Search engine optimization or SEO is the practice of improving the quality and quantity of traffic to a targeted web page or website from popular search engines like Google. It is considered among the primary sources of organic traffic. Therefore, SEO for ecommerce product pages or websites becomes essential.
As it helps customers to find the product easily among the SERPs and this way the business owners can increase their revenue. Also, research shows there are more than 20 million ecommerce websites active presently, and those are used by 4.45 billion internet users worldwide.
The numbers significantly increased after the pandemic situation more and more people started online shopping after the lockdown period. This has increased the demand for online shopping, resulting in huge competition in search engine ranking.
Why ecommerce sites SEO?
Many people wonder, do ecommerce sites need SEO? The simple answer is- acquiring a proper ranking is essential, else, your effort and investment in an ecommerce website will not yield the expected outcome. Also, there is a big misconception about ecommerce as many users assume that visitors go to product pages via homepages and category pages, which is wrong, and a missed opportunity.
How do you optimize ecommerce product pages?
In SEO, you need to understand how the search engines consider your online shop, specifically the best practices for product detail pages, so they can appear in popular searches and influence the visitors to purchase. Search engines evaluate your entire ecommerce website for product page optimization, which includes these vital attributes, such as product pages and category pages, very similar product variants, products available in several categories and expired or discontinued products.
Thus, SEO for product pages is equally essential and needs to be at the center of SEO strategies, so you can get your desired organic traffic from existing and prospective customers. The following strategies will guide you in optimizing the product pages of your ecommerce web store.
Implement a powerful keyword strategy
The ultimate goal after developing an ecommerce website is to rank on the first page of popular search engines, so your online shop is visible to more users or prospective clients. Hence, you must know how SEO works for an ecommerce website, and an effective keyword strategy is the best solution for that.
You should identify and use the proper keywords to promote your website and do a thorough search for words that can help your ecommerce web page rank higher in search results.
Keyword research plays vital role in the performance of your SEO campaign. Extensive research to be done to get the set of keywords which matches your business and user intent.
To develop a strong and results-oriented keyword strategy, you first need to learn how to do keyword research. You can subscribe to advanced ecommerce SEO tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs, or use free tools like Google Keyword Planner for easy online searches. When doing keyword research, be sure to check the search volume, keyword ranking difficulty, and search relevance/intent for a particular keyword.
For ecommerce product page SEO, choose product-related keywords that prospective customers are likely to search for online. The keywords you choose should be relevant and tag your transactional intent. Choosing long-tail product description keywords can go a long way in improving search discoverability. Make sure your keyword search intent is accurate and clear before choosing based on search volume.
Optimize page titles and meta descriptions
Page titles and Meta descriptions are two different pieces of HTML code that must be placed on every web page. It can be compared with a book as it shows the title of the page you are currently reading and a summary of that page. Search engines use title tags and Meta descriptions to create legible links from their index to your website. Web browsers also use the title tag of web pages in browser bars to make them easily accessible from one tab to the next, and it is very useful when you work in multiple tabs simultaneously.
Using keyword optimized page title and meta description for product & category pages helps in improving organic ranking.
Meta titles and descriptions are an essential part of SEO for ecommerce product pages and a crucial factor for your website to rank higher on popular search engines. Product titles and Meta descriptions are more than just counting characters. They guide the visitors to your web page once they search for your specific product.
Title tags and Meta descriptions are the two primary things a potential customer sees on a search engine results page (SERP) when searching for your product. Therefore it’s important to use them tactically to increase your website traffic.
To write the best product page titles and Meta descriptions for your ecommerce website, you must make sure to follow these factors. Make them unique, so the users don’t get confused between the search results. You should maintain the right length; the title’s length should be between 60 and 70 characters, and 155 to 160 characters are the perfect length for Meta description.
Use accurate keyword phrases for each product page and avoid keyword stuffing. While you are planning on SEO for product pages of your ecommerce website, you should perfectly maintain all the factors for search engine ranking.
Write unique descriptions for products
Unique and appropriate product descriptions usually play a massive role, and it is considered one of the best practices for product detail page SEO. An essential part of SEO optimization is serving proper content to consumers, which they are searching for, and that will influence their purchasing decisions.
Therefore, optimizing your ecommerce product pages with detailed, high-quality descriptions can improve the overall experience of your website visitors.
For creating an effective product description, you need to understand the indexing factors for search engines like Google. When Google crawls through a website, it tries to understand what the site is about, and this process is called site indexing.
Google analyzes page content and embedded images or files to index the same, as per the category. Also, you should use keywords in your product descriptions so they appear in the search results spontaneously.
So the product description for an ecommerce product page should provide an overall idea to the visitors. For that, you should create short and descriptive page titles and descriptions to make your content easier to understand with improved readability. This is how to do SEO work for ecommerce websites, and if you follow these instructions, your website will thrive above all. Also, avoid duplicate content, as these create a negative impression for SEO.
Markup product pages with structured data
Structured data has many benefits for website optimization, such as better click-through rates, faster indexing, better search visibility, voice search superiority, and more. Markup helps Google understand your content better and faster, and helps improve your website’s visibility in search features. It is effective for ecommerce product page SEO. If the markup is applied the users can see price, availability, customer review & ratings in search results. That will help them understand your product within a short time.
Rating schema if implemented properly might appear on the search engine result pages and helps in improving CTR
Structured data is an identical format for providing information about product pages and classifying the page content. You can use structured data in your ecommerce website by following these simple steps: First, you need to add the essential properties for your content to be qualified for display as a rich result. Follow the guidelines to understand where to place structured data on your page based on the format you’re using, and confirm your code with the Rich Results test.
Provide the selected product pages with structured data and use the URL Inspection tool to test how Google recognizes them. Make sure the page is accessible to Google and isn’t blocked by a robots.txt file, login requirements, or no-index tags. We encourage you to submit your sitemap to notify Google of upcoming changes. You can easily insert structured data in your ecommerce product pages using the Search Console Sitemap API.
Reduce webpage loading times
Remember, people don’t like to wait while searching for anything. So, the bounce-back rate will be high if your page speed and loading times aren’t optimized. Even, if the other factors for on-page SEO for ecommerce product pages, like title & Meta description, product description, and keywords are applied properly, the technical SEO elements like loading time need to be sorted, and you should strive to achieve page speed optimization.
Generally, a website that loads at lightning speed provides a better user experience, making the online shopping experience smooth and convenient. Once you optimize the speed of your ecommerce product pages, customers will explore more products on your online store. It will lead to an increase in sales and the number of pages per session.
You can check the webpage loading time and mobile user experience for your ecommerce product pages SEO using a free Google Page Experience Checker same as the one on Cloudways. This way, you can see how to optimize your ecommerce website for mobile users and others, and it will improve your site’s overall performance and more.
Design descriptive and consistent URL structure
A good URL design structure helps Google crawl and index your business website with proper ranking. A well-crafted URL helps Google find and retrieve your ecommerce site’s webpage more efficiently. If you have control over the structure of your URLs, this guide will help you determine your URL structure to avoid the indexing issues Google may find on your ecommerce website.
A good quality URL structure should be descriptive, consistent, brief, easy to read, and lowercase. The URL slug, i.e. the last part of the URL, should be relevant for ecommerce product pages. Now, if you are thinking about how you optimize ecommerce product pages, you can start with creating a perfect URL structure. You need to follow these best practices to understand the requirements for optimized URL structures.
You should minimize the number of alternate URLs that return the same content to prevent Google from making more requests to your site than necessary. If your web server treats the case of URLs the same, convert all text to the same case so that Google can easily determine that the URLs point to the same page.
Also, you need to make sure each page of paginated results has a unique URL. Most URL errors are found in the pagination URL structure. Finally, add descriptive words to URL paths, as words in URLs help search engines understand your page better.
Add a FAQ section
The best ecommerce stores are generally identified by their descriptive and consistent product pages. High-quality unique content is essential for your ecommerce product page SEO to rank in the SERPs to teach a higher number of users, and therefore you need an FAQ section dedicated to your product page.
Adding Frequently asked questions helps in reducing customer queries, improves navigation and SEO of the ecommerce store.
A Frequently Asked Questions or FAQ page allows visitors to find answers to all their questions in one place. Not only does this make life easier for your website visitors, but it also saves your business time and resources by eliminating the need to contact many customers to provide their specific answers.
The FAQ section provides an effective way to reach out and interact with your target or prospective audience. The FAQ section should include any questions your customers may have regarding your product, and it should also be marked up with structured data for FAQ to appear in the search results.
It is one of the best practices for product detail pages of ecommerce websites, as it significantly reduces the bounce-back rate and improves customer satisfaction. An efficient FAQ resource can inform, educate and guide your visitors through your website content towards your objective and desired results.
Share customer reviews and product ratings
Implementing rating/ review schema for ecommerce product pages is a good SEO practice which helps in increasing CTR
When a customer leaves a genuine review or recommendation on your site, and other potential customers see it, it’s often the final push they need to make a purchase. When your customers become advocates for your product, their reviews on your website say a lot about semi-cold leads. Therefore it is very essential to have a review or testimonial section on your ecommerce product page.
A study shows that 58% or more visitors rely on customer reviews, and positive reviews help them to make instant purchasing decisions. Testimonials from previous customers act as strong sales pitches, as they are considered unbiased voices that help to establish trust among prospective clients. Also, reviews help to establish an emotional bond with your website visitors.
A prominent 4 or 5 star rating just below the company or product name makes a positive first impression among website visitors, and a well-designed testimonial usually impresses your target audience. That way, they’re more likely to buy things to get the same satisfaction and happiness as the previous users.
Use high quality content, images, and videos
High-quality videos and images are very important in getting prospects to buy products online from your ecommerce store. Because these images and videos fill an important gap given that customers cannot physically touch the product. Including high-quality images that show your product in detail and in context can increase conversion rates. Also, optimized images and videos improve overall ecommerce product page SEO performance.
Furthermore, high-quality or high-resolution images and videos is likely to be liked, commented and shared by visitors. Because generally high-quality images and videos will always make your website content more engaging and prospective clients tend to share it with their friends to get an overall reaction about the specific product. This also increases the website traffic and helps to increase revenue.
Therefore, adding relevant, high-quality images to your ecommerce product page will increase your website’s organic rankings and visibility. Additionally, high-quality images establish a story about your product and service and also help build trust between your business and customers.
It helps you work towards your ultimate goal of converting potential leads into paying customers. Also, high-quality images and videos will perfectly match modern web design and social media platforms, as well as boost brand promotion.
Include product pages in the XML sitemap
XML sitemaps are of utmost importance for ecommerce sites and SEO for product pages. They are created specifically to help search engines index your website properly so that your customers can find your products organically.
A sitemap refers to a map of an ecommerce platform, so customers can easily find what they are looking for. These files are important for your ecommerce website as they help you organize the products categorically on your product pages, so the search engines may return with relevant products in search results.
A sitemap helps search engines understand the relationships between your pages, products, and images by listing everything on your site. Search engines like Google use these files to crawl down your ecommerce website and index your web pages so that your content appears in search results in the most relevant way.
You should create a separate XML sitemap for each content type in your website. For example, create one each for product pages, category pages, manufacturers, blog posts, support pages, etc. This makes it easy to track how search engines are indexing after submitting your XML sitemap to Google Search Console. Include only indexable pages that return HTTP status, and be sure to limit the number of URLs per XML sitemap.
Finally, audit product pages for technical issues
Using faceted or new URLs for each filtered search causes problems, especially for large ecommerce stores. Too many different URLs can waste crawl budget, cause split link fairness issues, and duplicate content.
There are many ways to optimize your crawl budget and improve your ecommerce product page rankings. Also, you should check the ecommerce product page SEO on the product page for technical issues.
There are many SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, Moz Pro, Google Search Console, etc. that can help you with this. After reviewing your product pages, you should also optimize the technical issues and content of your ecommerce product pages to beat all the competitors and appear in the first position in search results.
So if you wonder do ecommerce sites need SEO, the simple answer is that SEO is very important for ecommerce websites. Your product should rank higher than your competitors and should be reflected by proper position in search engines so that a potential customer can choose which website to find and click on in the SERPs for the required product.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many words ​​are perfect for SEO product pages?
There is no specific character limit for the SEO of ecommerce product pages. Generally, it is advised to write a minimum of 300 words for every web page. Also, you should ensure that you provide correct answers and provide all the details your prospective clients need to know about your product as they can’t get a tangible idea from online stores.
What is the standard length of the product title?
As we have mentioned earlier, product titles should be between 60 and 70 characters long. If you make your product title too long that might appear as spam in search engine crawl.
How do you optimize categories on product pages?
You need to choose the right keywords that match with search intent of your prospective customers. You can improve the rankings of your category pages by filtering products as per size, material, and other key attributes, which will help your target audience to determine the perfect product they intend to purchase.
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