Lauren
When you drive traffic to your website, your ultimate goal is for them to convert and make a purchase from your website. One of the best ways to encourage online shoppers to move down the sales funnel and buy from your business is to create compelling product descriptions.
Strong product descriptions will make your products more enticing and increase the likelihood that shoppers will add them to their carts. Additionally, a good product description will also improve your search engine optimization, leading to more traffic and more product sales.
While eCommerce retailers know the value of well-written product descriptions, writing effective product descriptions can pose a challenge. It can be difficult to incorporate keywords into the product copy without sacrificing content and originality.
However, while creating good product descriptions can be easier said than done, it is not impossible!
Here are a few tips for writing SEO-friendly product descriptions that you should consider:
Keep it simple
Consumers don’t have the time, energy, or willpower to read through a wall of text to find details that are pertinent to the products they are browsing. When your product descriptions are paragraphs long, your consumers will lose interest or they will become distracted from the task at hand- buying your product.
Keep your product descriptions concise and consider using bullet points or shorter sentences to communicate the main product features quickly.
Create unique copy
When you’ve come up with the perfect product description, it can be tempting to reuse some of this copy for your other products, too. Don’t reinvent the wheel, right?
Not quite.
When you duplicate your product descriptions, it can make it difficult for search engine crawlers to index your product pages, and the repeated content will decrease your search engine optimization.
It’s not enough to switch out a word or two here and there in order to reuse product descriptions. For the best SEO results, you need to create unique copy for each product.
Be strategic
If every other word in your product description is a keyword, search engines will lower your SEO ranking for what is known as “keyword stuffing.” Keyword stuffing is a tactic that some marketers use to try and boost their SEO by loading their copy with keywords instead of relevant and substantial content. While it might seem like a great way to attract new customers, keyword stuffing will negatively impact your search engine optimization.
On the other hand, you do not want to completely omit keywords from your product descriptions. This will keep your product pages from becoming top search results when people search for keywords related to your products or your business.
The best course of action is for you to conduct keyword research and then opt to use these keywords strategically. Include keywords in your product page and meta descriptions, put keywords in your website and blog headers and subheaders, and use long-tail keywords in your content.
As a rule of thumb, you should make sure your focus is to highlight key product features and write informative copy, not to see how many keywords you can fit in a sentence. Try writing your copy first and then altering it to include keywords after you’ve already created the main content to avoid keyword stuffing.
When your product descriptions contain keywords (without going overboard), it will increase the chances that people who are searching for these keywords will see your product pages at the top of their search engine results pages.
Know your audience
If your product descriptions are relevant to your audience, they will be more likely to convert and buy your product.
Don’t use humor in your product descriptions if it will not appeal to your target audience. Don’t use words that are not typically in your audience’s vocabulary (for example, current slang might not appeal to your shoppers if your target audience is 60+ years old).
If your target audience is interested in woodworking, including details about a carving knife that has “a blade perfect for woodworking projects” will be relevant and valuable to your audience.
When your customers find value in your product descriptions and convert, it will increase your search engine optimization.
Use A/B testing
A/B testing is one of the most effective resources marketers can use to see how their product descriptions are influencing their search engine optimization.
With A/B testing, you can randomly direct some of your website traffic to a product page with a specific product description while directing the rest of your traffic to a product page that uses a different product description. After a set window of time, you can look at the data from your A/B test to see which product description outperformed the other.
A/B testing gives you the chance to see how even seemingly insignificant changes to your product pages can make a major difference so that you can choose product descriptions that will convert with your target audience.
Be honest
While it might seem like an effective tactic, embellishing your products in your product descriptions will only cause harm in the long run.
When people feel like your products underdeliver on what your product descriptions promise, it will prevent them from making future purchases and increase the likelihood that they will share their negative experiences with their friends and families.
Inaccurate and misleading product descriptions will lead to a reduction in sales and website traffic, which will have a negative impact on your SEO.
Add value
When search engines rank websites, they focus more on content and value-added than on keyword usage.
If you are not providing customers with product details that they can use to make an informed shopping decision, it can lower your SEO.
Saying phrases and words like “bestselling,” and “top-rated,” might seem like it will attract your target audience, but in reality, these are just meaningless buzzwords that won’t give your audience the information they need to buy your products.
Consider what your audience would want to know about your product in order for it to suit their needs, then highlight this information in your product description.
You should also make sure that instead of just mentioning product features, you also show the benefits of your products. Instead of simply saying that a blender has a specific type of processor, mention that the processor allows users to crush ice and frozen fruit. Now, instead of having basic information about a processor that may or may not be of any use to the shopper, shoppers will realize exactly how that blender’s processor can make their smoothie-making experience easier.
Whenever possible, make sure you are adding true value. This will help improve your SEO ranking and your conversion rate.
