5 Ways to Optimize Your Product Pages for SEO in 2023
Ecommerce sales are expected to make up 24% of total global retail sales by 2026. An increase from 18.8% in 2021.
Image via Statista
But this projected growth doesn’t guarantee conversions for your store.
To make a sale, you have to make customers aware of your ecommerce store first. And this means getting your product pages to rank high for searches related to your products.
Research shows 55% of U.S. consumers depend on search engines to find specific information on a product they want to purchase.
More data shows the first result on Google’s organic SERP has an average click-through rate of 27.6%. It’s ten times more likely to get clicked than the web page on the tenth spot.
More clicks equal more sales.
So, how do you optimize a product page for search engines to achieve this impressive high click-through rate? Let’s get to it.
5 Tips to Optimize Any Product Page for Search Engines
Here are five doable and effective strategies you can use to boost your product page SEO.
1. Make Your Product Pages Load Fast
Research shows 53% of online shoppers expect an e-commerce page to load in a maximum of 3 seconds.
Image via Digital.com
And a slow page is a great source of discontent. About 21% of customers say slow-loading pages are their main source of dissatisfaction while 45% will get a negative impression of a business with a slow site.
These numbers show page speed affects people’s experience on a website. And every second counts.
Google cares about giving its users a great experience, which is one of the main reasons page speed is a ranking factor.
Analyze the speed of your product pages using Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
Here is an analysis of an Amazon product page.
Image via Google PageInsights
The product page passes the Core Web Vitals Assessment.
Here are some changes you can make to optimize your product page speed:
- Use dedicated hosting for higher speed. Unlike shared hosting, you don’t have to worry about other businesses draining the available pool of resources.
- Compress and resize your images. Use plugins like Smush to reduce the weight of images without losing their quality.
- Reduce your page redirects
- Enable browser caching
- Get rid of unnecessary plugins on your website
Apart from the above-mentioned methods, you can also use a reliable headless e-commerce platform to speed up your website. Or, You can also get ideas from other ecommerce owners in online communities like the Shopify forum.
2. Invest in High-Quality Images and Videos
All Google’s complicated search algorithms point to one goal—providing searchers with an optimal user experience.
It uses user signals like dwell time, click-through rate, and bounce rate to determine search rankings. User signals are behavioral patterns of users that show the usefulness of the results shown on a SERP.
High-quality images that capture the visitors’ interest and convince them of the quality of your products can make them stay on the page for longer and buy. It can boost the SEO of any product page.
You want to provide as many details as you can about the product so that customers don’t think of looking elsewhere. For example:
- Use videos to show your products in action
- Have several images of the product in different positions and angles
- Use customer testimonial videos
- Add videos that answer common questions about the product
See the clear and high-quality images GoPro uses for its cameras.
Image via GoPro
On the same product page is a video captured using the GoPro camera.
Image via GoPro
Optimize your images by including the product names in the alt attributes, title tags, and image file names.
You can prevent these images from slowing down your product page by using modern image formats like WebP or AVIF. They carry superior lossless and lossy compression for web images.
Be sure to add subtitles to your videos to make them more accessible to people who can’t or choose not to turn on the audio. Subtitles also improve comprehension and capture viewers’ attention, making them watch for longer.
3. Have a Good URL Structure
The URL of your product page affects your SEO performance. A good URL will help users and search engines understand your product page.
By including a keyword, search engines can know what the destination page is about, helping you show up in search results.
In the same way, a searcher who sees your ranking product page can tell what the product page is about from the URL. It leads to a high click-through rate that tells Google that your site is relevant to the search query.
How do you optimize your product page URLs?
- Make them brief, simple, and compelling
- Use words, such as product names, that visitors can understand and remember, instead of numbers and codes
- When you need to separate words to increase readability, use hyphens and not spaces, underscores, or other special characters
It’s also important to stick to one letter case for your product page URLs, preferably lowercase.
According to John Mueller, the Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, URLs are case-sensitive.
Image via Twitter
This means product page URLs that differ only by letter case and display the same page can cause duplicate page issues. This can negatively affect your product page SEO.
4. Optimize Your Meta Descriptions and Title Tags
Besides the URL, search engines display a meta description and title tag for pages in a SERP.
Both are HTML elements.
A title tag defines the title of your product page. It’s the clickable headline that shows up right below the URL.
A meta description is a summary of the content on your product page. It shows up below the page title and URL.
Title tags and meta descriptions tell search engines what your product page is about, which helps in ranking your page in response to users’ search queries.
These two elements also help searchers understand the content of the pages on the SERP. It helps them choose the best solution for their problem.
A good title tag includes the name of the product and brand. Include any distinguishing characteristics of the product and keep it between 50 and 60 characters.
For a meta description, ensure it:
- Has the product and brand name
- Is between 150 and 160 characters
- Includes a short description of the product
- Briefly mentions what makes your product unique
- Invites the reader to take an action
Remember you want to encourage the reader to select your page in the SERP to increase your click-through rates and boost your SEO. So, make these elements inviting and easy to read.
Front-load them with the most important keyword.
Here is a great example of a good product page title tag and meta description from Samsonite.
Image via Google
In case you don’t add a meta description to your product page, Google takes its own description from the content on your product page. This may not always result in a text selection that’s enticing for readers.
5. Have an Engaging Product Description
Avoid product descriptions that your supplier or manufacturer used. There could be hundreds of ecommerce stores that have used the same descriptions, resulting in duplicate content.
Having duplicate content is one of the major SEO don’ts. It tells Google that your website is of low quality, affecting your SEO.
Take the time to create a unique product description.
Besides, a solid product description on a product page convinces a visitor to buy. It outlines the benefits of the product and gives a concise explanation of its features.
See the product page by REI for one of its women’s jackets.
Image via REI
Use bullets to make the description readable. But don’t just list them down. Use language that sells to the shopper. You want to make them imagine the delight that comes with owning the product.
Ensure you cover the key features and benefits first to show readers early on why the product is right for them.
Be sure to place the right keywords strategically, without stuffing. It’ll boost your SEO by telling search engines what your product page is about.
Here are some other sections you can include that’ll boost your product page SEO.
A Reviews Section
If collecting customer feedback is part of your experience management strategy, add some of the positive reviews on your product page.
Research shows displaying reviews increases conversions. The purchase likelihood of a product page with only five reviews is 270% higher than for one with zero reviews.
Reviews can also boost your product page SEO.
Here’s how.
Long-tail keywords often have less search traffic, but they have a high conversion rate because they’re ultra-specific.
It may be hard for you to come up with a lot of relevant long-tail keywords related to every problem your product or service can solve. Or all the descriptive words potential buyers would use when searching for your product.
Reviews take this problem off your hands by turning your existing customers into content creators.
Their reviews will naturally include keywords related to the problem your product helped them solve. And more keywords mean better SEO.
Besides, reviews will optimize your product page further in two ways:
- They create a constant supply of fresh content that Google can crawl and index, which will optimize your product page.
- You can mark up these reviews using review schema to optimize your product page. It’ll increase the odds of getting featured on Google’s rich results (rich snippets).
An FAQ Section
An FAQ section will benefit your product page SEO and customers too.
It addresses any objections and questions they may have about your product, which gives them the confidence to buy.
Your FAQ section should be based on important keywords. A tool like Semrush or Ahrefs can help with your keyword research.
It should also include questions your marketing and customer service team receives from customers. These questions can come from many different sources, such as live chat, email social media inboxes and your business phone system, among many others.
Use FAQ schema to make Google aware that your content is in a question-and-answer format. It makes you more eligible for a rich snippet and improves your chances of showing up in the ‘people also search for’ section. It also makes your content more accessible to Google Assistant searches.
Optimize Your Product Pages for Search Engines
You can get your product page on the first page of Google for related searches if you apply these 5 essential SEO tips:
- Optimize your product page speed
- Use high-quality visuals
- Optimize your URL structure
- Create engaging meta descriptions and title tags
- Create valuable and keyword-rich product descriptions
Be sure to use SERP tracking tools to keep track of the performance of your product pages continuously. It’ll boost your organic traffic, leading to more sales.
Author Bio
Gaurav Sharma is the founder and CEO of Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company. Grew an agency from 5-figure to 7-figure revenue in just two years | 10X leads | 2.8X conversions | 300K organic monthly traffic. He also contributes to top publications like HuffPost, Adweek, Business 2 Community, TechCrunch, and more.
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