The e-commerce space is extremely competitive and to survive you have to constantly come up with innovative ways.
The question that arises is what should you do to ensure your ecommerce product page SEO success and make it to the top of the search results?
You can easily do that with some really easy SEO improvements on your product page that will give you an edge over your competitors.
Listed below are SEO best practices for eCommerce product pages to avoid shameless mistakes:
eCommerce Product Page Seo Mistake 1 – Not Optimizing Title Tags
The title tag is an important element in eCommerce product page SEO. If you are not placing the keywords in the title tag prominently then you are losing an opportunity to rank the product pages in the search results.
Ensure that you perform through keyword research for your e-commerce products pages. See the product reviews on your competitor e-commerce website sites to get the ideas what people are saying about the product which is similars to yours.
Try to discover and research for keywords on amazon’s internal search engine and collect the ideas.
In the title tag, you should start with the most important SEO keyword of the keyword followed by the brand at the end. Some of the points that you should keep in mind:
- Your title tag should be 50 – 60 characters long, including spaces.
- It must describe the content on the page.
- Title tag must be different from the other page’s title tag.
- You should not ‘keyword stuff’ your title tags.
- Include Free Shipping or offers in the title tag of the product pages.
- Place the verb in the title tag like “Buy”.
- Although it is optional include the keyword which you are using in mother category pages in a product.
Mistake 2 – Not Optimising Product Meta Descriptions
Custom Meta descriptions are very important for Ecommerce sites. A crisp meta description can improve your click-through rate (CTR) from search results. Although meta description is not a Google ranking factor but some of the points that you should keep in mind for product page optimization:
- The Meta description should be 135 – 160 characters long.
- Most important keywords should appear in the meta description.
- Your meta description should be a readable copy.
- You should not duplicate Meta descriptions.
- When you write the meta descriptions make sure you point out these key points when you are pitching to your customers. A person buys from online have 3 questions in mind during the
- A. Why your product is the best
- B. Why should I purchase from you
- C. Why should I trust your brand and the claim you are making
Take a look at the example as mentioned below, how all these questions are answered in simply-christening.co.uk meta description.
Once you answer these entire questions all within 140 characters in Meta description then your customer will get persuaded to buy from your brand.
Mistake 3 – Not optimizing and Not Using High Quality Product Image
Image optimization is important for your e-commerce product page. If your product images are uncompressed then the heavy files will take the time to load.
Give below are some image optimization tips:
- Create keyword-rich file names.
- Reduce the file size of the e-commerce product images. Your image should not take more than 5 seconds to load on mobile and not more than 3 seconds on laptop or desktop.
- It’s an absolute must to provide multiple shots of your products. Write unique alt tags for your shots.
- Your thumbnail file sizes should be as small as possible as they directly affect your site’s page loading time.
Screaming Frog is a great tool that will complete onsite audit if there are images which are missing alt tag or the image size is too heavy. You will get the filter option and accordingly tag those images.
Mistake 4 – Not switching to HTTPS
Ensure that all user information is encrypted as your e-commerce store will have a number of forms which collect personal details from users.
Your front end of the store was running on HTTP.
Switch your entire domain from HTTP to HTTPS for ranking boost.
Https is good for e-commerce SEO and the websites which are HTTPs and SSL certified stays in Google’s good book. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html
Mistake 5 – Not Optimising Product Descriptions
A product description is a highly important parameter to optimize product page SEO and in fact, a well-written description sells more products.
If your product descriptions are very short or if manufacturer’s descriptions include copied content then your website may not come into a rank or even it come to rank that won’t sustain for a long time.
Ensure you write unique descriptions for your products on your site. If you accidentally copy the product description then check it on copyscape.com
Update with new descriptions of say 20 to 30 existing products every day.
Seo Product Description Length
For new products, you should write original descriptions before uploading them to your page. The minimum word count or rather a seo product description length for the e-commerce product page should include 400 to 500 words. To write the good product description follows these key rules.
- Highlight the benefits of the product in bulleted points.
- Avoid phrase like “excellent” “get a [product name]” rather use “buy a [product name]” “stunning” “nice” as these types of words are less persuasive.
- If the product is best, then proof in the description why you are claiming that the product is best.
- Add sensory adjective terms around to describe about the product.
When you write unique product introduction and description you do not run the risk of being penalised for thin content.
Mistake 6-Onsite Content Duplication
Many ecommerce resellers copy their product descriptions directly from the manufacturer’s website. If you are doing that your site will go down in SERPs.
You should write original descriptions for all your products. Many times what happens in most of the ecommerce website is that a particular product appears in two categories which result to identical content under different url variants.
Example1 : https://www.modcloth.com/shop/vintage-dresses/as-ruffles-ripple-maxi-dress/10096736.html?cgid=vintage_dresses_236&dwvar_10096736_color=LAV#start=1
Example2 : https://www.modcloth.com/shop/party-dresses/as-ruffles-ripple-maxi-dress/152545.html?dwvar_152545_color=LAV&cgid=
To avoid this type of onsite content duplication always use rel canonical tags. Rel canonical tag tells Google about a preferred version of a web page, so that Google bot stays away from indexing duplicate content.
Mistake 7 – Not Creating Search Engine Friendly URL.
If the product url of your ecommerce website is having special characters (alpha numeric) then it is not a good practice. In that case you have to restructure the URL.
While restricting the product page Url do not forget to include the keyword in the URL structure. Take a look at the example below:
- www.abc.com/panasonic/lumix/lumix-dmc-FZ200.html
- www.abc.com/digital-cameras/panasonic/lumx-dmc-FZ200.html
- www.abc.com/product/luxim-dmc-FZ200.htm
Mistake 8 – Not Internal Linking Between Blog Post and Relevant Products.
Always set up a blog section in your ecommerce website. Post an article in relation to a product in every alternate days.
If you are not writing a blog post and internal linking with the products then you are making another seo mistakes to promote a product page.
You must be wondering what type of blog topics to write for ecommerce website to get visiblity on google and traffic acquisition? Here are few e-commerce blog topics inspiration that you can take a look.
- How to dos and tutorial related topics like tips to use a particular product/ What customers can do with your product.
- Promoting a new product
- Write about gift ideas and carefully include any of your products.
- News about your company
- Fashion trends if you are having fashion online store
Feature your customer’s review in form of a post
- Blog on giveaways and contest
- Write about Interesting facts or fun facts.
Note: Whenever you are writing an article in the blog, do not forget to do internal linking with product pages.
Misatke 9 – Not Optimizing Pages Speed for Mobile.
How fast your site loads is directly related to your search engine visibility. If your site takes a lot of time to load then search engines will downgrade your site visibility. If your site is slow then your site visitors won’t wait for a few seconds more but leave your site for another that provides a faster experience.
Mistake 10 – Not focussing on User Generated Content In e-Commerce Product Page
User generated content is the type of content which is given by users in form of a review. It not only not only increases the content limit of the product page but also helps in conversion.
How User Generated Content Helps
- User generated content is a visual proof that the product is either good or bad from verified buyers
- User generated content grabs the attention of new buyers that helps in conversion
- Boost the trust worthiness of your product and brand.
- Improves the product page seo strength to get ranked on Google because you are not spending time to create fresh content but the fresh content is getting generated from verified buyer in form of reviews.
- User generated content also increase the engagement in your e-Commerce store. When a new shopper comes to buy the product he or she feels connected to see the personal experience of other user in form of reviews, photo, comments and video.
Mistake 11- Not optimising Header and Sub Header tags
If the product page is having multiple sections in product description content then do not forget to include <h1> and sub headers tags like <h2>, <h3> upto <h3> (optional).
The product name must come under <h1> tags and product description headings like features, benefit and video can come under <h2> tag. The header tags in a product page actually provides better user experience where the shopper can get to understand what the page content is all about.
Mistake 12 – Deleting Out of Stock Product Pages
When you cannot supply product as per consumers demand in that case you should add a “temporary out of stock” notification if you know that the product will come.
If you are not planning to stock the product then you should redirect the page to a similar product.
Never delete the product page which is out of stock as that results to a broken link and if that broken page is ranking for more searchable keyword, then when user land on that page he or she gets a bad user experience.
Mistake 13 – Omitting Bread Crumb Navigation
From ecommerce product page seo perspective bread Crumb navigation is too important. If you are omitting breadcrumb navigation in your e-Commerce product page then you are missing a scope to optimize product page for seo and conversion.
Breadcrumb helps your site users know their current location within your site and also easily return to their earlier product category pages.
Apart from helping your site visitors it also helps search engines to understand your site’s structure and related pages better.
After going through the product page seo checklist, you can start first by implementing those points that you feel can be quickly performed and then see the ranking results after one month. You will get to see much improvement.
You can connect with Mohammad Mohsin on LinkedIn
