Do you own an e-commerce website or have your products listed on an e-commerce marketplace like Amazon? Either way, you would already know the importance of optimizing product listings. How your product listing appears on your e-shop has a greater bearing on your website’s overall search engine ranking, visibility, and sales.
But what is a product listing?
The product listing refers to the display of your products online providing all the valuable information to the customers to help them purchase. Such information could be the product category, its features, size, color, type, product images, and price. All these details need to be available to your eShop users.
This article will give you useful tips for optimizing the product listing on your eShop, no matter what your market niche is.
How to optimize product listings on your eShop?
Perform keyword research
Does it sound too technical? Don’t worry! Performing keyword research isn’t difficult if you know the right tools and we are here to help you.
First what you need to know is that search engines identify product listings through keywords. And how should you know which keywords to use in your listings to optimize their visibility? You need to perform keyword research.
Let’s see what keyword research is. Keyword research is the process of identifying the search terms your potential users are using to search for the products in your market niche.
For instance, if you have an e-commerce store selling ‘yarns’ keyword research will help you identify what search terms your users use to buy ‘yarns’ online. Some potential keywords would be crochet yarn, bulky yarn, recycled yarn, acrylic yarn, etc.
You can use free keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner or paid ones like Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, and Semrush to perform keyword research. You can also use the ‘related searches’ section at the bottom of the search result page to get a list of target keywords.
Write descriptive product titles
As mentioned, it is crucial to use keywords to help search engines identify your product listings. What you should take care of the most is your product titles, which should be descriptive enough and include keywords. Therefore, the longer and more descriptive the product title is, the higher its chances of being read by search engines. Thus, the higher the chances will be to improve your website’s visibility and sales.
But don’t forget to include all the necessary keywords in your product title related to the product. For instance, if the product is ‘dog food’, the product title should encompass details like the dog’s size the food is suitable for, whether it’s dry or wet dog food, package size, quantity, flavor, and so forth.
With this, when a user searches for ‘dry dog food,’ your product is more likely to appear at the top of the search results.
Accurate product descriptions
Just like product titles, product descriptions are equally important to optimize. Since it’s not always possible to include all essential information in the product title, be sure to cover all other necessary details about the product in the product descriptions.
You can use pointers to highlight every detail to make the product description more readable. Furthermore, it should include all the valuable information a user needs to know before buying a product.
For instance, in a clothing product listing, essential information like fabric type, care instructions, and size is vital. Similarly, when purchasing gadgets, providing all the product specifications is crucial.
Use high-quality product images
Statistics say that 75% of online buyers rely on product images when purchasing. Since they can’t see the product in real time, they rely solely on photos to better understand its appearance.
Hence, it’s crucial to upload product images that very closely resemble the actual product. Including at least 4 to 5 product photos from different angles is advisable. All these photos should be of ultra-HD quality. You can also utilize real-life images of users using your product to increase the authenticity of your product. This strategy helps you pitch the reliability of the product in multiple ways.
Do include customer reviews
Customer reviews with photos greatly influence a shopper’s buying decision. Not all your customer reviews should be positive, but most should be.
Include verified customer reviews from your customers. You can ask them to leave reviews by offering incentives like discounts, loyalty points, special coupons, etc. You can simply request to leave a star rating feedback after they have received a product. The easier it is for a customer to leave a review, the higher the likelihood of receiving one.
Optimize the product pages for snippets
Snippets can be seen on top of the search results page and have a greater chance of getting clicked. To enable Google to display your product page as snippets, you use a type of code called structured markup language. It provides a specific framework for designing the product page and writing content that helps search engines understand and present the information effectively.
You can use Google Structured Data Markup Helper to add a markup to a web page by entering the page URL or HTML code.
Optimize the product links
This may not be so beneficial for e-commerce apps, but it is a dealbreaker for e-commerce websites. The web page URL should clearly give a hint about the page contents. For instance, an eCommerce store web page showing a sports shoe should be like www.ecommercestore.com/sport-shoes instead of using generic terms that give no knowledge to search engines about the web page. Using appropriate and short URLs also helps you target and rank for the relevant keywords.
Conclusion: a few tips to remember
In summary, a few tips to remember to optimize your product listing include:
- Do market research to know the keywords you need to target
- Use only high-quality product photos
- Use a definitive product title and product description
- Include the customer reviews section
- Utilize SEO tips like structured data markup and short URLs.
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