SEO FOR PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS

October 15, 2020

There are millions of stores online and standing out takes work and strategy. While you may have product descriptions that sell, they won’t do your store any good if no one can find them. Many ecommerce businesses understand their product pages are important but don’t take the time to optimize them for SEO.

In this article, we’ll look at 4 easy ways you can optimize your product descriptions for SEO.

TARGET THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

Search engines need to understand the pages on your site to help internet searchers find your store. The best way to do this is to target the right keywords in your product descriptions.

When you are doing your research, you will want to look for:

• Keyword difficulty (how hard it is to rank for a specific keyword or keyword phrase)
• Search volume (how many people are searching for your keyword)
• Long-tail keywords (longer phrases with multiple words people search)
• Related terms (you may want to use these in your content as well)

The best way to do keyword research is to use an online tool. Tools like SEMrush or Ubersuggest will help you narrow down your list of keywords and focus on the right ones for your product descriptions and other pages on your website. It’s important to keep in mind that most long-tail keywords are typically easier to rank online. You’ll want to find a balance between choosing keywords that are too broad or too narrow.

STRATEGIC KEYWORD PLACEMENT

Once you choose your keywords, it’s important to place them strategically in your content. However, you’ll want to avoid keyword stuffing (overuse of your keywords). It’s bad for ranking online and can really hurt your website. Place your keywords:

• Once in the URL
• Once or twice in the product description
• Once in your alt tags (these are tags on your images)
• Once in your meta description
• Once in the product description title

You can also use slight variations on your target keyword to avoid overuse and possible penalization by the search engines. It’s important to keep your keywords in mind as you write copy for your descriptions, but you want to make sure you are still writing for your customers and not just for bots.

Product description title

Don’t get fancy with your titles. Find the middle ground between overly specific and too broad. The keywords you use in your product description are the key to ranking online. Keep it simple.

Product description

Your descriptions are the place where you can use your creativity. Use some related keyword terms from your search and come up with something catchy to tell your customers more about your products in the body copy. Writing product descriptions that sell is just as important as writing with SEO in mind.

Alt tags for images

Alt tags are often forgotten or overlooked by new business owners, but they provide an opportunity for using your keywords more strategically. Alt tags are behind the scenes information because search engines can’t “see” your images. Using keywords in your alt tags will help search engines properly index your site.

Meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are another often overlooked opportunity for business owners. It is the 160 character snippet describing your page that search engines show to internet searchers. Meta descriptions don’t directly affect your ranking, but it does affect click-through rates. It should give potential customers a short and compelling description of your page and include your target keywords.

So how does it help? Google highlights the words in your meta description to help users know if they’ve found what they were searching for, and those words will likely be the keywords you used on your page.

DON’T DUPLICATE YOUR DESCRIPTIONS

After you’ve done your research and placed your keywords in all the right places, it’s time to finesse your content! You’ll want clear and concise CTA’s (call-to-action), and unique product descriptions for each product on your site. Too many new ecommerce businesses make the mistake of using the exact same description for every product. It confuses search engines and they won’t index your site properly and drives visibility down on all pages.

It also creates an issue with keyword cannibalization which means you have two or more pages competing for the exact same keywords. It’s easy to avoid when you are using different keywords on each product page.

USE GOOGLE ANALYTICS

A huge part of SEO is understanding your traffic and your audience. Google Analytics is a free tool ecommerce business owners can use to track traffic, set goals, track user behavior and so much more. Google provides free courses and training through their Analytics Academy to help you understand your site and ways you can improve visibility online.

Start Optimizing Your Online Store Today!

SEO can be overwhelming when you first get started, but it needs to be part of your marketing strategy. Even with a basic understanding and implementing the strategies listed above, you’ll be able to boost your online traffic and sales! It takes a little work but SEO can make a huge difference for your ecommerce business.

‍