5 Quick Tips For Shopify Product Page SEO

5 Quick Tips For Shopify Product Page SEO

Building a successful ecommerce store is all about capturing customer attention. It doesn’t matter how amazing your products or prices are if your customers can’t find your website and purchase your items. That’s why it’s so important to invest in Search Engine Optimization, or “SEO”. 

There are many facets involved in optimizing a Shopify store, from ensuring your pages load quickly with the right theme, to providing an excellent user experience with great navigation. However, one of the biggest mistakes business leaders make, is focusing all of their attention on optimizing blogs, home pages and landing pages, and not dedicating enough time to product pages.

Your product pages, just like any other aspect of your site, need to be optimized to ensure they rank at the top of the search engine results page whenever people start looking for your items. 

So, how do you make sure your product pages are ready to rank?

Shopify Product Page SEO: What You Need to Know

Just like most parts of your website, your Shopify product pages can benefit from a variety of search engine optimization techniques. If you’ve already invested in “technical SEO” for your store, then you can probably already rest assured your pages are loading quickly on every device, and delivering an excellent experience. However, it’s important to get on-page optimization right too.

On-page optimization for your product pages generally revolves around a couple of things: your product descriptions, your title tags and URLs, and the meta data used for each page. 

Done correctly, optimizing your product pages won’t just make it easier for customers to find the items you sell when shopping online, it will also improve the customer experience. Well-designed pages make customers more likely to shop with you, and consider purchasing products from your brand. In this way, they can increase customer lifetime value, retention levels, and more.

5 Tips for Shopify Product Page SEO

Optimizing your Shopify product pages is a long-term process. It’s not enough to just add a few keywords to your pages and hope for the best. You need to constantly look for new ways to enhance your page descriptions, and improve the user experience. 

Here are our top tips for success. 

1. Don’t Just Write for Bots – Write for Buyers

First, when it comes to optimizing your product pages for SEO, it’s easy to make the mistake of writing descriptions specifically designed to capture the attention of search engine crawlers. However, today’s search engines don’t just look for the right density of keywords on your site. They’re looking for evidence you’re going to provide real value to your customers. 

With this in mind, think about how you can adapt your product descriptions to not just include keywords, but showcase the real benefits of your products. Don’t just list features (what your product can do, or what it looks like), Describe how the components of your product are going to make your customer’s lives better. 

For instance, instead of: “Water bottle with sealed cap”, write “The extra-strong seal on this bottle will prevent pesky spills and keep your water fresh.” 

2. Master Keyword Research

Any Shopify marketing expert will tell you keywords are crucial to effective SEO. However, many ecommerce leaders still struggle to find and implement the right keywords. With product pages, you’re not focusing on keywords that get the most traffic or volume online.

Instead, you should be concentrating on terms that are most likely to appeal to customers at the bottom of the sales funnel, with the highest levels of buyer intent. Long-tail, specific keywords generate more value than simple, broad topics. After all, someone searching for “shoes” could be looking for anything from tips on shoe sizing, to shoe style trends. 

However, someone looking for “size 6 sports shoes for women” is generally more likely to be thinking about making a purchase. Get specific with your keyword targeting.

3. Use Your Keywords Strategically

Once you have a selection of high-intent keywords, the next step is figuring out how to use them effectively. You don’t just want to scatter keywords throughout your product pages. Instead, you need to think about how you can strategically place each term to get the best results. 

A good rule of thumb to follow is that your keyword should appear once in:

• Your page URL (where possible)
• The product description title)
• The alt image tag for your products

You can also use your keyword once or twice in the product description, provided you don’t stuff too many examples of the term into a short space. Remember, keep things simple when it comes to creating SEO-optimized product listings. Your pages should highlight the benefits of your products to customers, but they should also use terms people will actually be searching for. 

“Majestic sunset dress” might sound great on paper, but it won’t attract nearly as much attention as a simple phrase like “orange slimline dress”. 

4. Build Page Content Around Buyer Awareness

One of the biggest challenges business leaders face when tackling product page SEO, is figuring out how much content they should include on each page. Tools like Shopify give you a decent amount of freedom to experiment with description length and other factors. 

However, it’s generally a good idea to keep things short, sweet, and straight to the point. This is particularly true if you have a lot of customers who browse through your website on mobile devices. The exact amount of content you produce for each page should depend on buyer awareness. 

For instance, if you’re selling an unusual or unique product that people are unlikely to understand at first glance, you might need to include more in-depth descriptions and videos. If you’re selling something universally recognizable, you can generally avoid adding too much extra information.

5. Find Ways to Improve User Experience

SEO and UX design go hand-in-hand these days. Search engines look for evidence that customers are having a good experience on your store (such as low bounce rates), to determine how high your rankings for each page should be. With that in mind, it’s worth looking for ways to add content to your pages that can streamline the customer journey. Experiment with:

• FAQs: While you might have a dedicated FAQ page on your website, it’s also helpful to add a few commonly asked questions to your product pages. You can create an expandable list on your store which allows people to tap questions to quickly access an answer. Think about the key questions your customers are most likely to have before they can make a purchase. For instance, you might want to provide insights into returns and shipping policies.
• Social proof: Today’s customers want evidence they can trust you. Studies show that product pages that include customer reviews see around 52.2% higher conversions. Adding a carousel of user-generated content and reviews to your pages could make your products seem more valuable and trustworthy. You could also include valuable accreditations or certifications your products have achieved on your product pages.
• Visuals: One of the biggest drawbacks of online shopping is customers don’t have an opportunity to physically touch or see the product themselves. That means you need to bridge the gap by giving your customers more visual content to work with. Share photos of your product from multiple angles (with alt tags), and consider using videos to give your customers a 360-degree view of whatever you’re selling.

6. Make Every Product Page Unique

Finally, although it takes time to write unique product descriptions, choose specific meta tags, and select individual keywords for every page, it’s worth it. While you can use consistent elements on your product pages (such as the same call to action button), the core content should be unique. 

This means you can’t just copy and paste content from similar products with slightly different words. It also means you shouldn’t just be copying content from a manufacturer if you’re reselling products or using a dropshipping business model. If your product descriptions look like duplicates of content on other pages, search engines are most likely to ignore them, or penalize your site. 

Take the time to actively create unique content for every product page you create, whether you’re creating content for a brand-new listing, or a variation of another product. 

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Don’t Underestimate Product Page SEO

Optimizing your product pages for the search engines doesn’t just give you a better chance of finding new customers, it can also significantly increase your sales and revenue. Although it takes time to master the process of creating great pages and description copy, it’s well worth the effort. 

If you can create pages that not only appeal to the search engines, but also inspire and engage your customers, your ecommerce business will reap the benefits.

If you need more help designing SEO-optimized, and user friendly Shopify stores, reach out to the team at Storetasker today. Our Shopify experts can help you with every aspect of building an exceptional store, from theme design, to implementing marketing strategies. 

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