How to Optimise Product Pages on Ecommerce Sites

Ecommerce Product Page SEO Best Practices

SEO for product pages is just as important as optimising the rest of your site. Good ecommerce product SEO helps you reach your target audience, provides a great customer experience for website visitors, and achieves better conversion rates. Your product pages will have increased visibility in search engine results, increasing the likelihood of attracting organic traffic.

Use these key ecommerce optimisation techniques to help create the best converting product pages.

 

1. Mobile First SEO for Product Pages

Each product page should provide an ideal user experience, no matter what device your customer is using. Smartphones account for over 70% of online shopping orders, while almost a ⅓ of people in the UK use a tablet to make online purchases. Today, the best converting product pages must be properly optimised for mobile website visitors.

Additionally, while laptops and desktops may be used for B2B shopping or higher value purchases, Google is ‘mobile first’, so will mainly use the mobile version of a site for indexing and ranking.

 

 

 

Your ecommerce site should use responsive design, ensuring the product pages change to fit the screen they are being viewed on. This means images will be scaled for mobile devices and content blocks appear in the right order.When planning your branding, take advice from a web designer about the top mobile-friendly fonts. SEO design for product pages also means thinking about how buttons and menus are displayed to make sure they are easy to use on touch screens.

 

2. Use Product Schema To Get More Attention In Search Listings

Schema markup can help you to create some of the best ecommerce product pages. It enables you to provide information to search engines so they can understand a page’s content better. A search engine uses this information – also called ‘structured data’ – to enhance search listings with elements like rich or featured snippets, knowledge panels and local business information. This can make your pages more visible.

Search engines use schema markup from product pages to provide things like product details, shipping information and reviews. This makes it a highly useful part of SEO for ecommerce product pages.

There are lots of product schema options, including:

• Price
• Colour
• Sizing
• Product variants
• Model
• Manufacturer
• Offers
• Barcode
• Shipping details
• Reviews

This is a great opportunity for you to occupy more space and stand out on search engine result pages. Key details about your products will be displayed more prominently, drawing attention, helping to improve your click-through-rate.

There are a few different options for using schema, so learn how best to implement schema markup as part of your ecommerce optimisation.

It’s important that this type of data is correct on your product pages as it impacts both your organic results and your Google Shopping results. If you think you’re having problems that are reducing the number of clicks your products get, you should try to fix Google Merchant Center problems.

 

3. Ecommerce Product SEO Descriptions

Carrying out the best possible SEO for product page descriptions means more than just including your keywords. You also need to ensure you provide as much product information as possible to increase the chance of a sale, but it should still be relevant to customers. Consider including:

• Product features and benefits
• Sizing or dimensions
• Ingredients or materials
• Allergens and safety information
• Instructions for use

As part of your ecommerce content optimisation, make sure product descriptions are easy to read. Use tools like Grammarly to double check spelling and grammar, avoid unnecessary and complex words, and keep your writing concise. One giant paragraph can be off-putting so break up sentences and use bullet points while injecting your keywords across the product page. 

Your SEO product descriptions can be used beyond your own ecommerce site. Adding them to online marketplaces like Amazon or on social media product catalogues like Facebook and Instagram can help your products to be discovered. Optimised product descriptions will also improve the performance of your Google Shopping ads.

 

4. Meta Titles and Descriptions

Like any other page on your site, SEO for product pages should include unique meta titles and descriptions for each product. Make sure to use your keyword and language that appeals to your target customers.

If you have products with particularly lengthy names, you should find a way to shorten these so they won’t be cut off by search engines. You’ve got 600px – around 50-60 characters – for a meta title. Keep important product information but consider moving other details into the meta description, where you’ve got 960px on desktop – 150-160 characters – and 680px on mobile devices – 80-90 characters.

 

5. Optimise Product Photos in the Best Ways

Multiple photos

Product pages with photos get more organic traffic, better conversion rates and a lower rate of returns. People expect to see a product fully before they commit to a purchase. If a picture paints a thousand words, then imagine what 5 can do. 

The best converting product pages feature multiple high quality images. If you’ve got a single image that blurs when someone tries to zoom in, you’re not doing enough. 90% of people buying products online say photo quality is the most crucial factor in their purchase, and over 60% think images are even more important than descriptions.

Ensure your product images can be seen large and clearly. Show all of a product’s details, zooming in and offering different angles. This is especially important for higher value items: people spend more time considering these big purchases and want to be even more sure about what they’re buying.

 

Use the right size and quality

All images should be high-quality, compressed files. A format like WebP produces small file sizes that retain image quality, which will help speed up page load times. You can convert JPEG or PNG files to WebP using a tool like Squoosh.

 

Create appropriate file names

Your images need descriptive and relevant file names. Photos uploaded with names like IMG1234.png aren’t telling a search engine anything useful about the image. Use hyphens to separate words (this helps search engines understand the file name better) and ensure they aren’t overly long. Rename files with titles like grey-plastic-garden-dining-table.webp.

 

Add alt text

Alt text helps search engines to better understand what images are showing. It’s what will display if your image breaks or the page loads too slowly. However, its main purpose is to provide an image description to visually impaired users who use screen readers. Your alt text can provide a slightly longer description than a file name. It should convey any relevant visual information to provide a good customer experience for visually impaired audiences.

 

Consider EXIF data

Most modern digital photos will have EXIF data, a way of storing metadata about images, and this is visible to search engines. It can be useful in multiple ways and can make it easier to find files in a photo library. Most of the EXIF data will be technical information about an image, such as the camera’s shooting settings. However, it can also contain more personal information, like the time, date and location that the photo was taken.

The geolocation data might be useful if, for instance, you’re a wedding photographer who works in the West Midlands. If you upload photos from previous weddings in Wolverhampton or Birmingham, this can increase the chance of you showing up for people searching for wedding photographers in those areas. But in other circumstances you might have privacy concerns, so you should consider removing EXIF data from photos with an editing tool.

 

6. Product Videos

Product videos can make a great impact and are an extra way of enhancing SEO for product pages. Used well they provide another opportunity to appear on search engine results pages.

Lifestyle products videos show customers how a product can fit into their lives, helping them to imagine themselves with it already. Peloton is one example of a company that uses lifestyle product videos for their adverts. They need minimal dialogue and customers can see how people use Peloton products as part of their everyday lives.

 

 

 

Your product videos can also highlight specific product features and show customers how to install or use the product. Think creatively about this and you can find opportunities to upsell. For instance, Pact Coffee’s coffee product pages have links to video guides. These show customers how their coffees can be used with different types of brewing equipment, which they also sell.

 

 

 

 

Product videos capture the attention of website visitors for longer, potentially helping you to tell an engaging story about your product and brand. This can connect to them on an emotional level, making the product and your brand more memorable and desirable – think about all the John Lewis Christmas adverts.

Passenger is another example, combining lifestyle and emotion into their clothing videos. Showing a group of people on a trip together, these product videos sell the idea of making memories with friends as much as they do their products.

 

 

 

 

User generated content

You can source additional product videos from user-generated content. These types of product videos are ideal for helping to build authority and trust with your target audience. Look for ways to use positive product review videos, unboxings and tips on how to use products. You might even consider partnering with influencers to collaborate on content.

 

 

 

 

7. Use Calls To Action That Stand Out

Your product page will already have some variation on ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Add to Basket’, but the best product page design means giving more thought to your calls to action (CTAs).

 

CTA Colours

The colour of your CTA buttons should clearly contrast with the page background. Bright colours are attractive, but make sure they still align with your branding on the rest of your ecommerce site. Having sufficient white or blank space around the button will also help your CTA stand out.

Optimise for different devices

Your product page CTA should always remain above the fold, whatever device the customer is using. This is the section of your page that visitors see immediately when the page loads, before they scroll down. If your CTA isn’t as easy to find when your page loads on mobile devices, you risk losing out on sales.

 

8. Be Transparent About Delivery

Your product page shipping details and delivery charges should be displayed clearly. Being vague may force people to leave the product page and go hunting elsewhere on your site, perhaps failing to return. Finding shipping info themselves could also seem too much work or make potential customers think you’ve got something to hide – like a lengthy delivery time or surprisingly high shipping costs at checkout. This could put them off buying from you altogether.

Build trust with your customers by making your shipping details, options and charges easy to find on every product page. Be sure to highlight if your delivery is free or a reduced rate when someone spends over a certain amount, which can contribute to increased sales. Remember that shipping details can also be included in structured data to boost search engine result page visibility.

 

9. Show Product Reviews

Online shoppers spend an average of 30 minutes reading reviews and recommendations before making a purchase. Ideally, reviews should tell people that you’re a reliable company that offers quality products.

You should make sure your product reviews are displayed prominently on your product pages and consider the ideal display style for your site. As they often influence customers’ purchase decisions, it’s important to display them in the best way. Automating review feeds from review sites like Trustpilot and Google can make this easier.

As product reviews can form part of structured data, they can also boost your search engine rankings and help with product visibility. They support SEO for ecommerce product pages because they are a signal of trustworthiness. Search engines see this signal, but so do potential customers – about both your products and your customer service – so reviews can also act as free advertising. 

 

Those are rookie numbers

Consider some of your past purchases. Imagine you are looking at two companies you aren’t familiar with and both are selling the same product at around the same price. However, one has 10 five-star reviews and the other has 100 five-star reviews. Which one would you purchase from? It would probably be the latter as it has a greater trust signal.

You can’t just sit back and hope lots of people will leave you good reviews. You need to find ways to encourage them and make it as easy as possible. You’ll need to do this consistently and ensure you’re managing the reviews, responding to them swiftly. If you’re struggling with this, explore our guide for ideas on how to get more reviews from your customers.

 

10. FAQs

 

FAQs can provide great benefits as part of product page SEO. You can add FAQ schema to help search engines understand your FAQ content better, so your answers can appear in search results like featured snippets.

They need to be genuinely useful to customers and relevant for each product page. They should answer questions and concerns about that specific product. FAQs aren’t displayed in results as much as they used to be, but are still a good way of adding valuable, relevant content.

Avoid adding in FAQs just for the sake of it – if generic information is already available clearly on the page, like in a shipping section, then you don’t need to repeat it.

Think about the types of queries you get about products and consider the small details that are often important to the people who buy your product. You should be helping them get over any hurdles that could halt their purchase and clarifying details to reduce the rate of returns.

 

11. Link to Variants and Related Products

Ideally, customers should have no need to leave a product page once they land there, but sometimes the product may not be quite what they need. Good SEO for product pages includes adding internal links to additional products, giving you an extra chance at a sale. If your product has variants, like different sizes or colours, ensure these options are clearly displayed.

Where possible, you should also push a feed of related relevant products – maybe you’re selling a bookcase and someone wants a coffee table or cupboards in the same style. Look for opportunities to upsell; for example, when someone adds leather shoes to their basket, you could ask if they want to buy shoe polish as well.

 

By carrying out these product page best practices, you can maximise the effectiveness of your ecommerce site. Quality ecommerce optimisations can help you to achieve better returns on your marketing investments, and drive more revenue for your business. You will increase the visibility of products in search results and can ensure you have the best converting product pages.