If you’re selling products via an eCommerce website, the way those products are titled can make or break your sales goals.

Product titles are sometimes an afterthought,  but those seven or eight little words can have a big impact on a shopper’s decision to buy.

Trin Salaloy, the creator of MadeFreshly, explains: “Your product title has everything to do with how people will perceive your product: whether it is attractive, what it can do for them. Your product name needs to be intriguing enough to pull people in, especially if they’ve never heard of it before.”

Here at Marketing 360®, we work with hundreds of eCommerce businesses that are looking to break into competitive markets.

Although their products may offer something the competition doesn’t, these SMBs often face an uphill battle when it comes to brand recognition.

Creating smart, attractive, keyword-rich product titles that draw people in and increase conversion rates is what our Natural Listing Ad® Specialists are trained to do.

Our SEO experts will spend time digging into your keywords, ensuring that each product title is fine tuned to target your ideal customer while also demonstrating relevance to boost search engine rankings.

If you’re not working with professionals, you may be committing one of the following product title writing mistakes, increasing the chances that potential customers will click away from your site rather than start loading up their shopping cart.

#1.  Keyword Stuffing

Assuming that “more is better” when writing product titles is a rookie mistake.  Instead, take the approach that less is more.

This product title stuffs keywords and tries to get the entire product description into the title:

Long descriptions often get truncated on your site’s category pages and in shopping feeds. This means shoppers won’t be able to read them at a glance and may choose to leave your site without converting.

Your best, most relevant keyword for a particular product should definitely appear in the title, as long as you can do so in a way that reads naturally.
Resist the urge to add in a dozen more just for good measure. Remember, you’re optimizing for humans first and search engines second.

#2.  Short or Irrelevant Descriptions

Though lengthy, keyword-stuffed product titles are bad, extremely short, sparse titles can also be counterproductive.

Tiny titles are unlikely to be descriptive enough to match keyword searches, especially if they’re spoken (as so many searches are these days.)

While you’ll want to avoid obscure references and fluffy adjectives, simple descriptive words (shapes, common colors, familiar cuts/styles) help customers find what they’re looking for.

#3.  Misuse of Brand Names

If you’re selling your own products, resist the urge to reiterate your brand name in every product title. If you’ve worked with Marketing 360® to design an eCommerce store, your brand name is already prominently displayed on the home and category pages, so including it in titles is redundant and wastes valuable real estate.

However, if you’re distributing products made by other, well-known brands, and your keyword research indicates people are including said brand names in their searches, feel free to use them in your product titles.

In the example above, you’ll see that the third-party seller (left) chose to put Yankee Candle at the beginning of their product title, while the Yankee Candle store (right) relegated it to the end of the title because the brand is implied.

Doing so will help you to capitalize on that SEO momentum and make it easy for people to compare various products on your site.

Scroll through the infographic below for examples of these and other product title writing mistakes, as well as suggestions for how to correct them and increase sales!

Contact the Marketing360 team today to learn more about how our Marketing Executives can help you optimize and market your ecommerce business.