4 Key Things To Know About SEO for Ecommerce Product Pages
Convincing SERPs you’ve created the best ecommerce experience for potential visitors takes work that goes beyond basic SEO strategy. On the contrary, optimizing your product pages for maximum visibility demands marketers take a deeper dive to apply a more nuanced approach to SEO.
Here are a few things to consider:
1) Product Schema, Product Schema, Product Schema
Properly implementing product schema is one of the easiest things you can do to an ecommerce product page to increase your visibility in search engine results. Whether you use an extension or not, be sure to verify that that schema is set up correctly and is error-free.
One of the most common mistakes we see related to product schema is that it has been implemented on product pages that don’t have a price. If you are a B2B business using a Cart to Quote feature and you don’t have a price on the product detail page, you can not use product schema. Price is a required field. We recommend disabling product schema on these product pages to avoid a ton of error alerts.
While properly implemented product schema is the most important type of structured data to have on your ecommerce product pages, it’s not the only kind of schema that can give your product pages a boost. We recommend adding webpage schema and review schema to your product detail page templates as well.
2) Unique Product Descriptions & Metadata (We know it’s a lot!)
Unique product descriptions can make a big difference in your ability to rank your product pages in search results. Think about it this way, if dozens of other retailers are selling the same product and everyone is using the same description from the manufacturer why should Google serve your ecommerce product page first?
Having a robust and unique product description that speaks to the features and benefits of the product for your target market makes it much easier for Google to decide to elevate your page above your competitors. But, this is a major lift. Writing quality content takes time and you have hundreds, if not thousands, of products.
So, how do you prioritize and make the best use of your time? Use keyword research to identify the products with the greatest search opportunity or rely on the 80/20 rule. 80% of your sales likely come from 20% or less of your products.Start by writing content for those ecommerce product pages first and once you start seeing the impact you’ll be eager to keep going.
3) Architecture Actually Matters
Each of your products are most likely nested within categories and sub-categories, with links between them–this is a great start. Connecting associated products in your catalog helps Google better understand your business and the types of products you offer.
Additional links can help not only increase sales by directing traffic to your top products, but help pass authority from one page to another. A great way to do this is to select a handful of your top products to be featured on your homepage. Since most visitors will enter your website from a search result page to your homepage, that page will likely have the highest page authority on your website. By linking directly to select products from the homepage, you’ll pass along some of that link value to those pages and give them a boost in search results for more specific product related terms.
Another way to improve the internal linking between related products is to use cross-sell and up-sell product highlights on your ecommerce product pages.
4) Make Use of Canonical Tags
For most ecommerce businesses, any one of your products can fit into several of your products categories. This in and of itself isn’t a problem. You want to showcase your products in all of the categories on your site where it makes sense, but what you don’t want is multiple urls generated for each category that product is in. This puts you at risk of confusing Google with duplicate content and if Google doesn’t know which page to serve, they won’t serve up any of them in search results.
We recommend having all product urls canonicalized back to the shortest version of the product url which is typically, www.yourdomain.com/product-name without any of the categories or sub-categories in the url string.
Overall, it’s vital to layer in these strategies as you think about the experience you’re trying to create. Remember, the impetus of SERPs is to refer users to the most relevant and useful experience possible. As a marketer, it’s your job to create that experience using whatever tools you have at your disposal. SEO is a powerful resource, but only when done thoughtfully and to scale for the unique offering your business provides.
Curious About How You Can Maximize Your Impact with SEO? We Can Help!
Book a consultation with us today to discuss how we can help you optimize your ecommerce product pages for maximum visibility.
