One of the most overlooked parts of Magento SEO is optimizing product pages individually so that visitors convert. This is especially true for merchants that have a large catalog and use generic product descriptions and images provided by the manufacturer. Sometimes, online retailers are, let’s accept it, lazy or don’t have the time or resources to invest into writing long product descriptions that are unique, relevant, and products that sell themselves.
Why do I need on-page product SEO optimization?
To maximize sales on the web, visitors need to have engaging and abundant information which serves for selling, advertising, and educational purposes.
Manufacturers (e.g. Nike, Garmin, Sony) offer their products en masse to online and offline distributors. Most online merchants end up using the product description and imagery provided by the manufacturers. As a result, the internet gets flooded with multiple websites who are using the same product copy; titles, descriptions, and images. Except for regular CMS pages that are unique to each eCommerce store, the copy of the website then ends up being the same as a hundred other websites and are treated by search engines as not providing unique content or any particular value. Below you’ll find a guide on how to optimize each product page on your Magento store.
Magento Product Names
Your product name should be short yet descriptive. Most search engines will display up to 71 characters. The URL Key of the product page should reflect the product name, it’s category or anything else that is important depending on what you’re selling. When stuck, it’s not a bad idea to use your page titles as, essentially, your URLs.
Magento Product Meta Tags
Your product Meta description will appear in search results, so you’ll want to make it short and concise, and remember that it’s purpose is to encourage people who are querying search engines to click on your product link.
Magento Product Descriptions
When writing product descriptions you are making a sales pitch to the potential customer. Don’t copy the product description directly from the manufacturer. There are possibly hundreds of other vendors who have access to this description, so using it won’t give you the unique original content that search engines are looking for. Try to humanize the language by including all the product specs, warranties, features etc. The longer the description, the better informed the buyer will be. Where possible, it is a good practice to include PDF product manuals. Be careful to not overdo it and try to avoid “keyword stuffing” — the practice of using a particular keyword too often to trick a search engine. Provide value and stay within context.
Add Videos to Product Description
Using video for product overviews or reviews can greatly increase conversions and assist with SEO. Magento allows for video embedding directly on the product page. We highly recommend that you use YouTube to host your videos as they are the 2nd biggest search engine after Google and you’ll save on hosting (bandwidth and quota). Quite often online shoppers will turn to Youtube for their research. If a visitor lands on your website they can see the video directly on the product page and vise-versa. If you don’t have the time or resources to do product reviews look at the manufacturer’s website or Youtube Channel. Most manufacturers have overview videos of their products. Provided that you are an authorized reseller of Garmin, for example, you can search for a product video on Youtube and embed the video directly on the product page. To embed a video in the product description go to: Product Information –> General –> WISYWYG –> Show/Hide Editor –> Insert/Edit Embedded Media (vertical film icon) –> Source –> Paste embed code –> Insert.
Magento Product Images
Great images vs bad images will certainly make a difference on your online store’s revenue. Search engines, however, can not read images and only crawl the alt tags. Write strong alt tags and name the image files appropriately. Remember that some people search for product images, which can lead them to your website and products. Alt tags also allow those who cannot read your website to understand what an image is depicting.
Magento Product Reviews and QA’s
Product reviews are one of the top motivators for conversions and they add free, relevant content to your website. Out of the box, Magento comes with product review functionality. Fist thing first, you need to enable reviews on your store and continuously monitor and approve the reviews that come in through the Magento Admin. Sometimes the problem is that most of the reviews are spam and submitted by spam bots. To prevent this from happening you’ll need to install an extension for your product reviews to be SEO friendly/bot crawlable. Reviews will add product-related content to your website which will be great for SEO.
Product reviews are one of the top motivators for conversions and they add free, relevant content to your website. Out of the box, Magento comes with product review functionality. Fist thing first, you need to enable reviews on your store and continuously monitor and approve the reviews that come in through the Magento Admin. Sometimes the problem is that most of the reviews are spam and submitted by spam bots. To prevent this from happening you’ll need to install an extension for your product reviews to be SEO friendly/bot crawlable. Reviews will add product-related content to your website which will be great for SEO.
Alternatively, you can use a SAAS platform like Yotpo, an easy to use solution that can generate ratings, reviews, questions, and answers.
Some of the Yotpo features are:
Automatic & smart logic for real-time personalization based on device
Mobile friendly
Ability to customize look, content, and logic
Easy and fast review submission process
Upsells in the review request email
Reviews carousel
Reviews tabs
Dedicated reviews Pages
Product PDF Owner’s Manuals
Having publicly available PDF Owner’s Manuals on your website not only offers additional information to the buyer but also serves as a point of reference for others and a way for past clients to come back to your website. The same way as with the videos, ask the manufacturer for a PDF manual so that you can display it on the website. If you can not find one, make the effort to even scan an owners manual and upload it on your website (as long as it is ok with the manufacturer).
The list can go on and on since no online store is virtually the same and business models and strategies vary greatly. I have seen solid businesses running on Yahoo stores where the user experience and website layout/architecture is the worst but they offer a ton of information on each product and rank very high on search engine results. With Magento, you have the latest and best SEO technology. The basic idea here is to provide the visitor with as much information as possible on the product they are shopping for. If you follow the steps discussed above your store will stand out from the competition and become a favorite for Google.
Gentian, CSO and co-founder of Shero Commerce, guides the company and client digital strategies. He's an expert in technical SEO, Inbound Marketing, and eCommerce strategy.
