7 Ways to Optimize Your Product Pages for Search
Product page SEO is the most effective way to drive high-value traffic to an eCommerce website. In fact, the latest research suggests that 34% of all traffic that Ecommerce websites receive comes through organic search. When done correctly, product page SEO (or landing page SEO as it is also known) is a cost-effective and scalable way to increase the quantity and quality of leads that you are generating for your Ecommerce website.
Table of Contents
#1. Keyword Research
The SEO for a product page is like any other page with content, it needs attention and optimization for good traffic and conversion results. If you’re spending time modifying content pages to gain better search engine results, you should also be doing so for the pages with products you’re actually selling. However, there are a few notable steps you can take for product page SEO that can set your business apart from your competitors in search engine results.
The basics of Product Page SEO are much like the basics of SEO for any other pages. There should be a hefty amount of research into keyword research and understanding the vernacular that resonates with the target audience for the production of content on product pages. Product pages should aim for longtail keywords that are more relevant to the product. They may have fewer searches but will entail less competition and therefore provide a higher chance of ranking well.
When the targeted keywords have been selected, the next step is to consider the URL for the product page. Your permalink structure and URL structure should be cohesive and consistent across all of your product pages. It should be easy to remember and applicable to most, if not all products. The bottom line with product page URLs is that they should be simple, straight to the point and readable by both Google and users. Users should also be able to trace their way back to their starting point by following the URL cookie trail.
#2. Meta Description and Title Tag
The meta description and title tag are the first impressions a user will have. It’s important to implement strong titles, with the focal point being on the product name and possibly the manufacturer name when applicable. According to Safari Digital in Sydney, the primary title tag should also always include focal keywords. If there is one thing you need to get right, it’s the title tag.
While on a product page, there is also a lot of general information about the product (product description, product dimensions, images
#3. Rich Snippets
Structured data is a great way to optimize product pages and stand out against your competitors. Structured data is there to help search engines like Google to understand specifics of the page and then display the content on search engine results as much richer than others. These “rich snippets” will give users valuable insight into the product page with extra information like colors, sizes, and stock of the product.
The program schema.org comes from a collaboration between Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex to create an industry standard for structured data. When the schema is implemented in the content of a page, it defines the ways in which it should be used. Schema allows webmasters to communicate with search engines to improve the way that on-page data is interpreted and ultimately presented to users.
#4. Unique Product Descriptions
Each product should have its own unique product description. To optimize the outset of these product’s pages, the descriptions should be created with the user in mind. Avoid reusing the description the manufacturer has shipped with the product. This description is likely to have been copied and pasted on hundreds of websites selling the same product.
Creating unique content for each product takes plenty of time and effort, but ultimately it will amount to a large portion of your website’s content. Duplicate content is often a sign of a low-quality website, so don’t risk your rankings – create your own unique product descriptions.
#5. Reviews
Users value authentic, crowd-sourced feedback. According to Pew Research, more than 82% of adults in the United States say that they read online customer reviews or ratings before purchasing an item for the first time. 40% of those interviewed admitting that they use customer reviews to guide their purchasing behavior on every occasion. Adding real reviews will add a layer of security and authenticity to your website. Ratings and reviews are an effective way to create crowdsourced content that is unique to each product page.
Make sure to also mark up the reviews and ratings with the correct schema elements in order for them to be provided to search engines for those rich and informative search engine results.
#6. UX Testing
Tools like Google Analytics and Search Console can provide powerful insight into how audiences interact with your product pages and your website overall. Unfortunately, there’s no special formula for the SEO success of each page. Each website and its target audience are entirely unique and dependent on the demographics, the product, and the user. A lot of information and improvements will only come from trial and error of testing the user’s experience. Use these tools to record and shape the trials of each product page and make future improvements.
#7. Website Speed
Website speed is not only critical for user experience, but it’s also critical for SEO. Unresponsive and slow-loading pages will deter visitors, increase your bounce rate, and negatively impact the way that Google crawls, indexes and interprets your pages.
Page speed is vitally important to both Google’s algorithm and user experience. Google has indicated it is one of the ways the Google algorithm ranks pages, and a slow website is harder for the search engine to crawl and index. According to Maile Ohye from Google; 2 seconds is the threshold for eCommerce load time acceptability. 47% of users will navigate away from a page that takes longer than 2-seconds to load, with 20% of customers admitting to abandoning their shopping cart if the purchasing process is hindered by slow load times.
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