5 Best Practices To Elevate Your Product Content Across Search Engines
Learn from Randy Mercer the best practices to elevate your product content on various search engines beyond basic SEO marketing copy.
Ecommerce shopping usually begins with a query on various search engines. Hence marketers should optimize product content on multiple channels. But the process of delivering product content isn’t standardized. Randy Mercer, VP of global product management, 1WorldSync, explains the best practices to elevate your offerings beyond basic SEO marketing copy.
Because much (if not most) of ecommerce shopping begins with a search engine, brands and retailers sell themselves short if they don’t prioritize SEO, whether it’s a web search engine or retailer or marketplace search engine. When retailers focus all their efforts on one digital channel, they miss out on other opportunities. A whopping 99% of customers research products online before they go to the store, according to PowerReviews. But they use various channels, including:
- Search engines (61%).
- Third-party website reviews and brand manufacturer websites (41%).
- Retailer websites (39%).
When you showcase product content across all channels, you ensure the adequate representation of those products and your brand. You are growing market outreach and providing customers with enough information, communicated in multiple ways, to make informed purchasing decisions.
But here’s the problem. The process of delivering product content isn’t standardized. And a negative spiraling effect occurs if you stick with the status quo or use legacy approaches: a slower go-to-market launch availability devolving into:
- Delayed profit margin targets or lost revenue.
- Fewer return customers.
- Negative brand impact.
Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but that doesn’t mean all is lost for product manufacturers. Want to get products into your customers’ hands more quickly and cost-effectively, keep current and attract new buyers to your pipeline? You need to elevate your offerings beyond basic SEO marketing copy using these best practices.
See More: 3 A’s To Transform Your Content Marketing Strategy
SEO Product Descriptions
It’s worth the effort to update your product descriptions regularly. Doing so improves search results and increases consumer viability and engagement. Customer voices speak volumes, so use those voices to inform updates to your long- and short-tail product descriptions.
The primary goal of product descriptions is to appeal to your customers. But the content must also appeal to search engine algorithms. Otherwise, you risk losing rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). Conduct keyword research to learn how customers talk about the products you sell. Listen to your customers by using data you’ve gathered to see what they’re looking for, why they’re looking for it and what they expect once they’ve found it.
Omnichannel SEO for Equal Ecommerce Shopping Opportunities
As more people lean toward blending online and in-person shopping based on convenience and need, you must offer equal experiences to consumers — no matter how they shop. Consider that 61 million Americans, or 1 in 4 adults, live with a disability that impacts their life activities, including shopping.
Those disabilities shouldn’t impact the customer experience they deserve and expect. Ensure you’ve optimized your website and complied with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements. Accommodations include:
- Incorporating alternatives to images, text and other multimedia components into product data.
- Using prerecorded captions.
- Offering static content for time-based and interactive media, like animated infographics, videos and other multimedia with an audio/visual component.
- Enhancing UX with an accessible design that includes title tags (which should match user intent and be specific), appropriate header structure (in code appearing as <h1>, <h2> and <h3>) and descriptive alt text (i.e., the image description that lives in the site’s backend).
Alt-image Text for Product Photography
The alt-image text describes an image’s function and appearance on a page. It helps visually-impaired users picture what’s on your website as their screen readers scan and read the descriptions aloud. The alt-image text also helps bots understand web content, allowing search engines to crawl and rank your website more effectively. And it’s key for image search SEO, too. The text helps Google (and other search engines) understand your site’s images and return relevant image search results.
To write the most effective alt-image text, you should:
- Stick to about 125 characters or fewer.
- Describe the image using concise, specific language (and no need to include “image of” or “picture of” in the text since we know you’re referring to an image).
- Resist the temptation to stuff alt text with keywords. Instead, focus on using your descriptions to provide context. If you can work in a keyword, great, but don’t force it.
- Use accessibility best practices to describe complex images like charts, diagrams, maps and other images.
Optimizing Load Time and Page Navigation
According to Google, 53% of visitors abandon a mobile web page that doesn’t load within three seconds. And mobile ads already take twice as long as desktop ads to load.
To improve on-page speed optimization and load times, start by understanding how the retailer page or product description page plans to feature a product. You can optimize page loading speed by:
- Compressing and optimizing images.
- Caching web pages and enabling browser caching.
- Reducing the number of redirects.
- Removing unnecessary spaces in CSS, HTML code and JavaScript.
- Using alternative ways like pop-up snippets to share relevant content.
Another option? Choose a performance-focused hosting solution where the retailer or brand site doesn’t host the content. The benefit of this approach is that it allows you to pack a ton of rich content into a PDF without slowing down the site. And if your ecommerce site includes or requires a significant amount of enhanced media and content, explore the option of using a third-party rich content syndication service.
See More: Not Seeing Content Marketing Results? Perform a Content Audit
Product Detail Pages (PDP): The Holy Grail of Information
What’s the magic of PDPs? They offer the perfect place to leverage SEO in many different areas and ways. Don’t make the mistake of viewing PDPs in isolation — search engines don’t work like that anyway.
Optimize product detail pages by:
- Following your retail partner style’s guidelines (bonus: this approach helps pages rank higher on SERPs).
- Aligning product names with the brand’s keyword strategy.
- Using descriptive and consistent product URLs.
- Using illustrative headings.
- Highlighting “you might also like” or “recommended” products.
Finally, write engaging product descriptions. While it’s sometimes tedious to take the time to write authentic product descriptions, the copy-and-paste approach isn’t a recommended best practice. Don’t just focus on what the product is — show the product’s benefits. What makes it superior to the competition? How will the product make people feel? Why is it the best choice?
Omnichannel marketing strategies reach more customers more successfully and efficiently than single-channel approaches. To elevate your brand content and maximize your digital marketing campaign’s effectiveness even further, you need to leverage SEO.
It provides the “secret sauce” for promoting your website in organic search engine results, improving brand visibility and engaging with and connecting website visitors to relevant content. SEO is the heart of an omnichannel approach and provides the foundation for moving people (and helping people move themselves) down the sales funnel.
What best practices have you incorporated to elevate your product content across multiple search engines? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Image Source: Shutterstock
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