One of the priorities of an e-commerce site is obviously to sell the products it offers. And this necessarily involves the visibility that its products will have with potential buyers. The (good) referencing of your products on search engines is therefore a very strong lever for increasing the sales and turnover of an online store. On which keywords should a product sheet be referenced? How to attract visitors and trigger a sale? How to manage out of stock? How to optimize your images? 10 tips to follow to write product sheets that generate traffic and sales! 

1. REFER TO A KEYWORD AND A SEARCH INTENTION 

Depending on the keyword entered by the Internet user in the search engine, the search intention is not the same. If the search intent of the targeted query is more informational, then a blog post is more likely to be clicked on by the user. If the keyword is too general, again, the Internet user will prefer to click on a category page to give themselves the choice. Only certain queries, often long-tail, target a search intent corresponding to a product page.  

Let’s take the example of sports leggings (or rather indoor leggings currently) and some associated queries: 

• “Women’s sports leggings” lends itself more to the referencing of a category page. 
• “How to wear gym leggings” is a query that a blog post will best answer. 
• “Idea look with black leggings” corresponds more to the image search. 
• “High waisted black leggings” is a search to optimize a product page on!

However, if you have several products in your catalog responding to a specific request, do not hesitate to create a dedicated sub-category and target the product page to an additional request: color, material, use, dimension, etc. When you have identified the query to work on, make sure that the basics of SEO services are respected.  

2. RESPECT THE BASICS OF SEO: MARKUP, PAGE SPEED 

When creating your product page, the first step is to optimize the markup of the page and its construction. 

OPTIMIZE PRODUCT PAGE MARKUP: TITLE, META DESCRIPTION, H1 AND H2 TAGS

Each of these tags must be unique, respect a number of characters and use the targeted keyword or the associated semantics. Regarding the H2 and depending on the construction of your product sheets, it can be: product elements (description, opinion, etc.), subtitles of the text present on the page, complementary, associated or similar products. 

OPTIMIZE THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE PRODUCT PAGE: JUST LIKE THE REST OF YOUR SITE

That is to say that your product sheets must, like the rest of your site, respect the essentials for a page to be indexed and ideally referenced by Google. This includes:  

• page indexability (code 200 )
• decent loading speed
• a mobile-friendly page
• the information of the hreflang tag  if the site exists in several languages ​​… 

Among these SEO optimizations, we also find the optimization of images.  

3. OPTIMIZE THE IMAGES OF YOUR PRODUCT SHEET 

Often forgotten but nevertheless essential, especially for an e-commerce site, images are both: 

• A real added value for your product sheet: visualizes the product, its details, the rendering worn or in situation… 
• An SEO opportunity on Google Image directly and therefore clicks to your product page. 

Image optimization involves several elements: 

THE RESOLUTION AND THE SIZE OF THE IMAGE

An image that is too heavy will slow down the loading time of it and of the page on which it is located. Modify the resolution of the image BEFORE importing it into your Backoffice. Change the resolution  of the image so that it does not exceed (more or less) 72 dpi or 100kb (100kb). Depending on your sector of activity and the importance of the images, a slightly higher weight tolerance is possible, to maintain good quality on display. Also, the Web P format allows you to compress images on display, but maintain good quality. Compression modules exist, either    before importing into the Backoffice, or directly from the chosen CMS.  

THE NAME OF THE IMAGE

Remember to rename the image before adding it to the site with a relevant group of words. Google can’t read an image directly, so the more information you give it about what’s in it, the better. 

• Remember to separate the words with hyphens. 
• Avoid numbers on image names. 
• Do not put any accent in the name of the image. 

THE ALT TAG 

This is an important part of optimizing images for SEO. Search engines read the ALT attributes of images. The ALT tag allows you to add additional keywords to the name of the image, they must be different. The ALT attribute can contain a maximum of 14 words or no more than 70 characters.  

Be careful not to use only keywords at the risk that this will be considered by Google as over-optimization. 

FINALLY, DO NOT NEGLECT THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF THE IMAGES!  

These must be both aesthetic and realistic. They are intended to make the Internet user want to buy the product and project themselves with it. When all the essential prerequisites for on-page SEO are in place, you should do everything you can to stand out from your competitors.  

4. WRITE CONTENT ON YOUR PRODUCT PAGE 

Writing quality content that meets the search intent has become essential to give weight to a product sheet. If, for certain e-commerce sites with a strong notoriety, a good technical construction of the site, associated with the weight of this one (notoriety indicators, volume of page, volume of traffic, etc.) and respect for the basic rules (markup, image optimization, etc.) may be enough to ensure a presence in the SERP, it is far from being systematic, and even less within everyone’s reach.  

Writing the content of a product page can take several forms: 

• A detailed description of the product, its operation, its uses. 
• Answers to questions that Internet users may ask about this product: how to use it, how to maintain it, how to wear it, store it, etc. 

Whatever the case, the content of the page must use the lexical field of the product, i.e., close terms, likely to provide an answer to the search intention of the Internet user or which is associated with it. In addition to the content of the page, Internet users will also be interested in the quality of the product. And to do so, nothing beats customer reviews!  

5. HAVE CUSTOMER OPINIONS AND ELEMENTS OF REASSURANCE: ON THE PRODUCT OR ON ITS E-COMMERCE SITE 

 Real essential of an e-commerce site, customer reviews are often the final element triggering the purchase. Given the variety of choices available to Internet users in terms of e-commerce, regardless of the product, the sector, the elements of reinsurance and more specifically customer feedback will play a major role in the notoriety of your brand and the switch to purchase.  

 Among the elements of reassurance, we find:

• easily accessible contact elements (telephone, email, form)
• legal mentions
• payment security
• delivery and returns information
• …

Regarding opinions  :  opinions on the product visited are a plus. If you do not yet have a customer opinion on the product, opinions on other products or the shopping experience on your site can nevertheless reassure Internet users. 

Reviews require management time: setting up a module, responding to customers, etc. But the investment and the time spent are well worth the benefits they can bring you. Combined with a good user experience, visibility of add to cart button and a controlled order funnel, they are often formidable!  

6. ENSURE A GOOD USER EXPERIENCE  

Overall, if your product sheet responds to the various tips you find in this article, it must be able to satisfy the user experience of your visitors. If all the elements that an Internet user can legitimately expect on a product sheet are present, that’s already a very good thing! 

 Then, it is the overall aspect of all the elements mentioned that will allow a good or a less good user experience. The arrangement of the different blocks and their location must respond to an inverted funnel logic, namely: the most important information as well as the “Basket” button at the top of the page, the descriptive elements, details below, and finally, reinsurance and additional information: associated products, similar products, etc. 

7. GIVE FULL VISIBILITY TO THE “ADD TO CART” BUTTON 

Nothing more obvious and yet! Having a clearly visible “Add to cart” button on your product sheet is not necessarily easy. Between the name of the product, the images, the price (with sometimes the price excluding promotion and the price on promotion), the short description, the choice of size / number of items desired, customer reviews …. Sometimes the Shopping Cart button does not get the visibility it deserves.  

Here are several ways to give visibility to your main “Call to action” button: 

• Color:  a sufficiently visible color that stands out (at least slightly) from the rest of your site. 
• Size:  a dimension of the button large enough to stand out more than the other elements (price, product size / number of products, etc.) 
• The picot   : ideally the basket button should include: a “Basket” icon and the term “ADD” or “ADD TO BASKET”. 
• The hover effect:  a hover effect, color change, highlight, etc. will increase the visibility of the button. 

Of course, this list is not exhaustive and all button visibility ideas are interesting. We also advise you to perform A/B testing of your Shopping Cart button. You will be able to compare the click or conversion rate of one compared to the other.  

Then, what to do when adding to cart is not possible because the product is no longer in stock? 

8. ALLOW FUTURE BUYERS TO BE ALERTED WHEN BACK IN STOCK 

In the event of temporary unavailability of the product, it is important to provide an alert in the event of its return to stock. By creating a clearly visible field, generally replacing the “ADD TO BASKET” button, the Internet user must be able to enter his email address. 

Also, to satisfy the most rushed customers, a suggestion of similar products is a good idea to reduce frustration when an item is no longer available. 

9. MANAGE THE REDIRECTION OF A PRODUCT THAT WILL NO LONGER BE BACK IN STOCK 

 In the event that your product is no longer in stock, it is all the more important to correctly manage the redirection of your product page, and all the more the time spent to optimize its referencing! Thus, it will be necessary to find the most profitable solution or, failing that, the least harmful.  

1. Your product will no longer be back in stock but a new, similar product is entering your catalog.  In this case, and if the URL allows it, we recommend that you keep the URL of the worked product sheet and replace the content and description of the product.
2. Your product will no longer be back in stock but no similar product is in your catalog.  In this case, we advise you to redirect to an existing similar product.
3. Your product will no longer be back in stock and neither new nor are existing products sufficiently similar.  In this case, we recommend that you redirect the product URL to the parent category. 

Also, the choice to keep a product page or not   may vary depending on the interest of this page, both from a semantic point of view and crawl budget.   

1. That is, if the semantics worked on the product page is relevant and makes sense on a new product page or similar category, in this case, opt for a 301 redirect. 
2. On the other hand, if you decide to completely stop the production of a range of products, or even a category of products in your catalog, the 410 redirect  will allow you to no longer appear on the requests worked on and therefore preserve the crawl for your others products. 

If your site includes a very large volume of product pages, the gain in crawl budget will be really significant.

10. LINK YOUR PRODUCT SHEET WITH SIMILAR OR COMPLEMENTARY PRODUCTS 

Finally, the last step that we recommend: the mesh of your product sheet. Having links to the product sheet that you want to reference will be useful both to give weight to it from other pages, to allow Google robots to quickly crawl this product, but also to encourage Internet users to discover this (new) product from other semantically similar product pages or categories.  

Internal linking is an SEO for Personal Trainers method that aims to build your site as a separate silo with the right On Page SEO Service. It is therefore important to choose the pages from which your product sheet will be linked, and conversely, the pages to which your product sheet will itself make links.  

Some criteria to respect for a good internal link: 

• Make links between your mother/daughter pages 
• Make links between your  sister pages 
• Link to your blog posts/FAQs regarding the type of product featured on the page. 

This concludes our list of 10 SEO tips for creating a long-lasting and effective SEO product sheet. Of course, this list is not exhaustive and can be expanded by other recommendations such as: 

• Adding videos or 360° visuals to make people want to buy your product even more. 
• Adding a Wishlist to keep and find all your favorite products. 
• A FAQ to answer all the questions that Internet users may have about using the product. 
• If you have stores, the availability of the product in a physical store near you. 

Do you want to quickly obtain optimized product sheets for better SEO and a high level of conversions? The 1ère Position agency and its SEO editorial team have been improving the SEO of online stores for more than 20 years. Why not yours?