Typically, product pages are designed to serve one specific purpose effectively. They’re either filled with keywords and technical information to please the search engine crawler, or they’re created with the shopper in mind and the search engine barely takes notice. The notion that you can only choose one option is obsolete. Search engines are now capable of reading pages similar to how humans read them, and with less patience among shoppers, the technical performance of a page directly leads to revenue.
Write descriptions that actually sell
Using the description provided by the manufacturer is a mistake often made in ecommerce SEO. It’s the same text block that can be found on hundreds of other sites from sellers, so Google identifies duplicate content at large and doesn’t reward your page for it.
So put in the effort to write your own. Highlight what the product can offer to someone and not just what the product actually is. If you write a product page for waterproof leather hiking boots, you should explain why it is important (i.e. dry feet on a wet trail, confident comfort, long-lasting boots) and those long-tail keywords will naturally come into place. You’re not inserting phrases; you’re simply exposing real user cases, and that’s exactly what someone types when they’re about to make a purchase.
A pretty safe bet: If the description you just wrote would fit any other product from any other brand, it’s too broad.
Handle the technical architecture carefully
Having a large product catalog can be challenging regarding SEO. Especially when products are listed in multiple categories or when faceted navigation options create multiple URL combinations leading to the same content. These are not easy mistakes to spot or fix, and often require a substantial amount of resources to correct later. Companies with complex catalogs often work with a shopify SEO agency to run technical audits that catch these problems before they compound. Getting the architecture right once is considerably cheaper than recovering from six months of crawl errors.
Make the page fast, or lose the sale
Although page speed is important for SEO, it is more critical for conversions. If a site loads in two seconds, the bounce rate is significantly lower than for a webpage which takes five seconds to load. This shows it isn’t just your organic search that’s being affected; it’s your overall revenue stream based on how your site performs in search organic or paid. Users are notoriously impatient, and consumers shopping around on the internet have been spoiled for the past decade because of how rapidly so many websites load. For example, if they have to wait a few seconds, they are going to get frustrated and leave your site, especially if they have been conditioned to expect sites to load virtually instantly.
Use schema to earn more than a ranking
Product schema provides detailed information to search engines about the content of your page such as price, availability, review ratings, etc. This data is presented by the search engines directly in search results as a “rich result”. When users see star ratings and price ranges before clicking, their behavior changes. They know more about the product before they land on the page.
The first result with rich snippets doesn’t just get a higher percentage of clicks from the first page of search results; it also gets a higher percentage of clicks from the users’ second search. They’re more likely to find what they’re looking for with the first click. So the difference in the click-through rate between the first result with rich snippets and the second result without rich snippets is even larger than first realised.
The rest of your page can also get more visual real estate with rich results.
Build trust with the page itself
Having an FAQ section on a product page accomplishes what a product description never will: It satisfies potential concerns before the buyer even has to bring them up. Is it compatible with X? What’s the return policy? How does sizing work? These are the questions that destroy your conversion rate if they go unanswered.
An FAQ also serves as a location on your commerce page to answer informational questions. People who Google “does this product work with X” are still potential customers – you just need to provide one more answer to bring them into the funnel. Answering this question on a transparent, informative FAQ is exactly how you do ecommerce SEO and conversion optimization together, not against one another.
The most common mobile shopping device, the smartphone, often times isn’t catered to by the basics of a website. The price and the add-to-cart button need to be at the top before scrolling. If these two items are what customers want to find and they need to hunt them down, you’ll lose the sale.
The websites that do well online and convert visitors consistently aren’t ones made just for search engines or shoppers. They’re designed finely to perform both functions equally.
