How to Optimize the Product Pages of Your Ecommerce Website

 
SEO • October 5, 2023
 
Someone may perform a Google search for an item in your store, but unless that product’s page is optimized correctly, they may not be able to find it easily in the search results. So, unless you wish to miss out on potential visitors, you should make sure your product pages are optimized. The recommendations below can help you direct more traffic to your ecommerce site and even steal traffic from your competitors.

Understand Product Keyword Research and its Importance

Every product page must be supported by research in the way buyers are searching for that product. This is why keyword research matters when it comes to SEO. Prior to optimizing the product page, you need to know the search terms that attract the most search traffic. Understand the best phrases and keywords for your products by considering the following factors – relevance, competition or ranking difficulty, and search volume. Use tools like:
  • Google Search Console for identifying the top search queries,
  • Unamo SEO for analyzing the competition,
  • Keywordtool.io for gathering insight into consumer search behavior, and
  • Google Keyword Planner for finding product page keywords to target.

Make Sure Your Product Names Are Relevant and Descriptive

Product names affect search rankings to a great extent. Use the keywords you identified earlier to create descriptive product names. Ensure they are to-the-point and include the necessary descriptions customers might be searching for. The simplest way; do a Google search for related products, and see how the most visible pages name them.

Add Value to Your Products with High-Quality Descriptions

Product descriptions help SEO, but only when there’s value added. Add product descriptions by asking yourself what customers would like to see in the description. Include the following points in the description copy: Key Features and Specifications: Do not forget the major features and specifications of your product, and the value these provide buyers. Keywords: Revisit your target keywords as often as you can. Introduce model numbers, synonyms, brands, and keyword variations. Be Brief: Make the descriptions informative, but not too wordy. If necessary, add lists and bullets. Make It Unique: Keep your product descriptions as unique as possible. Never copy/ paste from the manufacturer. Here’s an example of how a simplistic iPhone-case product page can be made more appealing with a unique description.

Improve Rankings with Your Page Title

Good page titles not only improve your rankings, but boost click-through rates as well. Ensure your page title is unique and has relevant keywords. Place the main keywords at the front of the title, but never repeat the same keyword. Include brand names for maximum effect.

Have Unique Meta Descriptions for All Items

Keywords in meta descriptions don’t affect rankings, but adding them is always a good choice, as it draws more clicks. Moreover, inserting keywords and formatting with symbols and numbers can bolster click-through rates as well. Include keywords and explain what is present on the page to let users know what they are clicking on. Make sure the description is unique and not too lengthy. Use the selling points of your product to improve click-through rates, and employ things like prices, numbers, and other formatting options to help your product stand out. I have been editing meta tags very easily using Shopify because it provides a simple and easy-to-use editor for making such changes. Moreover, Shopify automatically generates sitemap.xml, robots.txt files and canonical URL tags (to prevent duplicate content issues).

Pay Attention to Product URLs

Keyword-friendly and clean URLs impact search rankings. Make sure the old URLs get redirected to new URLs through a 301 permanent redirect while optimizing URLs. Keep these new URLs user-friendly and make sure they appear directly beneath the title in the search engine results. Make sure the URLs are short, written in lower-case, have keywords, and use subfolders. Do away with any dynamic parameters and clean all the unnecessary elements in the URL structure like the id’s of categories and products.

Use Good Headings

Break down your content using formatted headings and subheadings to make it more readable and help shoppers find information more quickly. Include synonyms, keywords, and relevant terms in headings to improve SEO. Never include large chunks of text; nobody likes to read them.

Add Product Reviews

Set up a product reviews section and request users to engage. Make sure the text is crawlable. Don’t worry if all customer reviews aren’t five stars – a bit of variation in feedback increases the site-wide legitimacy of your products. Get user reviews by reaching out to past users via email follow-up after their purchase, incentivizing user interaction by offering raffles and discounts to people who submit feedback.

Improve Your Chances with Videos and Images

Use quality product images and how-to videos to compliment your descriptions, keywords, and headings. This helps boost your sales and traffic. Consumers think image quality is an important factor when purchasing online, so make sure you include multiple, high-resolution photos on the product page. Do not forget to optimize the image file name and the alt tag. Videos help improve the average order value by 50 percent, so include how-to videos, exhibiting your product from different angles, in use, against a white background, with all its different components, etc. Include image and video sitemaps separately to ensure your product page’s images and videos are crawled in a quick and effective manner.

Use Breadcrumbs to Enhance Navigation on Product Pages

Breadcrumbs on a website are links found at the top of the product page. These are effective in helping shoppers rapidly browse and find products that they want and help your pages get crawled by the search engines faster.

Include a Prominent CTA to Improve Conversions

Never lose the sight of your end goal – to get customers to add products to their digital shopping cart and complete the purchase. For this reason, highlight the “Add to Bag” option more than other elements in the product page; make it stand out so that customers are focused on it. See how this page makes the ‘Add to Basket’ button stand out in blue color, which isn’t used anywhere else on the screen.

Reduce the Loading Time of Product Pages

Slow-loading product pages decrease your ecommerce conversions as well as your keyword rankings. Ideally, your page should load within 3 seconds or less. Start with testing your product page loading speed using Pingdom’s Performance monitoring tool. One quick hack to significantly reduce your page loading time is using a CDN. In 90% of cases, a CDN would be highly beneficial, however there are some instances where you might want to skip it. There are times when product pages have the most landing page potential on your ecommerce website. So, implement the changes mentioned above to improve your product pages and increase your site SEO.