Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Product Descriptions (SEO)
-
So I would like a few opinions. How long should a product description be? Enough to get the point across? 100 words? 800 words? Over detailed? Any advice would be appreciated.
-
Hello mattl99!
You are really fortunate. You got two 10x responses from Roman and Bob.
I'll add just a little... about.... Your visitors and your niche...
If you are selling very simple and common items that everybody uses and knows about then you don't need to write a huge description - just explain the specs. But, if you are writing about things that involve effort, knowledge and creativity of your visitors to purchase, then you need a lot more than specs. Items for do-it-yourself projects, items for craft/hobby projects, or the tools, parts and accessories needed for complex goods. These require a lot more effort and the visitors both need and expect your expertise to help them decide, purchase, use and enjoy.
-
It completely depends on your niche, your goals, your competition, the amount of time you have, and the expertise level of the person writing the description.
Your Niche and Competition:
Google the top 5-10 product descriptions from a high traffic, important keyword in your industry. For best results, track at least 10 keywords. Each keyword can be different, so you may have to be careful there. Look at the top 5-10 results for a product-related term. Are they long descriptions? Are they short. Are there none? What's the content of them? What features and topics do they have? How's the UX and mobile? I could go on and on.
Your Goals:
Are you looking to do a 10X product description or just throw a little something together. I always recommend re-writing the manufacturer's information in your own words at the very least. See Rands Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die for more
This brings in the writer's Experience Level
Are you a beginner or an expert in the niche? You may not be able to write 10X content if you know nothing. Try rewriting the manufacturer's info for starters. You will learn a lot. Never copy and paste from another website into your own!
Which ends with time and scalability
Do you have all the time in the world or 5 minutes per description. Most medium difficulty level niches require a store with lots of content and at least 200 products just to get started, but it can vary widely and it really depends. Try balancing between not spending enough time and spending all day on one 10X product. Try making your top 10 hitters (by profit) 10X. or make your top 30 or 50 10X. 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your products. Sometimes it's more extreme.
I hope I have helped.
-
According to Statista, the average CTR for paid search in e-commerce is a mere 2.69% ( _Average clickthrough rate (CTR) in Google AdWords - USA between August 2017 and January 2018 ) _That’s the equivalent of being eternally ranked immediately below position five.
In my opinion SEO for products, descriptions bring up a host of difficult questions
- Which keywords should you target?
- What’s the perfect description length?
- Should you write for engines or people?
- Where and how often should you use keywords?
Getting the answers right is essential. Here’s how I do it
- Write for Buyers, Not Bots
- Major on Benefits (Include Features)
- Target the Right SEO Product Keywords
- Let Buyer “Awareness” Drive Your PDP Length
- Create Unique SEO Product Descriptions for Each PDP
When writing your descriptions, always ask yourself:
**Does this help the online buyer? Does it inform them, enlighten them, and, ultimately, help them make a purchase decision? **If you start from square one using this approach, you’re already on the ideal path to writing amazing product descriptions for SEO.
1. Write for Buyers, Not Bots
The number one rule for good SEO any time, anywhere, is to write for people first … not the search engine web crawlers.Here’s why: what’s good for your audience is good for search engines, because their main concern is usability.
The whole point of search is to help users find exactly what they’re looking for. If your product descriptions align with this goal, you’re going to please Google and rank well.
2. Major on Benefits (Include Features)
You cannot write an informative, accurate description of a product unless you understand that product inside-out. Vague knowledge of a product will lead to an equally vague description, one that is unhelpful for your online buyers as well as the search engines.
3. Target the Right SEO Product Keywords
Your job of correctly optimizing SEO for product descriptions must include using the right keywords. This will help search engines understand your pages, which will help internet searchers find what you’re selling.
So, how do you find the right keywords, and how do you use them strategically?
It’s all about narrowing down to the right phrase, and it all starts with a solid keyword tool. SEMrush is a great option, as is KWFinder or Moz Keyword Explorer. These tools let you research specific keywords and give you valuable data about factors like:
- Search volume (how many people are searching for a given keyword)
- Keyword difficulty (how hard it will be to rank for a given keyword)
- Related terms you can potentially use in your content (e.g., longtail keywords)
4. Let Buyer “Awareness” Drive Your PDP Length
Your process of optimizing SEO for product descriptions also needs to include writing at the right length for good search engine results. Unfortunately, there is no set length that works for every product. Instead, best practices demand that you base the length of your descriptions on what your audience needs.
5. Create Unique SEO Product Descriptions for Each PDP
Another must for good SEO is to avoid duplicate content at all costs.
In general, creating similar descriptions for all the products in your online store can cause problems for search engines trying to index your pages.** IN SUMMARY**
SEO for Product Takes Work … But It’s Worth It
There’s no doubt about it: SEO for product descriptions can be tricky.The key is to think of the online buyer’s information needs first and foremost. Then, follow the best practices to make sure your product description SEO skills will net the attention of search engines.
That’s the simple rule of thumb for writing winning product descriptions that do their job without a hitch.
Hopes this info will help you
Regards
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are Wildcard Subdomain Hurting my SEO?
I have some sites with a lot of categories (category, sub-category, sub-subcategory) and locations (country, state/territory, city). To avoid listing pages really deep in my hierarchy I used wildcard subdomains for the locations, but lately I have been told that might be hurting my overall SEO efforts. I have a lot of URLs like https://city-state-country.example.com on one side of the domain and example.com/category/subcategory/subsubcategory on the other. In the middle you see stuff like city-state-country.example.com/category/subcategory/subsubcategory and everything in between. Would I be better off moving the locations to the right side of the domain name? Then you might find stuff like example.com/country/state/city/category/subcategory/subsubcategory and everything in between. I think I could do the new rewrite rules fairly easily since every country slug is just two characters long.
On-Page Optimization | | PostAlmostAnything0 -
Homepage SEO optimization
Hello, I’m almost ready to lunch my new website https://thetravelhoop.com , I just need to create the content of the product page and put all the images. I would like to know what you think in terms of SEO of the home page (is the content that I want to rank the most). My doubt is that since it is a landing page, there is not a lot of text but mostly <h>. It’s not a styling decision of course (I know is bad practice) but mostly because they are supposed to be title/headings.</h> Do you think I’m doing something wrong, or do you have any suggestions? Thank you, Daniele
On-Page Optimization | | danielecelsa0 -
Does anyone rate CORA SEO Software?
I can't really see any third party reviews of this software. Does anyone rate it?
On-Page Optimization | | AL123al0 -
How do you make product pages unique when there are thousands of products?
When an ecommerce site has 200 product pages, this is fine. It's time consuming, but I can write 200 unique paragraphs describing the product and it's not an insane amount of work for one person. But when there are 10,000+ product pages... what is the best way for one person to go about this? Risk the page being thin and just bullet point a couple of "need-to-know" info bits, or take the time to prioritise what products could benefit the most from the unique content and get cracking with a paragraph for each? Or do you just forego having truly unique copy on each product page and just aim to optimise the category pages for the longtail? Just wondering how you guys deal with thousands of product pages really. Starting to feel as if I should re-evaluate my strategy and wanted to get some idea on what others are doing... Notes: Product pages already have reviews, helps with adding more unique user-generated content to each page. There's dynamic content e.g. "You may be interested in...", "Related products", etc.
On-Page Optimization | | Ria_3 -
Business Name is Meta Description
I would like to know what your opinion would be regarding the business name displayed in the meta description. Would you write your business name as: Business Name or BusinessName™ (no space with Trademark) I used MOZ example from here (Meta Descriptions Best Practice) and inserted the different business names. Welcome to Business Name in San Diego, California - the nation's largest urban cultural park. Home of 15 major museums, renowned performing arts venues... Welcome to businessname™ in San Diego, California - the nation's largest urban cultural park. Home of 15 major museums, renowned performing arts venues... I'm not sure which would be best for Google and other search engines. Thanks for your help.
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
How Much Does Punctuation of a Word Effect SEO?
I have a page on a site that is targeted for "mens hair cut" and I have received a F for the grade. The content on the page uses "men's" throughout the content. (proper punctuation) When I re-graded the page with "men's hair cut" the page received a B grade. My question is, does mens v.s men's make a different for on-page SEO? Should my targeted keywords include "men's" rather than "mens"?
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Is it SEO-wise to edit an already published article?
One of the pages on the website is #7 on the first page for a highly competetive keyword. Since I would like to improve rankings and the page is not optimized (e.g. keyword density is 0), is it SEO-wise to edit an article and create a good on-page optimization? Of course, the ultimate goal is to be in TOP 3 for a specific keyword.
On-Page Optimization | | zorsto1 -
Related products - random products or static
Hello, I was curious about where to get related products from. Currently I just grab some random products from the same category. Would there be any benefit to always linking to the same related products on a product page? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | nux0