SEO for ecommerce product pages

Author: Bradley Porter
Published: November 19, 2020
Updated: November 19, 2020

“Users need high quality information from authoritative sources when researching products, especially when products are expensive or represent a major investment or important life event.”—Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, section 21.0, paragraph 5 (Oct. 14, 2020)

Introduction

This article discusses SEO for ecommerce product pages as it relates to the above extract from the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. To maximize organic search value (and therefore visibility), ecommerce product pages should meet or exceed the needs of two unique search intents: know (research) and do (purchase). Product pages that meet expectations for only one of those two intents are likely to be outranked by pages that satisfy both. Ecommerce product pages can satisfy both intents by providing high-quality information, streamlined navigation, and a clear path to purchase.

High-quality product information includes images, videos, a detailed description, features and benefits, specs, customer reviews and other user-generated content. Streamlined navigation should include links to product variants, a proper breadcrumb path, and jump-to links for on-page elements like the product description and review section. The path to purchase should include information on guarantees, returns, payment options, and other value props. Standard off-page, technical SEO best practices should also be followed. These include proper canonicalization, schema data, internal site linking, title, meta description, heading tags, sitemaps and more.

1.0 Overview

1.1 Your money or your life
1.2 Positive site reputation
1.3 High-quality content
1.4 Satisfy search intent

2.0 Content, on-page SEO

2.1 Product information

2.2.1 Duplicate content
2.2.2 Keyword research
2.2.3 Hierarchy of information
2.2.4 Delivering the information
2.2.5 Images and videos

2.2 Streamlined navigation

2.3.1 Acknowledge how customers define the product
2.3.2 Incorporate brand voice
2.3.3 Have a genuine opinion
2.3.4 Tell an interesting story

2.3 Path to purchase

2.4.1 Experience the user’s challenges (empathy)
2.4.2 Anticipate needs, other issues
2.4.3 Speak the language (and respect it)

3.0 Technical SEO

3.1 Clean sitemaps
3.2 Crawlability
3.3 Maximizing relevance
3.4 Internal linking
3.5 Breadcrumbs
3.6 Canonical tags
3.7 Permanently out-of-stock products

Overview

What’s best for the customer is almost always what’s best for SEO. This certainly applies to SEO for ecommerce product pages. There are dozens of features to consider, ranging from must-have functionality to nice-to-have optimizations. Over time, including more nice-to-have features in the standard product detail page (PDP) leads to higher rankings, more organic traffic, improved consumer trust, and increased sales. This article doesn’t debate the relative importance of one feature versus another, but it does explore the value added with each product page optimization.

The algorithms driving Google search are a closely guarded secret. However, the philosophy driving the math is widely accessible. Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines outline the process for human testing of search results. As such, the document offers a transparent view of where Google search would like to be. To maximize value for prospective customers and improve search ranking position over the long term, it’s best to exceed the expectations set in the guide.

“[Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines] don’t tell you how the algorithm is ranking results, but they fundamentally show what the algorithm should do.”—Ben Gomes, Google’s vice president of search, assistant and news, in a CNBC article by Jillian D'Onfro that covers how Google decides to make algorithm updates

Your money or your life (YMYL)

For pages that could impact a person's well-being or wallet, Google has a special classification called Your Money or Your Life (YMYL). Among the page types that fall into this classification are ecommerce pages. Relative to other types of pages, ecommerce pages are held to a higher standard for quality.

“[Google has] very high Page Quality rating standards for YMYL pages because low quality YMYL pages could potentially negatively impact a person’s happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.”—Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, section 2.3, paragraph 3 (Oct. 14, 2020)

Positive site reputation

Google instructs search quality evaluators to research a company's reputation. Companies with a bad reputation are to be excluded from high quality ratings. From this it’s understod that Google either has or is working on algorithms that calculate online reputation. This could be based on existing natural language processing (NLP) to understand the sentiment of text that mentions the brand name.

“Reputation is an important criteria when using the High rating, and informs the E‑A‑T of the page. While a page can merit the High rating with no reputation, the High rating cannot be used for any website that has a convincing negative reputation.”—Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, section 4.4 (Oct. 14, 2020)

This makes online reputation management an important part of SEO for ecommerce sites. Companies that put the customer first and provide a genuinely positive experience are more likely to have a good reputation. Every customer touchpoint should be considered for optimization, as each interaction affects shopper confidence. Even the smallest exchange of information, or lack thereof, will streamline or disrupt the customer journey.

This article by Chris Smith at Search Engine Land describes how reputation became a major SEO ranking factor.

High-quality content

“For advice on great content, a good starting point is to review our search quality rater guidelines. Raters are people who give us feedback on if our algorithms seem to be providing good results, a way to help confirm our changes are working well.”—Google's Twitter account @searchliaison advice on great content (Oct. 11, 2018)

Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines describe the importance of demonstrating expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E‑A‑T). SEO for ecommerce product pages must demonstrate E‑A‑T. By not providing the best content, pages with better content will receive a higher page quality score. While the product page with higher quality content might not rank higher today, Google is always looking to improve its search results. They will likely find ways to rank it higher in the future.

If a site and the organzation behind it have a positive reutation, page quality can be scored on a simple scale: Lowest, Low, Medium, High and Highest. Raters may also use a + to indicate quality between two of the five points on the scale.

Creating high-quality main content (MC), according to the guidelines, requires a combination of time, effort, expertise and skill. This includes product copy, images, audio and video content. As of October, 2020, search quality evaluators are looking for evidence of at least one of those ingredients. The more of those ingredients that are present, and in greater magnitude, the more likely SEO content for product pages will be of high quality.

“The quality of the MC is one of the most important criteria in Page Quality rating, and informs the E‑A‑T of the page. For all types of webpages, creating high quality MC takes a significant amount of at least one of the following: time, effort, expertise, and talent/skill.”—Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, section 4.2, paragraph 1 (Oct. 14, 2020)

Satisfy search intent

Know (learn) and do (buy) are the two search intents most pertaining to SEO for ecommerce product pages.

“Forget everything you know about the marketing funnel. Today, people are no longer following a linear path from awareness to consideration to purchase. They are narrowing and broadening their consideration set in unique and unpredictable moments. People turn to their devices to get immediate answers. And every time they do, they are expressing intent and reshaping the traditional marketing funnel along the way.”—Think with Google article, “How intent is redefining the marketing funnel”

“Be useful. People respond to brands that understand their needs. So, it’s important to optimize your media for both relevance to the consumer and lifetime value for the brand.”—Think with Google article, “How intent is redefining the marketing funnel”

Lowest quality rating

“The Lowest rating is appropriate if all or almost all of the MC on the page is copied with little or no time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users. Such pages should be rated Lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source.”—Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, section 7.2.4, paragraph 4 (Oct. 14, 2020)

1. Explore the pages that rank the highest for the most valuable terms. To outrank them, the page(s) will likely need to address all of those same topics (and more, and better). For new product launches, look at historical launches within the category, brand and competition. Patterns should emerge for product launch assets, including product naming, features and specifications, photos, audio and video content.

“High E‑A‑T pages on hobbies, such as photography or learning to play a guitar, also require expertise.”—Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, section 3.2, paragraph 3, bullet 6 (Oct. 14, 2020)

2. Make it clear that page is about the core concept and its related terms with specific headlines and callouts. Keep nonspecific, overly creative language and boilerplate text to a minimum.

“Quality score estimates how relevant your landing page experience is (how well your landing page content matches a person’s search terms). Higher quality scores typically lead to lower costs and better ad positions.”

3. Design the page top-down to serve bottom-funnel needs first. Address the most important (profitable) searchers’ intent as quickly and easily as possible.

“High quality MC takes a significant amount of time, effort, expertise, and skill. Very high quality MC is original, factually accurate, clearly written, and comprehensive.”

4. Many people landing on the page will likely have already decided that they will purchase the product or service. Some are ready to make the purchase at that moment, while some need more information for consideration and comparison. To maximize conversion, address these shoppers' needs and concerns from the bottom of the funnel to the top, from most critical to least critical.

5. Include social proof and address frequently asked questions. As readers move down the page, they’re looking to consume more specific (and equally, if not more helpful) content.

Technical SEO

Clean sitemaps

By listing only the URLs that need to be crawled, sitemaps will not contribute to wasted crawl budget. Help spiders prioritize crawls by using lastmod, which lists the date (and time, if desired) that each page changed. If the lastmod date is more recent than the timestamp on the indexed document, search engines will allocate resources to recrawling pages and updating documents with the freshest content.