products for free, also prefers to show stores with the right on-page and technical optimizations.
1. Focus on Technical SEO Improvements
Ranking a product detail page in Google is as much about solid technical SEO and schema markup as it is about on-page optimizations. When combined together, eCommerce businesses can see an influx of organic traffic to their online stores.
Product Schema Markup
Search engines crawl, understand, and rank eCommerce products primarily through markup. This markup, also referred to as structured data or schema, helps the algorithm understand the specific price, in-stock status, condition, shipping prices, featured image, brand, user reviews, and a whole lot more on any product. When you use the correct markup, your product can gain valuable rich snippets and rank higher in Google’s shopping sections.
Most eCommerce platforms create markup by default. WordPress, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, and others will inject this code into any product. If there is an issue with your markup, you’ll see a warning in Google Search Console with information about what to fix.
If you want to test your product pages, use Google’s free Rich Results test to scan your markup and show if you have any errors.
Meta Titles & Meta Descriptions
The product meta title and meta description are designed to be scanned by search engines, which then shows this information in the search results pages. Well-optimized metadata will include keywords in the product title and description while optimizing them for better CTR (click-through rate). As of 2023, stores no longer need to include their brand name since Google automatically shows brand names above each search result.
Improve Page Speed
Faster-loading web pages might not be a giant ranking factor or automatically get more organic traffic, but they absolutely improve conversion rates and provide a better user experience. The faster a page loads, the more likely a user is to purchase and the lower your bounce rate.
As stores improve their web page performance, they often find and fix related SEO issues like page indexing, broken links, and missing headings.
In a nutshell, yes. Websites that load faster often have better SEO. Check out our recent blog on how your eCommerce store’s page speed impacts its SEO.
Image Alt-Text
All product images should include alt-text, which is simply text that describes the contents of an image. This is key to a search engine displaying your product images in the search results.
2. Do Extensive Keyword Research
For most products, keyword research seems straightforward. After all, a blue T-shirt is a blue T-shirt. There’s no need to research beyond that, right? However, there are two common reasons why more extensive keyword research is necessary for products.
Long-Tail Keywords
First, keyword research helps you identify the right target keyword and long-tail keywords to include throughout your product description.
A battery manufacturer might choose to optimize all its battery products for “lithium-ion batteries” and totally overlook terms with “rechargeable batteries,” a closely-related keyword with 10x the monthly search volume.
Keyword Strategy
Second, not every keyword is going to show product-based results. Keyword strategy helps brands understand the intent behind the keywords they choose. Search engines don’t always show product pages for certain keywords. If you optimize a product for a term that search engines only show articles or blogs for, you’ll struggle to see results.
3. Write Unique Product Descriptions
Brands that take the time to write optimized unique descriptions for their products have a significantly better chance of showing in the coveted product spots in Google searches. Unfortunately, it’s common to see stores use a manufacturer’s default catalog content instead of writing their own unique content about the product.
In addition to writing unique descriptions, some stores also opt to include additional quality content forms like video reviews, walkthroughs, FAQs, and buyer guides.
This also applies to stores that sell similar products. Avoid duplicate product descriptions for two unique products just because they’re closely related variants. Instead, give each one its own quality page content to avoid duplicate content that will cause an SEO issue.
4. Increase Internal Links
In large eCommerce stores, product detail pages can end up on pages 5 or 6 of a category page, making it difficult for search engines to find them. To avoid this issue, build internal links at all possible times to help search engines — and users — easily find your most popular products.
One way to do this is by using your store’s blog. If you’re writing informative content on your blog or other pages, make sure to hyperlink to individual products whenever they’re mentioned.
Another way to increase internal links is to have a “related products” or “people also bought” widget on your product page. Most platforms have a plugin that adds this automatically.
Adding breadcrumbs to your product detail pages is also a helpful way to get more internal links for your category pages and to help users easily navigate back to category pages.
5. Build Backlinks to Product Pages
Backlinks are crucial for online stores to get more organic traffic and compete with big guys like Amazon. Search engines categorize pages with strong backlinks as more “authoritative” and are therefore likely to give those pages higher search rankings.
Because most backlinks are built to the homepage or to blogs, eCommerce brands should focus on building links to their individual products and category pages.
For more information about backlinks, check out our blog on what backlinks are and why they matter.
6. Optimize the Quality and Size of Your Product Images
For eCommerce product pages, using high-quality images is nearly as important for ranking and conversions as product descriptions and technical SEO. Search engines show product images in the search results. High-res, creative images can drive significantly more clicks.
To use hi-res images that don’t slow down the website speed, consider WebP images or SVGs in lieu of large PNGs. Also, make sure the images are sized correctly for mobile images because there’s no point in displaying a 900×900 image on a mobile device that is only 480px wide.
7. Get Product Reviews and Testimonials
Customer reviews and testimonials help your SEO because they can show in Google’s search results due to “review schema” that can show your product’s ratings like 4.9/5 or “5 stars” next to your product.
If your store doesn’t natively collect reviews, consider adding a widget to enable functionality that will solicit reviews for each product.
8. Optimize Your Product Titles
While it may seem like a stretch, you can achieve significantly better organic results by incorporating a keyword into your product name, particularly in the title tag. For example, “The James Purse” could be optimized by simply adding “The James Leather Purse” as the title. Potential customers still see the name of your product, but adding “leather” to the product title means Google is more likely to show it to searchers.
Product Page SEO is Worth the Effort
Effective product page SEO involves multiple components, ranging from technical work such as link building, schema markup, and page speed to content elements like optimized product descriptions, titles, and internal linking. By leveraging these strategies, you can enhance the organic visibility of your product pages and boost organic sales.
