When you are running an eCommerce website and business, it is important to understand that your product pages are the only representation of your products that your potential customers can see. Unlike a physical shop where your customers can come to view, interact and assess your products, your online shop’s products rely entirely on how you present them to your customers. It is therefore important that your product pages are clear, easy to navigate and descriptive. Below is a list of the SEO Guidelines for New Product Pages and best practices you should follow when putting together a new product page. 

Some Essential Practices 

Product Meta Titles 

It is best practice to ensure that each product has a unique meta title. This ensures that your product can’t be confused with other products on your website. A Meta Title needs to follow a very specific format:

• Maximum length: 60 characters (after which it is truncated). In pixel terms, not more than 600px
• Includes product name 
• You should include the manufacturer
• Includes the specific product type – but NOT product category (this is important as we don’t want product pages to compete with category pages) e.g. Butcher Knife, Pairing Knife – not just Knife or Knives
• Mentions important features or materials (e.g. high carbon steel, stainless steel, Japanese, etc) 
• Includes model numbers

 E.g. “Example Brand Butcher’s Knife 30cm High Carbon Steel, SKU123”

Product Meta Descriptions

The meta description of your product is important. It is similar to an ‘ad’ that encourages potential customers to use your search result as opposed to your competitors. Each product should have a short, descriptive meta description that follows the following guidelines:

• A maximum length of 160 characters. In pixel terms, not more than 920px. After this it will be truncated. 
• Include a short description of your product and its main selling point, features or benefits
• This description can focus either on specific product features or the abstract benefits of the product, depending on the type of product
• E.g. “Our Example Brand butcher’s knife will make short work of any cut of meat you throw at it with its high carbon steel double bevelled edge and ergonomic handle.”

Optimise Product Images for Search 

Images are a powerful tool for SEO. Ensuring that your images are optimised for SEO will help your product feature on search engine results pages (SERPs). There are some key ways to use images to help your product pages.

For the main product images on each page, make sure you include: 

• A descriptive file name e.g. “Example Brand Butcher Knife Side Profile” 
• Descriptive Alt Text – this needs to describe what the image shows. It not only helps visually impaired users, but it also helps search engines identify what your image is about. 
• Use high-quality images that have been optimised for loading speed (because slow pages are penalised) 

Keep URL Structures Consistent and Descriptive

When you ensure that your product page URLs are consistent and descriptive across your website and all your products, you help both search engines and people recognise your website and products easily. 

• Keep URL structure consistent across your products
• Include a few descriptive words in the URL – but not too many. Long URLs are difficult to read and remember. 
• e.g. /knives/butcherknives/example-brand-30cm-high-carbon-butcher-knife

Use General SEO Best Practices

SEO is important for all websites, but especially for product pages where there may be multiple different eCommerce companies with the same products. Some best practices are: 

• Use only one H1 HTML tag per page – this is usually your product title. 
• Use other HTML heading tags intentionally to delineate subheadings and subtopics, e.g. 
  • H1 (main topic)
    • H2 (subheading)
      • H3 (sub-sub heading)
    • H2 (subheading)
      • Etc. 
• Optimise pages for loading speed and Google Core Web Vitals 

Some Optional Practices to Help Your Product Stand Out

• Use custom product descriptions on each page (i.e. not those provided by the manufacturer). Google values unique content and every other website with the same product is probably already using that text
• Use unique images where possible – again, Google and search engines prefer unique content – which includes images. 
• Include structured data across your product pages – especially product schema – which helps Google generate rich snippets for your website 
  • https://schema.org/Product 

Conclusion

Ensuring that your product pages are clear, descriptive and prescribe to good SEO practices is important for all eCommerce businesses. If you need help or advice on how to set up the best product pages, please contact us on the form below.