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No one can buy your products if they can’t find them. This article offers 7 tips to optimize your SEO for product descriptions.
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You’re confident about your storefront on-site performance. Your site-speed score is top notch, your images are professionally shot, and a recent iteration of testing has taken your ecommerce conversion rate optimization to a new level.
Unfortunately, even if your product descriptions are optimized to sell, that may not be enough to impact your bottom line.
After all, no one can buy your products if they can’t find them.
And, if you’re not number one in search… you might as well not exist. The average click-through rate (CTR) for position one is 45.44%, according to Advanced Web Ranking, with position two bringing in an average CTR of just 17%.
In this article, you’ll learn seven tips for writing product descriptions that earn better search rankings for your ecommerce store.
Search engine optimization (SEO) product descriptions help ecommerce websites show up better in search engines like Google. They are used on websites that sell products online, like clothes or toys, and include special words and phrases that people might use when they’re searching for those things online.
These descriptions serve two important purposes: they optimize your website’s product pages and can be adapted for product feeds on shopping platforms like Google Shopping. For best results, creating unique descriptions for each platform is recommended rather than using identical content. This means writing one optimized version for your website and a distinct version for shopping feed listings to maximize visibility and avoid content duplication.
You can rank higher for relevant keywords by including them in your product descriptions, which will help drive organic traffic to your website and make your products more visible in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Well-written, informative product descriptions can provide value to potential customers and improve their overall experience on your ecommerce site. Online trust and credibility can increase conversions.
A detailed, accurate, and engaging description of your products can persuade potential customers to buy. Good copywriting can also help you differentiate your products from the competition.
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The number one rule for good ecommerce SEO is to write for people first—not for the search engine web crawlers.
What’s good for your target audience is good for search engines, because their top priority is usability. The whole point of organic search is to help users find exactly what they’re looking for. If your own product descriptions align with this goal, you’re going to please Google Search algorithms and rank well.
Sure, you can use the manufacturer’s descriptions—but they won’t be able to nail your brand voice and audience pain points like you can. It also might create duplicate content across different websites.
When writing your descriptions, always ask yourself:
If you start from square one using this approach, you’re already on the ideal path to writing SEO-optimized product descriptions. If you already have product descriptions on your site, conduct an SEO audit to see which are performing well, and improve on the ones that are not.
You cannot write an informative, accurate description of a product unless you understand that product inside out. Vague knowledge of a product will lead to an equally vague description, one that is unhelpful for your online buyers as well as the search engines.
Here’s a good example: Does this writer know anything about the winter boots they’re describing?
This description could be referring to any winter boots. It doesn’t connect to the buyer’s information needs. It’s heavy on features, but light on benefits.
You may be jazzed about your products’ features and ready to shout them from the rooftops—but all your buyers care about are the benefits.
Here’s the difference:
Features are impersonal. Features describe what a product can do, what it looks like, or how it works, without relating those things to the buyer. Features are great, but why should the buyer care about them?
Let’s return to the above winter boots for an example of an entirely features-driven product description:
“The Cougar Creek Boots Feature A Canvas Upper With A Round Toe. The Man-made Outsole Lends Lasting Traction And Wear.”
This description tells you what materials the boots are made of. What it does not tell you is how boots made of those materials will improve your life beyond “lasting traction and wear.”
Even that part tells us next to nothing:
Even if these boots could get you through a week living in a sub-zero arctic tundra, we’d never know. So what’s a better way to inform online buyers and get them to linger on your product page?
Benefits describe how product features will work for the buyer. Benefits address exactly how your product will improve your customers’ lives.
Describing benefits is far more helpful for certain demographics than listing features. Adding product benefits makes your description relevant to the buyer—and that makes it better for SEO.
A good, benefits-driven description looks like this:
This description not only mentions features (“a waterproof rubber foot” and “a soft fabric lining”), it also tells you how you will benefit from them (the rubber “blocks moisture from getting in” and the fabric lining “ensures toasty warmth and comfort”).
Note how quickly you get a clear picture of what it would be like to wear these boots when you read this description. It covers all the main points that matter to a buyer in two sentences.
When you stick to the benefits of your products in your descriptions, your persuasive power and enterprise SEO strategy will both be equally effective.
To optimize SEO for product descriptions, you must include using the right target keywords. This will help search engines understand your pages, which will help internet searchers find what you’re selling.
So, how do you do the right keyword research?
It’s all about narrowing it down to the right phrase, which starts with a solid keyword research tool. SEMrush is a great option, as is KWFinder or Moz Keyword Explorer. These tools let you research specific keywords and give you valuable data about factors like:
The right keywords will almost always fall into that last category, known as long tail keywords. Why? Because longer queries tend to have more commercial search intent. You should use long tail keywords because they have a higher conversion value—they lead to more sales.
For example, let’s say we’re selling a product that fits the general definition of “face oil.”
To narrow down our keyword, we consider our ingredients (or substitute the benefits and features, if we have a retail product).
If we add our top ingredient for face oil, we might identify something truly unique, like squalane oil. (For inquiring minds, squalane is a plant-based substance known for anticancer and skin-protecting effects.)
Let’s say our product also contains vitamin C and rose oil. We can add more key ingredients, and get a targeted phrase: squalane vitamin C rose oil.
Check out how the competition numbers go down when we narrow down our search queries (screenshots from Semrush).
Starting with “face oil,” we’re up against some fairly big sites: In the top results are landing pages from Ulta and Sephora, and we’re looking at numbers on the keyword difficulty scale that score past 50 out of 100. It’s possible buyers will find our product with this search, but it won’t be easy.
But just by adding “vitamin c rose” to “face oil,” we can identify an easier keyword to rank for:
By narrowing down, we’re competing with fewer big names to win first-page placement for our keyword ranking.
Check out how the brand Biossance—a Shopify merchant—uses this exact keyword phrase for its product name, a fantastic example of how to “SEO” your product descriptions.
Once you have some good keywords in hand, you can strategically place them in your product descriptions.
Avoid keyword stuffing. This is easy to do in short descriptions (300 words or less). To avoid it, use your focus keyword no more than a few times:
Include your keyword in your link text, but only if it meshes with the product title.
Let’s return to the Biossance facial oil for a good example of how to use keywords in your product descriptions.
Throughout this product description, the keyword “squalane vitamin C rose oil” is used:
This shortlist above is all you need to rank (and to avoid penalization for repeating your keyword ad nauseam).
Unfortunately, there is no set length that works for every product. Instead, best practices demand that you base the length of your descriptions on customers’ level of awareness of your product.
Potential buyers with low awareness of your product will need more convincing—they don’t know you, your product, or that they have a need for it. This means you have to describe your product thoroughly to bring them to the level of awareness needed for a sale.
The example we looked at above from Biossance thoroughly addresses buyers, even those at a low awareness level.
The first part of the description is a general summary, and below that there are tabs the user can click on for more details, ingredients, how to use, and FAQs. This is a fantastic way to lay out product copy in a way that is both user-friendly and informative.
Biossance also showcases customer reviews buyers can check out to see if it’s the right product.
On the other end of the spectrum, highly aware online buyers are already fully cognizant of the product and why they need it. They require far less convincing to reach for their wallets, so you’ll need less copy.
Here’s an example of a product description for a simple T-shirt from Madewell that addresses buyers with a high awareness level:
Everybody knows what a T-shirt is and what it’s for. We don’t need a novel-length description to explain it—just a brief paragraph and key bullet points.
Of course, awareness can be features-dependent, too.
For instance, think about selling everyday cotton T-shirts like the ones described above. Everybody knows what they are, what they’re used for, and how to care for them—you don’t need to explain their purpose or describe their special features in detail.
But what about organic cotton T-shirts? What about hand-sewn T-shirts with embroidered details? Or designer T-shirts made from high-end fabric?
As you can imagine, as the special features of a product increase, the length of the description you need grows too.
This is why your product description length for SEO depends on your particular targets, their level of product awareness, and the type of products you sell.
Your call to action (CTA) should come after the product description is written. CTAs help shoppers move seamlessly through their journey, from product browse to checkout. They should be clear and engaging, and include an action you want the customer to take.
Create ecommerce product pages with CTA’s like “Add to Cart” or “Add to Bag.” Many retailers also use a secondary “Add to Wishlist” CTA to let shoppers save desired products to their account, as seen in the Culture Kings example below.
Another must for good SEO is to avoid duplicate content at all costs.
In general, creating similar descriptions for all the products in your online store can cause problems to your website for to rank properly on search engines. Algorithm might struggle trying to index your pages.
When you have product descriptions that look like near-duplicates, search engines don’t know what to do with them. This can drive down visibility for all of your pages.
To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, each of your product descriptions needs to be unique, including specific product titles.
There’s no doubt about it: SEO for product descriptions is important for any DTC or B2B ecommerce strategy.
The key is to think of the online buyer’s information needs first and foremost. Then, follow best practices to ensure your digital marketing will net the attention of search engines.
That’s the simple rule of thumb for writing winning product descriptions that do their job without a hitch.
To optimize a product page for search, some of the main elements you’ll need are a descriptive heading, title tag, and meta description, a unique product description, high-quality product images with descriptive alt text, and a human-readable URL structure.
They should be as long as necessary to comprehensively describe the product. Keep readability in mind. If shoppers can easily understand and connect with your text, they’ll act on it. Meta descriptions on product pages, however, should be between 120 and 160 characters if you don’t want Google to rewrite them. Note that even if your tags are good, Google may still rewrite them based on the search query.
Your product description should provide a valuable and engaging experience for your reader that explains the product’s primary features, benefits, and pricing. It should also include the business value you provide to optimize click-through rates.
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