Do you run an online store? Getting your product pages to appear number one on Google can be more difficult than climbing to the top of Mount Everest. However, it’s still possible.
If your pages rank, you get more traffic, more customers, more sales, and more income. One of the major factors affecting the performance of your product pages is your product descriptions.
It’s the content that explains your product to search engines and if not well prepared, your product pages will always struggle to rank. Hence, It’s important that you optimize all your product descriptions for search engines.
On the other hand, you can always make use of ecommerce product description writing services if you do not have the time and resources to craft SEO copy for your products.
Want to know how to write product descriptions for SEO? I’ve rounded up some top tips which you can check out below.
How To Write Product Descriptions For SEO
1. Know Your Target Audience
You may need to target different demographics and audiences depending on the type of products you sell. For example, your product may sell better for young people than older people and vice versa.
For this reason, you must learn about your target audience first when creating SEO-friendly product descriptions. They are your potential customers. Search engines – notably Google – emphasizes a lot on search intent.
Uncovering your target audience entails determining who is searching for the keywords that may direct them to your website. Once you know who your target audience is, you can design a strategy and implement the necessary techniques to ensure that they can relate with your product description.
2. Use Good Writing Tools
If you’re unaware, good grammar matters a great deal when it comes to SEO. The best writing tools will significantly improve how you write your English. This is most important if you’re not a native English speaker.
With their language processing algorithms, you’ll be sure that your product descriptions are free from errors. You can use these writing tools for punctuation analysis, text editing, automatic spell checking, correct grammar analysis, and proofreading.
Fortunately, you don’t have to spend much to get good writing tools. Some of the best options out there include Grammarly, Grab My Essay, Evernote, and Hemingway app. Most of these tools are available for free. They’ll save you a lot of time and stress.
3. Do Keyword Research
Since you’re targeting a particular audience, you have to be sure that you’re using the right keywords. Performing extensive keyword research for your product description removes all the guesswork. You get to know the exact keywords and phrases customers use to find your products.
One of the best ways to go about this is to track your performing competitions. By tracking your competitors’ keywords, you may find out which ones bring the most traffic and which ones you can rank for.
There are several keyword research tools out there. The free ones – for example, Wordtracker and Ubersuggest – are good but to get the most value, you may have to go for a premium keyword research tool.
4. Don’t Stuff Keywords
Maybe it worked before but presently, keyword stuffing does no good. Increasing keyword density in your product description isn’t the same as keyword stuffing.
Keyword stuffing involves using so many keywords to increase organic search results; it’s just like cheating. If you want to write a search engine optimized product description, you have to be honest.
Keyword stuffing degrades the user experience. Nobody wants to read something written to appease a machine – the search engine bot. In other words, potential customers will likely exit as fast as they came.
This results in a high bounce rate. A high bounce rate won’t directly affect your SEO but customers leaving your site almost immediately means low profit. The aim of creating SEO descriptions is to improve profits.
5. Make Each Description Unique
When writing product descriptions for SEO, avoid using a template or a set format. This will make everything boring. Also, search engines can easily detect similar content. When this happens, you’ll have page visibility issues.
You should try to create a unique description for every product. One way to go about this is by not using the manufacturer descriptions. The manufacturer description is public which already is likely on hundreds of websites.
Using it will harm your SEO as Google can see it as plagiarism. Furthermore, manufacturers’ descriptions are often technical. Pick only the important details you need and write a unique description.
6. Work With Drafts
You’re likely to edit your product description over and over again before publishing. Hence, it’s ideal that you work with drafts. Working with drafts ensures you pay attention to detail. This is even more ideal if you can’t organically add keywords as you write.
For each draft, focus on a particular customer need or problem and explain what makes your product unique and how it can help. You can simply list the product specifications and discuss each one. Try to explain the importance of each specification.
At the end of the day, go through all your drafts and pick out only the most informative details. Then, strategically place your keywords in each detail and finally combine the selected draft to form a full description.
7. Breakdown The Product Description
Most of the product descriptions you see ranking on Google are very easy to read. You can make your description easy to read by breaking it down into different sections, using bullet points, numbering, etc.
For example, you can list the specs or ingredients with bullet points, highlights in paragraphs, use headings, and others. Your customer should be able to understand what part of your product description talks about what features with just a glance.
Google considers user interaction and such arrangement will allow customers to navigate the pages easily. Furthermore, if you break down the product description, you’ll find more writing space. You can add more product information and target keywords which is very useful for SEO.
8. Provide Short Info About The Product Brand
Brand and product go hand in hand. Explain who you are and why customers should buy from you. Also, add a brand story with a joint company and product history.
If search engines already recognize the product brand as an authority, including information about it will boost your chances of ranking.
Furthermore, customers may already be familiar with the brand. Seeing the brand name in the SERPs may entice them to click and visit your online store.
If you’re selling your own products and your brand isn’t very popular, you should also implement this SEO strategy. It’ll help you stand out in markets and improve your position on SERPs in the long run.
9. Follow The 4Cs
The four Cs are correctness, clarity, concision, and completeness. All four are important for business writing. Clarity guarantees your reader comprehends your message.
There is no obscure terminology to look up, no unnecessary words to mask the real message, and the communication has a logical flow.
Concision is using as few words as possible to convey your message. You should avoid adjectives unless they help clarify the idea and keep your sentences short and precise.
Completeness means the reader has all the knowledge they need to understand the message, decide, and act. A product description must be complete to help a buyer make a decision.
Correctness simply means that you use no misleading information. Everything you say about your product must be genuine.
10. Watch Your Tone
The tone you use is another important factor when writing product descriptions for SEO. You can easily connect with visitors with the right tone. Your tone must match the type of products and services you’re selling.
For example, if you’re selling fashion accessories, pet accessories, you’ll want to use a lively and engaging tone. If you sell stuff like medications, you cannot use a casual tone as you have to appear professional.
11. Include Quality Images
Even if you’re an expert at writing SEO product descriptions, your writing will perform poorly on SERPs without the right images. In a survey by iPaper, it was revealed that 98 percent of online shoppers are not willing to buy unless they are convinced by detailed product descriptions and quality product images.
Customers can read about all the superb features of a product and won’t buy if they can’t see what they’re paying for. In essence, product photos tell a lot about the components of products. With a picture, customers can envision themselves using the product which can entice them to buy.
You must optimize the size of images you use. Heavy images will cause your site to slow down which could negatively impact your SEO. It’s a good thing that there are tools that reduce image size without reducing much quality.
12. Treat Frequently Asked Questions
Keyword research will often generate direct keyword phrases. However, lots of customers searching for products actually ask Google questions.
For example, it’s common for someone to search “what’s the bicycle I can buy” rather than “best bicycle to buy”. You can take advantage of these frequently asked questions which other online retailers miss.
It’s ideal to create a separate section in your product description for FAQs. Or you can strategically integrate it while explaining the product features. With FAQs, you have a way to target long-tail keywords.
Answering frequently asked questions will not only boost your SEO but also establish you as a retailer customers can trust. To them, you understand the problem they’re facing.
13. Use Links
In general SEO, the internal and external links that you use are very important. The sample applies when you’re writing product descriptions. However, your main focus should be on inbound links.
Inbound links are links that point to other pages on your website. You can include one or two inbound links to your other product pages, blog posts, or your about page.
For example, if a product has different variants or similar products on separate pages, you can link them using CTAs. While this is a rather common eCommerce strategy, the SEO advantage is that you’ll have higher user retention.
You’re giving visitors a reason to stay on your site. High user retention increases your site’s credibility and can positively impact your ranking.
14. Split Test
Split testing is a way to know how good or bad your product descriptions will perform. Even if your product descriptions appear very professional, it’s always ideal to split tests for different factors.
Your product description can be in different formats. The difference could be the length, font size, font type, image positioning, etc. These seemingly little factors can affect the page’s SEO.
From your split test results, you’ll know which product description version performs better and why. You’ll also get insights on how to optimize subsequent ones.
15. Proofread
Finally, proofread your description to ensure it is as clear and engaging as you like. If you misused keywords, fix them. Also, check for spelling, grammar, and word flow.
If you can, go through your previous drafts to be sure you didn’t leave out any important detail. Another important thing to check is readability. If you follow the 15 steps listed above, you’ll have a relatively high readability score already.
You can make use of content auditing tools to check your performance. If you’re satisfied that your product description has all the takes to hit the top of SERPS, you can go ahead and publish.
Bottom Line
SEO is a complex activity due to the ever-evolving search engine algorithms and it’s impossible to cover every aspect or get it right to the tiniest detail.
However, you can apply the tips mentioned in this post to write ecommerce product descriptions for SEO.
Besides, proper SEO practice when writing product descriptions will help your product pages rank better in search engine result pages (SERPs).