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SEO Titles, Descriptions, and Alt Text for Products
Posted by on February 24, 2021 at 9:10 pmI’m launching an eCommerce retail site on Shopify soon, and I’m working through optimizing my site for SEO. I’m populating Titles and Descriptions for all of my pages, in addition to writing alt text descriptions for any images. I’ve read a few best practices, but haven’t really been able to find any information specific to SEO optimization for products.
For SEO Titles I’m assuming it’s appropriate to simply to use a formula: [Brand] [Product Name] (ex. 4505 Sea Salt Fried Pork Curly Qs Cracklins). Is it necessary to add any additional information (perhaps package size, especially where there are variants), or any other descriptive info or keywords (maybe semantics here like “pork rinds”?
For SEO Descriptions, does it make sense to duplicate the information in the Title, and then add more descriptive information about the product (ex. 4505 Sea Salt Fried Pork Curly Qs Cracklins are made with ingredients that include only pork cracklings and sea salt fried in rendered pork fat. Each 3 oz. Bag contains 2 servings of about 1/2 oz. Each. Each serving has 80 calories and 7 g. Of protein. Our sea salt cracklins are made in the usa and certified paleo.)? I’ll obviously need to trim some descriptions to stay under the 150-160 character limit. The other thing I read is that duplicating a description from someone else’s site (in this case, the manufacturer 4505) can actually hurt SEO; is it worth just writing my own SEO Descriptions?
For Alt Text I was thinking of essentially using the SEO Title, and adding additional information as needed, for image variants (ex. main product Image: 4505 Sea Salt Fried Pork Curly Qs Cracklins; Nutritional Facts: 4505 Sea Salt Fried Pork Curly Qs Cracklins – Nutritional Facts). Is it worthwhile to add more descriptive info to the image alt text as well?
Maybe I’m overthinking this a bit… but I just want to make sure I’m fully optimized for the first time Google crawls my site. I appreciate any input that you have, and hope to contribute to this sub-Reddit in the near future!
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1 Reply
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For page titles, you only have around 60/70 characters long. You need to take that into consideration when writing product page titles. Only add information you know people will use to search for products. If package size isn’t one of them, then omit it, and use it in the page or in the Meta description tag.
Description tags add no SEO benefits, just CTR. You don’t need to duplicate the page title, as you gain nothing from doing that, but it doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t include it. Because it’s in the Title tag, you don’t necessarily need to include it again. If your running out of characters then you can omit it, and just include the relevant information you think that will attract people to the page.
Always write your own descriptions/titles. With products I know you’re forced too sometimes use pre-set text provided by the manufacture but always write your own where possible. If you’re copying someone else’s description then how are you to stand apart from them if you end up being Organic Listing neighbours?
For Alt text, think about what the Alt tag is for. It’s primary use is to describe what the image is to those that can’t see the page, and use text to speech features. If it’s a picture of the product, put it as so, but don’t spam it with information that is already on the page.
Sometimes the best SEO advice is don’t think about SEO, and just think about what information you want the user to see, not the search engines.
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