Search Engine Optimisation for eCommerce can be incredibly complex, not only due to the sheer volume of pages, but also the complexity of the elements and platform features. I’m going to take you over how you can make your product detail pages (PDPs) more SEO friendly. These are the pages that provide the revenue from your website. So in theory, these are also the pages you really want indexed and ranking well for the product title. Achieving deep links to PDPs can be very difficult, a majority of links go to your home page, informational pages or category pages. However, by implementing features onto these pages that provide good link bait and attract people to link to them will help a great deal in getting that direct link equity. The points below provide some tips on how to do this and also on how to make your PDPs generally more SEO friendly.
1. Unique product description copy
I know, I know, I hear it all the time. Thousands, millions of products and you can’t have unique content on them all. It’s far easier just to copy the manufacturer’s standard content into each product and be done with it, onto the next product. Problem is, your PDP is now almost exactly the same as possibly millions of others across the web. How are you going to compete and stand out if you look like everyone else in the crowd? Well there’s a simple answer to this. Pick the products most commonly purchased, the ones with highest margins, those that are most popular on the website and sell well, and make their content unique. Monitor these pages, and see how they do. You can then start propagating unique content across other products with time.
2. Add social media buttons
If you’re selling online, your obviously going to be a retailer (unless otherwise) and I’m assuming selling to a B2C market. Therefore, depending on your demographic, your potential customers are likely to be heavily involved in social media channels. So why not adopt those channels, to reach them and potentially new markets? Add Twitter, Facebook Like, Stumbleupon buttons onto your product pages. Encourage that cross channel linking and communication. This way, you’re letting your potential customers (and likely current customers) to tell other people – that’s free marketing and promotion! Additionally, if you do promotions, remember to mention these and spread them via social channels. Finally, Google is now including search metrics as a way of measuring a business’ online reputation. So take advantage of this and show the Search Engines (and potential cusomters) how great you are.
3. Add features
So you’re selling the latest high-tech, ten slot, hyper-speed, chrome toaster that’s just been released. But there are also lots of other websites selling the same thing. How about adding more unique content to the PDP – product instructions, specifications, information, tips, facts and other product related content? All this information can make great link bait encouraging people to link to the PDP.
4. Meta description
You should be able to edit this section of the web page for your product within your CMS or eCommerce platform. This is a fantastic little opportunity for SEO and for gaining conversions from the search results pages. The meta description is a small snippet of text taken from the website (hidden from normal view on the site) that is usually displayed in the search results pages. Many people overlook the great opportunity this section presents, most of the time people just put in the ‘description’ of the product with the brand. No! You’ve got a great product, discounted price, free delivery and limited availability. Put it in the description – tell people as soon as they’ve done their Search Engine search why they should visit your site and buy your product – your USP.
5. Heading tags
The heading tags, or H1, H2 etc, on your PDP are another important area to include keywords. Use them effectively on the page and format them well. By that I mean, don’t have the H2 above the H1 on the site and make sure your CMS or eCommerce package doesn’t replicate the page title in your H1. Uniqueness is everything. Use the H1 as your product, so for example “Super dooper 10 slot Toaster” and then extend it with the H2 using sub headings. Stick to having one H1 on the page, but feel free to use multiple H2′s providing it’s logical to do so in terms of the content structure.
6. Images
The copy on your page is important, but the images in eCommerce maybe considered even more so. There is a saying in SEO “content is king” which is right. But in online retail it’s the image that will at least aid, if not make the sale. So include lots of them, from different angles and best of all, images of them in use or their features in action. Somewhere between 3 and 10 should do the trick.
7. Product reviews
Product reviews are a great way of getting interaction from customers, promoting the product, getting unique content on the page and earning the product valuable credibility. Make sure your PDPs can have comments, moderate them regularly and encourage your users to add them. Comments, feedback and even user tests of the product can help towards both increasing rankings and converting browsers to customers.
8. Videos
So many eCommerce sites go without them, but it’s another excellent tool you should use if you can. It may take more effort, a little investment and if you have far too many products and too little time, like with the unique content, do them for the high revenue or popular products on the site. Videos take the product from being just a static image to something almost tangible and makes the product come alive for the user. Additionally, if your video is tagged up correctly, it can also feature in the Google universe adding more search result real estate under your belt.
Finally, I’m going to throw something else into the wind. Consider loyalty schemes and discounts or vouchers. These items encourage loyalty and repeat business. Depending on your market, your product and demographic, you may be the only one in the industry to offer something like this. It may become a great differentiation for your online business and add to the OVP (online value proposition).
Hopefully the above will give you plenty of information to go forth and get great rankings and revenue generating product pages. Think there should be more added to the list? Please by all means comment below and let me know!
