Written by Julia Dent Bocchese, 4/3/2020

Julia is an SEO Consultant Pinterest Strategist for creative small businesses. Her goal is to make SEO and Pinterest strategies approachable and easy to implement for all small businesses so they can reach their ideal clients organically. Julia is t… — Julia is an SEO Consultant Pinterest Strategist for creative small businesses. Her goal is to make SEO and Pinterest strategies approachable and easy to implement for all small businesses so they can reach their ideal clients organically. Julia is the founder and consultant at *Julia Renee Consulting*.

7 SEO Tips for Product-Based Businesses to Get Your Products Ranking

Right now is an awesome time to optimize products for SEO! Google is featuring more product images in searches, and if you can get your products featured in Google Shopping AND Google Images, you can get some amazing traffic and sales.

Optimizing your products for SEO is the same general idea as optimizing any website, but there are some differences. Here are some easy SEO tips to optimize your products and get them ranking in Google!

#1

Optimize your pages

So before you start optimizing your products, you need to make sure your site is optimized and that Google is even able to index and rank your site. Do some keyword research for your pages, make sure your copy is clear and informative, see if your site is mobile-friendly, make sure your site is easy to navigate, and submit a sitemap in Google Search Console (make sure you have Google Analytics and Google Search Console set up!). Check to make sure there aren’t any errors or broken links, especially if you have products that have sold out or been taken down.

If you do find issues, make sure you get them fixed before moving on to optimizing your products. If you don’t check to see if Google can crawl and index your site and find out later that it can’t, then all your optimization work will have been in vain! So get big issues fixed so you can make sure ALL your optimization efforts will help move your site forward.

If you want some more guidance, check out my blog post on SEO strategies to implement this year!

#2

Fix site speed issues

Site speed is the biggest issue I see because not many people realize it can affect Google rankings! But Google is really focused on user experience right now, and if your site is really slow and aren’t serving your audience, Google is taking notice. They also notice if people don’t stick around and wait for your site to load, so if more and more people are leaving your site after a few seconds, Google will think that people don’t like your site and it isn’t worth ranking well.

If you have lots of products on your product pages and your site is really slow, it’s going to affect how many sales you get AND how well your site will rank. If someone is casually checking out your website and sees that it takes 10 seconds for a page of earrings to load, they’re likely going to leave and not bother checking out some of the products or click around to see your other offerings. And if they did stick around and add some items to their cart, but the checkout page is taking forever to load, they might leave before purchasing!

So fixing your site speed will benefit your customers, your sales, AND your rankings in Google. If you want to see what your site speed is, I recommend checking it with free tools like Pagespeed Insights and GTmetrix.

#3

Set up title tags and meta descriptions for every single product

If you have a lot of products, you’re probably not going to like this tip. But you really do need to set up title tags and meta descriptions for EVERY product you have!

If someone searches for a very specific product and you have it, you could either not show up in Google because Google doesn’t know what your product is, or Google will pull whatever random text they find on your page (including the names of your pictures or social media icons; I see it happen all the time) and fill in your meta description for you. Whether your product just doesn’t rank or Google fills in the description with gibberish text, you’re likely losing that sale.

So yes, it’s time-consuming if you have a lot of products, but adding title tags and meta descriptions are essential for telling Google what all your products are and getting them ranking!

#4

Set up Google My Business

Google My Business isn’t just for brick-and-mortar stores! It can be a great way for online businesses to drive traffic and increase rankings.

Google My Business gives your audience lots of information about your business in one spot. People can see your website, hours of business (if you have them), contact information, product photos, areas you serve and ship to, and, most importantly, reviews! Reviews on Google My Business are a great way to have your customers rave about your products for potential customers to see, and getting lots of great reviews will help boost your rankings. Google My Business is a great platform for any business to use!

#5

Optimize your images

You probably have multiple photos for each of your products, and they all need to be optimized to help you rank well in Google (and on Pinterest if people pin your products to Pinterest). The first thing you need to do is make sure they’re sized down and compressed BEFORE you upload them to your site. This is going to help with speeding up your site like I mentioned before, and you really don’t need massive photos for your products! You can compress them with programs like Photoshop or websites like TinyJPG.

After your photos are uploaded to your site, you need to add alt tags (also called alt text, SEO title, or SEO text depending on your website platform) to all your photos. This is where you can describe your images for Google Images, Pinterest, and screen reader software. I recommend describing your products in short phrase, and don’t just have a stream of words separated by commas or cram keywords into incoherent phrases. So for example, instead of “light blue sky blue baby blue t-shirt short sleeved women juniors small medium large,” try something like “women’s light blue short sleeved t-shirt in different sizes.”

That phrase is much easier for Google to understand what the heck is in the photo, and it’s going to look a lot cleaner and less spammy when people see that description on Pinterest. Plus, Google is smart and knows that similar phrases like “sky blue” and “baby blue” are types of light blue!

#6

Optimize category pages

You need to focus on optimizing your products, but don’t overlook your category pages! If someone is looking for different types of products, you want your category page to be shown to them on Google. So if someone is searching for black patterned skirts and you have several to choose from, you can help them by showing them the choices you have to offer on your category page.

To optimize your category pages, make sure you are writing detailed title tags and meta descriptions. They don’t need to be filled with fun, fluffy descriptions; most people want to make sure that your website has the specific thing that they’re looking for. So make sure you include details about the fabrics, sizes, styles, colors, etc. that are on your category page, and just like with the alt tags, make sure you’re writing coherent sentences that aren’t crammed with keywords. That could hurt your clicks more than it would help your rankings!

To help with site speed, make sure the product images on your category pages aren’t massive so people can easily skim through your products without having to wait forever for the images to load!

#7

Set up redirects when a product is gone

If you create custom products or seasonal products that sell out or get taken down, make sure you have redirects set up. You don’t want to have a ton of broken links that look spammy and confusing to Google, and you don’t want someone to click on a pin on Pinterest that brings them to an error page.

Depending on your site and other products, there are a few ways you can handle things when a product is taken down. You can use that page to talk about similar products, redirect to a similar product or a category page, or if the product is expected to come back stock at some point, you can say that the product is sold out and have people sign up for email alerts when it’s back in stock. There are lots of different ways to deal with it, just don’t have a broken link on your site!

So you can see that SEO for products is slightly different than other websites, but the general idea is the same! You want to give your customers and Google the best user experience and give as much information as you can without keyword stuffing or writing weird sentences. If you have a ton of products and all of this seems overwhelming to you, just take it one step at a time, and each little thing you do will help your rankings in Google!

About Julia Dent Bocchese

Founder & Consultant, Julia Renee Consulting, LLC

Julia is an SEO Consultant Pinterest Strategist for creative small businesses. Her goal is to make SEO and Pinterest strategies approachable and easy to implement for all small businesses so they can reach their ideal clients organically. Julia is the founder and consultant at Julia Renee Consulting.

If you are interested in learning more about SEO and Pinterest Strategy, please subscribe to Julia’s newsletter and follow her on Instagram.

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