Reasons Why You Should Optimize Product Listings
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Having an e-commerce website is a lot more work than you think. More than optimizing the site as a whole, you should also look at your product listings as a foundational channel for optimization. With the call to satisfy user intent, it only makes sense that you should pay attention to your products and make it rank on the SERPs.
If you are unconvinced that product listings need your utmost care and precision, then you should take a look at some of the reasons why you should optimize product listings here:
Make the most out of your product defining keywords
Having a set of keywords that are high intent and further maximizes the potential of your site to address your target market. More than having customer defining keywords, you should have keywords that address your product the best. This is to make sure that you would be more visible if a particular customer searches for your product directly. Be clear in your intent for the products itself.
Have the best possible tools at your disposal, use Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends for this. Also, look at the search engine results for the products that you want to rank for, so you would know what type of content increases its position in the SERP.
Taking advantage of product meta tags
Product meta tags are often overlooked because they are simple elements in product listings. However, you should know that it will help you in the long run especially if you are looking to proactively rank your product listing. I have seen instances where the product listings are SKU codes and this is just a disaster. Let me give you a tip, however simple it may be, you should try describing the product itself.
Say for example, you put YT-0543 as a product title then you wouldn’t satisfy the user intent of looking for a particular product. You could choose to retain the product name on the site but change the title shown on the search engine pages. Describe your product as modern dress for weddings or wedding venue in Metro Manila. This way, you can also target keywords that you do not have a distinct landing page for.
Clear and concise content attracts buyers more
If the user is on the consideration side of the buyer’s journey, they would more likely look for content that would attract them to buy right away. Aim to write compelling content that targets the intent you would want for your product to rank for. As you are marketing your audience in the form of impressions and clicks, make sure that you will write in a way that would encourage them that buying your product would be worth their while.
Stay competitive in the Google market
Evidenced by the January 2020 Core update, Google is constantly reinventing its algorithms in order to deliver fresh search results to users. Moreover, it has been announced that they have rolled out the Popular Products listing in mobile search results that gives more reason to optimize product listings. Submitting your products to Google Merchant Center is not the end of optimization since you should also do your due diligence to make sure that you have the right product schemas in place in order to stay competitive in the Google digital market.
As Google releases these search engine features, this is an urgent call to optimize product listings. Although I advise you to optimize for users and not for bots, this is also a factor that you should always consider.
Highlight the best product benefits
Optimizing the product listings will help you highlight the best product benefits that will help users the most. Do not just mention the features of the products but be proactive in reaching out to buyers by helping them paint a picture of the benefits they would derive from the product. This is a great reason to optimize products since your meta descriptions can help you increase click-through-rate, another known ranking factor.
Key Takeaway
E-commerce SEO’s ROI is measured in its effectiveness, more than its ability to raise awareness for the business. In these considerations, the most important part that you have to remember is that you have to add value to your buyer’s journey, more than optimizing for the product features on the site.
Ranking for your product listings would be the best move that you can make for your e-commerce site since you would be front and center of the buyer’s awareness. Use this article as a guide the next time you are thinking about where to optimize for next. I would like to hear your thoughts about product optimization, comment down below and let’s talk about it!