SEO Checklist for Your Product Page
- Product page URL: Add your keyword, brand name, and key specification(s)
- Product page title: Include the brand, your keyword, model, benefits, and key specifications
- Website assets and images: Compress
- Images: Use high-quality, optimized images (mockup-style & real life)
- Image names and alt tags: Optimize by including keywords
- Consider creating image sitemaps
- Meta descriptions: Add a keyword and a CTA
- Consider dividing your XML sitemaps by product categories
- Improve your page speed
- Improve your page mobile-friendliness
- Don't create separate variation pages (unless there's a search demand)
- Use Schema markup
- Use breadcrumb navigation
- Product description: adapt the length to the audience's preferences
- Product description: Format benefits as bullet-point lists
- Product description: Format specifications as bullet-point lists or tables
- Internal linking: Link to the brand, category, or filter pages with relevant anchor text within the description
- Include real reviews & social proof
- Suggest similar & frequently bought products
- Redirect visitors to available versions when a product is out of stock
Basic Product Page SEO
How to Optimize a Product Page URL
Your URL should contain:
- Your keyword
- Brand name
- Key specifications
In the end, you should get something like this:
samplesite.com/scuba-gear/wetsuits/neosport-wetsuit-neoprene-3mm
In our case, diving gear aficionados really care about the thickness of their wetsuit, so we’ll add it to our URL as a key specification.
Optimize Your Product Page Title
Similarly to the URL, your product page title should be an H1 heading and contain:
- The brand
- Your keyword
- The model
- Benefits
- Key specifications
This is a great example: it contains everything searchers want, including the benefit (“premium”). You can always include benefits if your audience searches for them (e.g., organic cotton sheets).
How to Optimize Your Product Page Images
Size & Compression
First, check if compression is enabled on your website.
Customers leave if pages take too long to load, so an image optimization plugin is the best compromise, giving you beautiful HD images while reducing your site loading time.
Which Product Images Improve Your SEO?
Short answer: you need product images that interest your visitors.
Patagonia does a great job of this! They have mockup-style product photos and photos with a model, showcasing different features the customers care about (e.g., hoodies and zippers).
Optimize Your Image Alt Tags & Names
You wouldn’t believe how many people find the ideal product via Google Image search! Make sure the search engines crawl your site by optimizing your image names (the same as your page title - keyword included) and alt tags.
Add Product Images to Your Image Sitemap
One little-known thing you can do to create the perfect product page for SEO is adding product images to your image sitemap.
If you use JavaScript to serve your images, bots may not be able to reach it. But with an image sitemap, Google will index your images normally.
eCommerce Meta Descriptions
Your meta description should contain the primary keyword for the page, benefits like free shipping (if you offer them), and a call-to-action to increase your click-through rate.
If you have multiple products, you can even create a meta description template:
Dive safe with [product title tag]. Buy it today and get free shipping!
The action should be related to your website or product category. Then, switch out the product title tags, and you’re good!
Add Product Detail Pages to the Sitemap
If you run a big eCommerce business, it’s easy to lose track of all the product pages Google should index for you. That’s why SEO experts like Barry Adams recommend dividing XML sitemaps by content (or product) categories.
Source: Polemic Digital
They’re easier for Google to process, and you can quickly audit your SEO performance if something looks off.
P.S. Not sure if your SEO could use some work? Generate your free SEO audit report and learn what to improve.
Make Your Pages Lightning Fast
Even the best meta description in the world won’t help if your page takes longer than 5 seconds to load. Run the PageSpeed Insights test to find out if there’s room for optimization.
If your page is too slow, try:
- Optimizing and compressing your images
- Disabling or removing components that increase your load time
- Using a Content Delivery Network
- Checking and enabling browser caching
Since most customers use their phones to shop online, check if your page is mobile-friendly.
Separate Pages vs. Canonical Pages for Product Variations
Do you need separate pages for product variations? That’s going to depend on your searchers. If you’re selling Corvettes, “red Corvette” is a valid search term.
But if you’re selling wetsuits, most people probably don’t search specifically for “blue Neoprene wetsuit.”
If people are searching for that variationReview your keywords. If people are searching for that variation, make the product page as unique as possible by referencing unique product IDs and creating different product descriptions.
If people aren’t searching for variations, canonicalize your variation pages to the main product page.
Add Schema Markup to Optimize Your Product Page
Bots don’t read the way we do. Instead, you need to feed them structured data so they see your website as trustworthy and an excellent resource for searchers.
How? With Schema markup. Simply put, Schema takes bots by hand and points at different online entities and properties, telling them: “This is a product page. This is a review.”
The first example contains Review and Pricing structured data. You can imagine it has a much higher click-through rate than other results.
Recommended Structured Data for Your Product Page
There are hundreds of Schema types you can use, but we recommend integrating at least:
-
Product schema tells Google you sell a specific product ="https:> - Review schema syndicates reviews
- FAQ schema highlights your FAQ section (great for more complex products)
Check if your structured data is set up correctly
Add Breadcrumb Navigation to Optimize Your Product Page SEO
If a searcher sees a lot of products with no rhyme or reason, they might bounce from your site.
Breadcrumb navigation is incredibly efficient at helping them navigate your website and find the exact product they care about, reducing your bounce rate. And it all starts in the SERPs:
Once they land on your website, they’ll see an unobtrusive navigation bar based on your site hierarchy, product attributes, or their path:
How to Write Optimized Product Descriptions
Your description length depends on your audience. Do they already know a lot about the product? Are they hobbyists or advanced buyers?
Check out your competitors, and don’t be afraid to A/B test.
As a rule of thumb, your product description should contain:
- Catchy heading: up to 10 words
- The body of the description referencing benefits and features: up to 150 words
- Benefits formatted as a bullet-point list
- Specifications formatted as a bullet-point list or a table
Make your product description scannable, and don’t over-optimize for keywords. Use the primary and secondary keywords, but remember that you’ll be addressing the searcher.
Best Practices for Product Page Internal Links
Internal linking is tricky with product pages, but there’s an intuitive way to do it and efficiently share the link juice.
Within your description, link to the brand, category, or filter pages with relevant anchor text:
This [link to material filter page] Neoprene [/link] keeps you warm even when scuba diving in January.
How to Increase Your Dwell Time and Reduce the Bounce Rate
Google evaluates user experience, too, so don’t forget about the basics of eCommerce conversion rate optimization:
Include Genuine Reviews
Give your potential customers a chance to hear from happy shoppers to convince them of your value and product quality.
Suggest Similar Products & Products Bought Together
Don’t be afraid to offer alternative options or upsell and cross-sell to interested customers.
When done right, it won’t annoy them and could increase the average order value.
And if a product is out of stock, not all is lost! Add a button to your product page, redirecting the customers to available versions.
Simple and Advanced Ways to Optimize Your eCommerce Listings
How many items did you check off? If you’re first getting started, you’ll go a long way with basic optimization.
But if you checked off the basics and your SEO could still be better, it’s time for Schema and advanced optimization.
Optimizing everything may take a while, but the results will keep coming in for a long, long time. And the better foundations you set today, the less you’ll have to do tomorrow!
