The e-commerce sector has seen tremendous growth in the last few years, a trend that will likely continue moving forward. While that might seem like great news for e-commerce brands in terms of sales and revenue, increased growth has presented a new obstacle – surprisingly tough competition.
This means that a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is more important than ever before, enabling you to rise to the top of results pages and support your brand’s success. With that in mind, here are some of the best product page SEO tactics you could implement, as well as a few practices to avoid:
Improve your keyword strategies
Keyword research is key to good SEO results. When doing this research, prioritize topics that are focused on the product and that users actually search for. Rather than fixating on volume, think about how relevant and likely to convert the keywords are. If you’ve collected data from channels such as paid search, you can also use it in your keyword research. Then, optimize your landing pages for users who are ready to buy. For instance, a user searching for a specific product like a dog bed shows clear intent to purchase due to the nature of the search. Make it easy for such users to take the desired actions.
Optimize meta descriptions and titles
Meta descriptions and title tags are vital to product page optimization as well. Ensure you incorporate important factors such as the product’s name, the product’s brand (as well as the proprietary brand), the specific model number, and any other relevant information like colors, dimensions, etc. Structured data can also be of great help, allowing you to show up in rich snippets. Make sure all your product pages have product and review schema to encourage clicks and drive sales.
Write unique product descriptions
It’s not uncommon for e-commerce websites to copy and paste a manufacturer’s description or use the exact same description for all of their products. Unfortunately, this is a great opportunity lost. Every item could rank for non-branded and branded keywords alike, which is why it should incorporate a unique description to enhance your SEO efforts. Aim to provide your customers with helpful and meaningful information about each product. This will encourage them to open your listings, and consequently boost traffic and sales.
Include a helpful FAQ section
High-quality and engaging content that meets the needs of users has a great impact on SEO. When site visitors don’t find your content helpful, they might decide not to purchase from you, thus increasing your bounce rates. Avoid this by implementing optimized content on your product and category pages. Make sure you have an FAQ section marked up with structured data as well. When users can quickly get answers to commonly asked questions, you will be able to sell more products simply by providing this useful information.
Prioritize real customer reviews
Product pages with real customer reviews tend to see significantly higher conversion lifts than review-free pages. This means testimonials are truly essential. Genuine reviews from consumers who have bought and tried your product are quite effective at encouraging other consumers to make a purchasing decision. Testimonials can also build trust among your audience, especially if you get a celebrity endorsement, along with providing unique and fresh content to search engines. For that reason, you must allow your customers to share their thoughts about your products and how they’ve benefitted their lives.
Don’t utilize automated optimization
Creating dynamically populated product pages including the name of the product as the title tag, the brand name, and no other valuable information is a common practice, but it’s not the best one. Similarly leveraging automated descriptions and only changing a couple of variables can negatively affect your click-through rates. Instead, try to incorporate valuable information that you can’t automate into your titles. When all meta descriptions and titles are unique, your e-commerce website will be better positioned to rank for targeted keywords.
Don’t omit or use poor calls to action
Many e-commerce brands don’t have particularly strong calls to action, even though easy and clear calls to action are vital to the success of every website. Keep in mind that the main purpose of your product pages is to drive sales and boost revenue. If site visitors take too long to understand how they can actually buy your products, they will likely go to your competitors with a better user experience instead. That is why you have to make it convincing and simple for users to purchase from you, whether you opt for traditional options or decide to use friendly and creative language.
Don’t miss internal linking opportunities
Links are still important for SEO, including e-commerce websites. Too often, brands will build links to their category pages and homepages, omitting their product pages entirely. However, these pages could rank on search engines as well. This presents a particularly good opportunity for long-tail keywords with high purchase intent that could drastically increase your sales and revenue. For that reason, you should aim to support all your product pages with internal links to improve your performance. A strong backlinking strategy and even paid social links could also aid in increasing visibility and driving sales.
Don’t overlook mobile optimization
A significant percentage of modern consumers shop using their mobile devices today, with over a third of them being mobile-only shoppers as well. This means that optimizing your website for mobile devices is a vital strategy for any e-commerce brand. For example, you can ensure consistency in content, prioritize responsive design, redesign your pop-ups, increase loading speeds, test your platform with mobile-friendly tools, and more. No matter how you optimize your site, mobile-friendly product pages will make you more competitive by providing a better user experience. But if you want to take this a step further, developing an m-commerce app can also be quite advantageous for boosting revenue.
Enhancing your SEO strategy also means polishing up your brand. When you give your customers the best possible product information, answers to their queries, a compelling reason to purchase, and honest third-party support, you will encourage them to keep returning to your e-commerce website.