Top 7 Tips for Optimizing SEO Ecommerce Product Pages

The product pages on your website are your chance to sell. They must draw visitors in by ranking highly in searches and provide all of the necessary information to ensure those visitors become customers. To this end, it’s essential to put in the effort to optimize your SEO e-commerce product pages.

Why Are SEO E-commerce Product Pages Important?

Research in 2014 calculated there were between 12 and 24 million online stores worldwide. And without the setup costs associated with establishing a brick-and-mortar store (such as rent, stock, and operational costs), it’s easier than ever for anybody to start their own business on the internet. With that level of choice available to consumers, it’s important to make sure your products are visible — and the best way to do that is to optimize your SEO.

Every product page is an opportunity to display goods for sale, and to encourage someone browsing to add those goods to an online cart. Once potential customers have reached a product page, they should see exactly what they’re buying, and have an easily understandable route to purchasing via clear on-site navigation. The good news is, if you focus on providing a great user experience, you’re already doing what it takes to get higher search rankings. Every positive change you make is a step towards improving traffic flow and conversion rates.

But without SEO, how will your customers find your product pages in the first place? It’s hard to over-emphasize the importance of optimizing SEO e-commerce product pages.

7 Tips for Optimizing SEO E-commerce Product Pages

In 2017, an estimated 1.66 billion people purchased goods online, with sales amounting to $2.3 trillion. Getting your slice of the action means improving visibility and usability. The two elements go hand in hand as part of optimizing your SEO ecommerce product pages. Here are seven of the top tips for ensuring you get the visitors you need to drive sales.

1. Basics First

SEO practices have changed in recent years, and there’s now a strong focus on putting the customer first and providing the content and services they demand. But that doesn’t mean you should forget grassroots SEO techniques such as SEO practices. Use catchy headers, incorporate long-tail keywords into product descriptions in a natural way, use internal links, and remember your alt tags on images.

2. Product Descriptions

Google’s algorithm positions content as one of the three most important ranking factors. Simply put, if your page has useful, relevant content, it’s more likely that Google is going to prioritize that page in the search results. Here are some simple ways to ensure your content is the best it can be:

Be unique:

Do you really need 30 unique product descriptions for the 30 baseball caps you sell, when they’re all functionally identical? Actually, yes. Every description on your site should be unique. Google wants to serve accurate, personalized content, not boilerplate copy. Copying text from the manufacturer’s own site or reusing the same description for all of your products won’t get you the search ranking you want, and won’t be as helpful to your customers.

Maintain accuracy:

You need to make sure every description is accurate and honest. Building trust encourages repeat trade.

Be thorough:

You need to make sure you include all of the information a customer needs to make an informed decision. This primarily helps with your conversion rate, but studies have also revealed that long-form content does better in search rankings. Just make sure you remain on topic and don’t pad your pages.

Connect with your audience:

Use appropriate language that speaks to your core demographic. For example, consider how Green & Blacks uses sensory terms to appeal to chocoholic foodies.

3. Designing for Mobile

If you haven’t optimized your site for mobile users, you’re losing half of your potential sales instantly. It’s impossible to ignore the importance of making sure your site functions across all browsers and devices. Learn from brands such as Etsy, which offers a clean and simple mobile interface with a prominent button to switch to shopping in the app. Don’t design for mobile as an afterthought.

4. Loading Times

The world moves quickly, and with so many purchasing options available, your visitors aren’t going to wait for your sluggish site to catch up with their demands. Make sure you optimize your load times, especially if you rely on lots of images to sell your products.

5. Seasonal Pages

Seasonal pages are a great way to generate extra sales during peak times. But what do you do with them afterward? Removing them to keep your site lean may seem like a good idea, but the problem comes the following year when you have to start establishing a brand new page in the search rankings. Rather than wiping out all your good work, keep your seasonal pages running, but update them with more relevant information. For example, Amazon keeps a Black Friday page running all year round, but after the sales finish, the page directs to other promotions, and includes a reminder to bookmark the page for the next Black Friday event. The site’s Christmas page redirects to a general gift-buying guide.

6. User-Generated Content

Encourage your existing customers to leave product reviews. Statistics indicate 35 percent of shoppers are less likely to buy if there aren’t any customer reviews. User-generated content makes your marketing more human, and helps to build confidence in consumers. Sites such as TripAdvisor make great use of customer reviews, using them to help inform customers and to make the site an invaluable resource for jetsetters.

7. Testing

Keep testing, and keep optimizing. Regularly check your site for broken links, pages that don’t load, or products that are no longer available. Furthermore, analyze your site with different tools to see where visitors go, what they click on, and why they leave without making a purchase. Something as simple as changing the position of your “buy now” button could make all the difference.

Final Thought: Put the User First

Google’s search algorithms place an emphasis on providing the best user experience possible. The intention is to locate sites users need, rather than driving them to sites they click away from in frustration. Secure sites featuring good images, quality content, relevant information, fast load times, and good formatting tend to bubble to the top. The best way to start optimizing your SEO e-commerce product pages is to examine your site and consider ways to improve the user experience. Put yourself in a customer’s shoes, and ask yourself which elements of the site are hindering your enjoyment. Are your product descriptions clear and easy to read? Does the site answer all of your questions as a consumer? Do the pictures show off the items in the best light? Put the user first, and Google is more likely to put you first.