Ecommerce Product Page SEO: Checklist

As competition grows stronger it becomes harder to find the balance between delivering exceptional content and leveraging the search rankings. eCommerce product page SEO becomes an afterthought while most of the SEO efforts are dedicated to the homepage, categories, and content pages.

It is a missed opportunity since optimized products are a source of targeted and conversion-ready traffic. So, in this guide, you'll learn everything you need to know about product page optimization. It will help you to boost your pages to Page 1 on Google and beat out the competition.

We've gathered the winning product page SEO tactics in one place to help you meet your target customer and drive more attention to your products.

1. Implement a keywords strategy

People searching for products online usually are pretty sure what they want to buy. That's why the first thing you need to optimize SEO for product pages is to develop a results-driven keyword strategy. 

Product pages usually have transactional intent. So you have to optimize your product pages to serve the audience that is interested in buying your products.

Regardless of the keywords research tools you use to find relevant keywords (Moz Keyword Explorer and Google Keyword Planner are great examples), remember to keep customers' best interests in mind. Pay attention to keyword volume and difficulty, but focus on the relevancy of the keywords and the long-tail queries.

Let's suppose you sell iPhones and take that as an example. Optimizing for a high-volume "iPhone" query won't play off very well for your rankings since it is too general. But if you target something like "iPhone 13 Golden 256 MG" you have far more chances to rank.

Moreover, you'll need to find relevant queries to optimize not only content but titles, descriptions, and URLs.

2. Create SEO-friendly Product URLs

URL is the second important step in your product page SEO strategy. It speaks not only to your customers but to search engines as well. Both can identify the structure of your website and learn what the page is about. 

It is important to keep the human-readable URL short, simple, and descriptive. Ideally, you should have keywords in your URL. But it's fine if you need to tweak it a little. Just remember to keep the words lowercase, separate them with dashes and avoid long random auto-generated URLs.

3. Eliminate Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is one of the most common SEO issues that can negatively impact your search ranking even if you constantly create unique content for your pages. It is a serious threat to your SEO potential. 

Ecommerce websites use faceted search, pagination, and filtering to deliver a better catalog experience. However, all of those features create parameterized URLs that are considered unique pages.

As a result, search crawlers have to choose the main page among the duplicates and rank it in the search. 

Don't guess. They usually don't choose the right variant of the page.

No need to disable the search, or filter to fix this. Just add canonical tags to define the main version of the page. It will consolidate the link juice and improve indexing.

4. Add Descriptive Headings

Except for unique content you need to pay attention to the product page structure. The headings, in particular, are very important.

They not only structure the page into concise and informative blocks but help search engines get more information about your page too. 

Generally, it is recommended to use the H1 for product names and H2 for features, benefits, and other technical specifications of the product.

Try to use your target keyword in H1 and in H2 where it fits. But remember to keep it natural and useful.

5. Create Unique Product Descriptions

People landing on your product page have their credit cards handy. They are ready to buy. So your task is to convince them your product is exactly what they need. 

Here is when the product page content takes the stage. You need to create a unique, engaging, and persuasive copy. Include benefits, key features and other information customers might be looking for. 

But no need to turn it into an essay just for the sake of more keywords.

Yes, a product page SEO strategy requires you to use keywords on the product page. But it should be the low-competition keywords similar to your target query. 

"The more, the better" is not the case for SEO. Don't be spammy. It is humans who buy from you, not search engine robots.

6. Optimize Meta Information

Meta titles and descriptions have a specials place in your product page SEO strategy. Title and description is the first thing customers pay attention to on the search results page.

So, making them unique and catchy will make your product stand out from the other generic results. An effective meta title is unique, includes a primary keyword, preferably at the beginning, and is between 30-60 characters. 

The same applies to the meta description which should be around 130-155 characters. They have to provide some additional information about a product.

Remember to include a CTA into your descriptions and name some unique benefits customers will get choosing your product over the others.

If you have plenty of products, creating unique metadata for each of them is going to take ages. So, it's best to create meta tags templates and generate unique meta titles and descriptions to boost your product page SEO.

 

7. Optimize Breadcrumbs

Website navigation is one of those many things that are important for both search crawlers and customers. Sometimes customers go through a lot of pages before the end up of a product page. So it is important to show them how they got there with the help of breadcrumbs.

Every eCommerce website should use breadcrumbs not only to improve internal linking. They allow customers quickly jump back to any higher-level category to continue browsing.

Besides, breadcrumbs help people and search spiders understand the page hierarchy of your store better. And if you mark the breadcrumbs with schema, they will be also displayed in search results.

But, we'll cover it later.

8. Link Product Attributes

Another great way to improve the internal linking structure and boost eCommerce product page SEO is linking product attributes with cross-links. It improves customers' experience and allows you to rank for queries around the product.

And there are plenty of ways to implement that.

You can link brand attributes to the brand page, category — to the category, color or size — to the product range with the same size or color. Opportunities are limitless as long as it improves the shopping experiences.

9. Use High-Quality Images

Do people have time to process the copy and find out how awesome your product is faster than they process images? High-quality images speak volumes about your products and improve conversion rates. 

You can spend hundreds on an engaging copy, but if people don't find a product appealing visually, the copy potential is a waste.

Make sure to use only professionally photographed images to display your products in detail. Images where your products are displayed in context also helps to evoke positive connotations with them.

From the product page SEO point of view, your should also keep product images optimized. Use product names in image files and alt attributes, compress image files to the right size, consider using WebP images as a modern file format and use lazy loading.

10. Display Related Products

Even when people land on your product page from a search, they might not be ready to buy yet.

Product descriptions are not too promising. The range of features doesn't fulfill their expectations. They might not be sure what they need exactly. 

There could be plenty of reasons. But it doesn't mean you have to lose these customers. 

Offer them an alternative in a form of related products. They could find related products better than the ones they originally landed on. Or it could be a perfect cross-sell if they already want to buy. 

Besides, related products are an ideal option for internal linking purposes and better SEO performance for your product pages.

11. Add Product FAQs

Quality content does make your page rank high on SERP. It is what makes people land on your product page after all, especially if it is optimized with keywords.

But still, it might raise some questions. If you've created your buyer persona, you know quite well what your potential customers might be interested in.

Including the Q&A section on your product pages contributes to more useful and engaging content. It helps you to address customers' objections and help them make a purchasing decision.

Ease up the pressure on your support department and provide customers will all possible answers they might need to convert.

12. Improve Page Load Time

You've dedicated a great deal of effort to improving the on-page eCommerce product page SEO, but the conversion rates are increased at a snail's pace, if at all. Website speed is one of the most essential SEO ranking factors which could spoil all of these efforts. 

Put yourself in your customers' shoes. You end up on a website that offers exactly what you need, images are breathtaking, and the product description highlight that the product is "just it".  But it takes ages to load.

Sooner or later even the most avid fans of your brand are going to look out for some faster alternatives. Pay attention to the page loading and speed up your website to squeeze out every millisecond for better product pages. 

The page loading speed depends on its actual size. One of the Sitechecker SEO platforms tools will help you check the actual page size in kilobytes and get recommendations for page optimization.

13. Mark Up Products with Structured Data

Once the metadata of your product page is optimized, you might be getting more traffic. However, to make it even more targeted you should mark up your products with rich snippets.

Structured data pull out additional information about your product in search. These could be reviews, ratings, price, availability, breadcrumbs, and FAQ. The right rich snippets help you to improve the CTR and target people who're really interested in purchasing your products. 

Not surprisingly. 

Search results with rich snippets drive much more attention than the rest of the results.

Don't you agree?

14. Audit Product Pages for Issues

SEO is a constantly developing concept. And since Google continues to release new updates, you should monitor your product page SEO constantly as well. 

Though you've gone through this SEO checklist for product pages, some things might find a way to go out of hand. Duplicate meta descriptions, speed issues, broken links, missing structured data, etc. 

To avoid any SEO issues, try to audit the product page regularly or use the SEO service to do it for you. 

Is it Worth It?

Once you optimize product pages for SEO, they're going to generate results on autopilot. But, unfortunately, it is not the "set and forget" case with SEO.

Sadly, your competitors look for the best ways to rank too, and will likely take your spot if you lose focus. So, you should constantly search for new ways to tweak your strategy to fit your needs and serve customers better.

For those who manage their stores on Magento, we offer a Magento 2 SEO solution. It helps you to streamline the search engine optimization process and cover most of the product page SEO requirements.