E-Commerce SEO Guide: How to Get Your Product Pages Ranking on Google
We are spending more time online than ever before. From interacting on social media to streaming the latest shows to shopping, almost everything can be done through the internet. Companies are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of having an e-commerce website to capture the attention of online customers.
But running a successful e-commerce business does not end with simply having a website that lists your products and services. Ensuring your site’s search engine optimization, or SEO, is excellent is vital to the performance of your store. The process of SEO is aimed at improving your e-commerce site’s visibility in search engines in order to increase organic traffic.
How can you do this? In this article, we are going to identify the ways in which you can get your product detail pages (PDPs) to rank on Google and how utilizing EKOM can help in the process.
Understanding the Importance of Keywords for Product Detail Pages (PDPs)
In order to provide viewers with adequate information on your products or services, creating detailed PDPs containing accurate product descriptions and visuals is necessary.
With the goal of e-commerce sites being to turn visitors into customers, the influence of PDPs cannot be overstated. Still, studies show that only close to 40% of e-commerce marketers have optimized their PDPs for search. In order to beat out your competition, you want to take every opportunity to improve your SEO. To do this, you’ll need to embed strong keywords throughout your PDPs to boost rankings.
Keywords in Context: More Than Just Search Terms
Keywords are the words or short phrases that a user may type into a search engine, known as search queries, to find the content they are wanting.
Your goal is for the keywords on your page(s) to reflect what online users are searching for so they are directed to your e-commerce site. Throwing sparse keywords into your content will not cut it. Instead, they should be included in the product name, product copy, photo title, alt tags, and metadata.
Keyword Optimization: Tailoring Your Strategy for E-Commerce Success
With the internet filled with millions of keywords, we next need to look at how you can find the right keywords for your PDPs.
First, create a list of topics you want to rank for that you think are important to your e-commerce business. Then, identify some keywords that fall under those topics. Next, factor in the user intent and how it affects keyword research.
The user intent is simply the reason behind an internet search. Your site should address the problem that a searcher intended to solve rather than merely featuring the keyword. Keywords can have different meanings, therefore, it is important to take into consideration how the keywords you are targeting can be interpreted.
To get a good idea of what a user’s intent is, enter the keyword into a search engine, see what type of results you get, and confirm that the results are similar to what you intend to create for that keyword. Once this is done, look at how related search terms rank on Google. Finally, take advantage of the keyword research tools available like SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner.
As you are conducting your keyword research, focus on the following three elements: relevance, authority, and volume. Because Google ranks content based on relevance, your content will only rank if it meets the search intent. Additionally, your content needs to provide more value than other sites in order to rank higher.
Next, focus on becoming an authoritative site by adding content filled with helpful information, and then promote it to obtain backlinks and social signals. Google looks favorably upon sites filled with exceptional content that gives it authority.
Finally, the volume of a keyword is measured by the monthly search volume (MSV), which is the number of times that a keyword is searched per month. Therefore, you do not want to rank on the first page for a keyword that few people search for before because this will not bring traffic to your site. To avoid this, choose keywords with a higher volume.
Once you come up with some keywords for your PDPs, make sure you revisit them to reevaluate their strength. As your brand gains authority in the search engine results pages (SERPs), you can continue to add more keywords to maintain your presence.
The Anatomy of an SEO-Friendly Product Detail Page
Now that we have established the significance of keywords and choosing the right ones, let’s go a step further and identify what else an SEO-friendly PDP is composed of.
Product Title Optimization: Making the First Impression Count
The product title is the first thing a potential buyer will see on your PDP. 66% of online users perform online research before making a purchase, so your title should contain more detail than just the product name itself.
Having a product title that is optimized will make your product more likely to show up as a relevant response in a search query. A few tips for product title optimization include: focusing on the product title length, making sure it is simple and to the point, placing the important information first, and including the name of your brand.
Building Compelling Product Descriptions
Once you have the product title optimized, your next focus should be elevating your product descriptions. A powerful product description will convince potential customers that your product or service is the solution to their problem and lead them to purchase.
Pay close attention to the following elements when producing a powerful SEO product description: make it reflective of your brand’s voice, gear it towards your buyer persona, offer value to your customer, provide quality writing that is technically proficient, and end every description with a call to action.
Optimizing Visual Assets: Images and Videos that Drive Engagement
Images are needed to make your content more appealing and engaging for those who are viewing your PDP, but they are also vital to SEO. In order to succeed with SEO, your images need to be optimized and high-quality.
Let’s look at a few ways to optimize your images. First, resize your images, keeping in mind that those with higher resolution and larger dimensions will slow down the load time on your PDP. Secondly, optimize image file names by applying relevant and descriptive keywords.
Next, use alternative tags so that search engines can index the image content correctly. Finally, make sure that the images are mobile-friendly because Google’s algorithm applies a mobile-first indexing that casts importance on the mobile version of your e-commerce site.
Are you looking for the right tool to help you create an SEO-friendly PDP? There are several available, but few possess the capabilities that EKOM has to offer.
This AI-powered automation tool has the capacity to do all that we discussed in this section, from creating and optimizing SEO product titles and descriptions to product asset creations like images and videos. Not only will EKOM get the job done, but it will save your team both time and money.
Mastering Technical SEO for E-Commerce Success
Technical SEO is critical to your overall e-commerce SEO strategy. One of the main reasons why it is so important is because it alerts search engines that your site is of high quality, leading it to rank higher. Let’s identify a few key factors that encompass technical SEO.
Accelerating Site Speed: A Key to User Retention and Conversion
Ideally, e-commerce PDPs should have a loading speed that is no longer than two seconds. No user wants to stay on a site page that has a slow loading time, and the chances of them leaving your site increases by more than 50% if the page takes more than three seconds to load. This will lead to your e-commerce business losing sales and a loss in annual revenue. The speed can be improved by reducing file size images, decreasing redirects, and minifying CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.
Building a User-Friendly Site Architecture
Overall site architecture, how your pages are structured and linked together, has a big impact on your e-commerce site’s technical SEO.
Here are three rules to keep in mind when designing your e-commerce site’s architecture:
- Remember that no page on your site should be three clicks from the homepage.
- Implement a logical hierarchy, descending from general to specific content.
- Make sure it is scalable and you can easily make edits and updates as your e-commerce business grows.
The Continuous Cycle of SEO: Monitoring and Adapting
Besides understanding how to implement an SEO-friendly PDP, you also need to monitor the results to understand what is working and what needs to be improved.
Utilizing Analytics to Guide Your SEO Efforts
SEO analytics means to collect and analyze raw data to understand your SEO efforts. Having this data eliminates the need for guessing what goals and strategies you need to develop to strengthen your efforts.
Before beginning to pull analytic reports and study the results, come up with a plan that identifies what you are hoping to uncover through data analysis. Having a solid plan in place will help ensure that no important insights are overlooked and you are not undertaking more work than you should.
Choosing the Right SEO Tools for E-Commerce Success
Next, choose the right tools to monitor SEO. There are numerous tools out there to give you insight into your search presence on Google and how keywords are performing.
If you are looking for one tool to do it all, EKOM has you covered. With EKOM, you can monitor your product asset analytics in your dashboard, meaning you have all of this critical information in one place. And, this eliminates the need for the use of another tool.
Other common tools used by e-commerce brands are Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and Google Analytics. Utilize the tool that you feel will provide you with reports that are filled with information that is as easy to comprehend and implement as possible.
Interpreting SEO Data for Informed Decision Making
After you have selected the tool(s) to use, you then have to analyze the data and the reports compiled.
In order to conduct a thorough SEO analysis, it is recommended you pay close attention to the following measures: checking your page speed, looking at your visibility on Google, image auditing, analyzing your URLs, ensuring your website is relevant and up-to-date, and evaluating backlinks and internal links.
When these factors are taken into account, you then review the data and act based upon the results.
Conclusion
With e-commerce becoming an increasingly more popular way for consumers to shop, it is essential to have an e-commerce website that incorporates SEO strategies, including optimized PDPs.
Having your PDPs rank high on Google’s search engine results pages cannot be done without implementing the proper keywords, creating an SEO-friendly PDP, understanding and applying technical SEO, and monitoring your SEO efforts.
Checking off all of these boxes will take some time and effort, but doing so will lead your e-commerce business to see an increase in conversions and revenue.
Begin implementing an SEO strategy for your PDP with EKOM today.