How to Optimise Product Descriptions for SEO

Want to sell more products? Of course you do. Once you’ve designed, curated and amassed your brilliant products, writing product descriptions for your online shop can feel like an afterthought. Don’t make this mistake. Knowing how to optimise your product descriptions for SEO can take you all the way to product pages that sell themselves – and importantly get found by your ideal customers.

Just consider that ranking your product number one on Google for a keyword your customers are searching for can give you an average CTR of 27.6%. Writing your best product descriptions for SEO is one of the best ways to increase your sales and brand visibility without having to spend on paid ads.

Here are 5 essential tips to help you optimise your product descriptions for SEO:

1. Write for Your Customer, Not Search Engines

Before we go deeper into SEO, remember first and foremost your product description has one goal – to help the person visiting your website decide whether or not to buy your product. It’s the online version of a customer entering your shop. Your product description is here to give them the information they need and to share why the product might be valuable to them, all in the voice and style of your brand.

That means your product description could be as playful as Bird & Blend…

…Or transparent and understated like Allbirds.

Writing product descriptions that help your customers buy from you will also help your search engine ranking which is, after all, about delivering the best value to the searcher. A good way to do this is by making sure your product description is between 300-500 words. This might be a little shorter if your end-user already knows about your product (e.g. fashion, stationery and homewares) or longer if it’s a product with features they’ll want to understand (e.g. tech, skincare or eco-friendly products).

Here are a few pointers to keep your product descriptions easy to read:

• Swap out complex words for simple words your customer will understand.
• Keep sentences short and paragraphs no longer than four lines.
• Use active pronouns like ‘We’ or ‘You’ for more engaging text – even better, make it about the customer.
• Break up longer text with headers containing your keywords or answering Frequently Asked Questions.
• Use easy-to-read bullet points to list useful features and measurements.

Put Product Optimisations Into Practice With Our SEO Essentials Course

Our new course is built for solopreneurs, freelancers, and small business owners who want to build a strong SEO foundation, including how to use tags, categories, and internal links effectively to drive meaningful traffic. Enroll in our SEO essentials course here.

2. Choose Your SEO Product Keywords

A good way to visualise keywords is like hooks that will help your target customer find your product on search engines. We go into a lot more detail in our article How to Pick Good Keywords for SEO, but here are a few pointers to help you bring up the best product keywords for your online store.

The easiest way to find keywords is by brainstorming the words you think your target customer would use when searching for your product. You can then use tools like SEMrush or Ubersuggest and Google Keyword Planner to look up your keywords.

The best SEO product keywords will likely be long-tail keywords. If you take the example of our client Cheeky Wipes, this is the difference between using the keyword ‘Makeup Pads’ which is highly competitive, and ‘Bamboo Reusable Makeup Remover Pads’ which has a lower search volume, but a higher chance of ranking on search engines.

You can also check the search volume for the keyword to see if it’s worth targeting. Lastly, a quick search on Google will help you check the intent of your keyword and make sure it’s transactional, meaning searchers are looking for products. If you’re curious, here’s exactly why search intent is important for SEO.

If you already have product descriptions on your website and want to check that your current keywords are working for you, you can request a free SEO audit from us to help you see how you’re performing and areas where you can improve.

3. Thoroughly Describe Your Product

The big difference between your online shop and bricks & mortar? Your customer can’t hold the product in front of them, so you’re going to have to do your best to describe it.

Yes you might have showstopper photos (and video content goes a long way), but taking the time to describe all the qualities of your product is an easy win to add valuable keywords to your product description. More importantly, you’ll be making your website accessible to blind people. And don’t forget, accessibility is a big part of user experience for SEO that you’ll want to know about.

4. Spell Out the Value in Your Product

Of course, you don’t want to just list features as that would make for a pretty boring product description. The sweet spot is where you can link those features to your customer and how your product will help them.

In her excellent book More Sales Please, sales expert Sara Dalrymple shares some questions to ask yourself when writing sales pages for customers:

• What is the transformation they’re buying into?
• What is the result they’re looking to gain?
• Who is it for/not for?

When optimising your product pages for SEO, we’d also add:

• What occasion is this product for?
• Who would it make a great gift for?
• Why would the customer care about the feature?
• How is your product packaged?
• What eco-friendly features have you taken care of?

And, here’s a bonus tip for products that make great gifts. At least six weeks before people start buying gifts for Christmas, Mother’s Day, summer holidays or your busiest season, make a spreadsheet and add an extra line into your product descriptions. It can be something like, ‘Our seed kit makes a great Christmas gift for gardeners.’ Enjoy the extra traffic and, after the event, come back to your spreadsheet and hit delete. Updating your website regularly is also a great habit for your overall SEO.

5. Add a Little About Your Business, Values, the Brand or Maker

This one is easily missed, but people buy from people and we love a good story. You’ve built an ecommerce business you’re passionate about, likely with sustainable values and all your hard-won experiences at the heart. The truth though is there’s no way a new visitor arriving as organic traffic on your website can know that unless you… tell them!

Always make sure there’s a place on your product page where your customers can see a couple of lines about who you are. Lauren Aston Designs does it well:

If you have some amazing values that have gone into the product or you’ve worked with a brand or maker you’re passionate about, make sure to add a sentence or two to your product description sharing them. It’ll help customers want to support you and make you stand out from your faceless competitors.

Customers are curious people, and you’re also decreasing the chance they’ll click away to go searching themselves for the maker or brand you’ve stocked. That’s good for your SEO and your conversion rate.

6. Place Keywords in Your Product Description

You’ve written your best product description for SEO, shared all the benefits, described your product and even added a little about you. Lastly, to complete your product description, have a final review to make sure you’ve placed your keywords strategically.

Here are four places you’ll want to put your product SEO keywords:

• In the product description title
• 1-2 times in the product description body
• In the page’s URL
• In one alt image tag

And you’re done! Making sure you add your keywords in these strategic places is enough and will make sure you don’t overstuff your keywords which search engines will penalise you for.

How Lumen SEO Can Help

We hope we’ve convinced you that learning how to optimise product descriptions for SEO is one of the best things you can do for your online shop.

If you’d like to delve deeper into SEO with expert support, at Lumen SEO we can take care of your entire SEO strategy. We cover everything from keyword research to backlinks, content and technical SEO so you can step back and do more of what you love.

Interested in learning more? We offer a free, no-obligation SEO audit for your ecommerce website. You can request an SEO audit here and we’ll send your personal SEO report within 7 days.