Your Guide to SEO Product Optimization
November 29, 2021
The more visible your products are in organic search results, the more cost-effective your e-commerce marketing strategy will be.
Did you know that, by some estimates, there are up to 24 million e-commerce stores out there selling products online? Of those, only about 650,000 are actually selling more than $1,000 per year.
This data can teach us a couple of very important lessons about e-commerce marketing. First, there’s no shortage of competition online for e-commerce stores, and second, only a small percentage of e-commerce stores are actually successful.
The last thing that you want is to invest so much of your time and money into e-commerce and end up with a dead-end store. If you want to be one of the few successful e-commerce stores online, you need to figure out how to make every product on your website more visible — and you need to figure out how to do so cost-effectively.
There are so many ways to get your products out there online, but not all of them are made equally in terms of cost. Paid ads, for example, are a great option when you want more visibility for your products, but relying solely on paid ads is not a great long-term strategy because of the cost. Luckily, search engine optimization (SEO) makes it possible to save more on every lead.
How do you ensure that your products rank organically for relevant search terms? By optimizing them for SEO!
How to optimize product pages for SEO
#1. Start with the right keywords
Properly optimizing your product pages for SEO starts with finding the right keywords. You’ll use your keyword research for so many aspects of the optimization process, and keywords should be used in many aspects of your product page. That’s why you need to first identify what they are before you do anything else.
As a general rule of thumb, when optimizing your products, you’ll want to choose keywords that are as specific as possible. Broader, one-word keywords are often highly competitive and nearly impossible to rank for. On the other hand, longer, more specific keywords — called long-tail keywords — are less competitive and easier to rank for in the organic search results.
Another benefit of choosing long-tail keywords is that, when people search for them, they’re usually more confident about what they want and further along in the sales funnel. Think about it: who would be more ready to buy — someone who searches “camera” or someone who searches “digital birding camera” or “digital cameras for birding?”
#2. Write original descriptions for every product.
If you sell numerous products on your website, it’s perfectly natural to try to take shortcuts when it comes to product descriptions. This is especially true if you have lots of similar products. However, regardless of how well a certain product description works for multiple products, every product on your site needs a unique, original description (as well as original product titles).
Duplicate content is not your friend when it comes to SEO, and if you use templated product descriptions, that is exactly what you’ll end up with. Google doesn’t punish websites that have duplicate content per say, but it won’t do your products any favors when it comes to ranking in the SERP (search engine results pages), either.
#3. Optimize product images
Most e-commerce stores are fully aware of the fact that having high-quality images for every product is an absolute must. People might not read the product description or the reviews, but they’ll almost certainly look at the images. But, what most e-commerce stores don’t realize is the importance of optimizing those images.
Here are a few tips for optimizing your product images:
- Change the file name – Optimizing the file name for your images will help Google gain a better understanding of the content.
- Add an alt image tag – The alt image tag is used by people who are hard of hearing, and it’s also a great opportunity to use a keyword. And when optimized, alt image tags will help your product images rank in an image search
- Compress and resize images – Large, bulky images slow down your website and hurt your rankings. Increase your site speed by compressing and resizing your product images properly.
#4. Include a video
Just as people would rather look at an image than read a description, overwhelmingly, people would rather watch a video than almost anything else. That’s why video is such an effective element to include on every product page.
When you include a video on your product pages, your visitors will be up to 85% more likely to actually make a purchase. Video also dramatically increases the number of time people will spend on your product pages, and that will help them rank better in the SERP.
Video marketing is powerful on almost any medium, and product pages are no exception. Truly, is there anything video can’t do?
#5. Include reviews
The goal of every product page is to make a sale, which means that every product description will be all about why the product in question is the best of the best. And with so much competition out there, this can make it difficult for online consumers to distinguish the difference between products.
Chances are, you offer similar products as other e-commerce stores — most likely at similar price points — so how do you set your product apart? By including reviews and ratings!
Consumers know that your ultimate goal is to sell the product at hand, and it’s much more convincing when a customer says it’s the best than when you do. Furthermore, Google weighs keywords found in reviews when ranking your website, and like your consumers, it weighs them more heavily than keywords you’ve included on your own.
Best of all, with the right schema markup, your product rankings will appear right in the SERP, which will help to attract more clicks.
Organic visibility can be the difference between having a successful e-commerce store and becoming one of the millions of e-commerce stores that don’t even sell $1,000 per year. Are you interested in working with professionals who can help to optimize your products and set your site up for SEO dominance? Learn how Marketing 360®’s content marketing team can help!
Originally published on 2/13/20
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