SEO For eCommerce Blog Series Part Four: Keyword Research, Meta Data and Schema

We’re onto part four of this six-part SEO for ecommerce blog series. We’ve already covered:

• why SEO is different for ecommerce sites compared to lead gen sites
• unique elements of ecommerce websites, including category pages, product listing pages and product description pages
• user intent and user experience including page speed, on-site search and images

Now let’s take a look at keyword research, meta descriptions, headings, image alt tags and schema markup – and outline any special considerations for looking at these elements on an ecommerce website.

Keyword Research

Keyword research should happen early on, and it’s an integral part of your SEO strategy whether your website is ecommerce or lead generation. The principles for keyword research are the same regardless of your website type, but for ecommerce you might want to consider:

• category headings
• product names and codes
• brand names
• high volume keywords
• long tail questions for featured snippets
• phrases that indicate intent, e.g. “X for sale”, “where to buy…” (see our last instalment for more on user intent and how to map keywords to different pages and stages of the buying journey)

Read our blog post 6 SEO Keyword Research Best Practices for more information on keyword research.

Meta Descriptions

Onto meta descriptions now – and again, they are pretty much the same regardless of your website type. Here are a few things to note about meta descriptions:

• Meta descriptions appear on search engine results pages underneath the link to your website, and are around 155-160 characters long.
• Meta descriptions are only used by Google if keyword user searched for is in your written meta description.
• They don’t affect rankings directly but can affect click-through rate.
• You should check if your product page meta descriptions include all of the important keywords people might search for, such as product name, product code/manufacturer number, brand name, description, size, and quantity.
• Put the most important keywords near the beginning so that if your meta description is too long, those important words don’t get cut off.
• Could your meta descriptions all follow a similar structure for pages of the same type? This is to help you with quicker and easier implementation more than anything else, especially during website launch.

Headings

As with SEO for all site types, you should ensure there is one H1 present on every page, that H2s are also present where possible, and that they all contain appropriate keywords.

A special consideration for product listing pages is whether headings change depending on the faceted search attributes chosen. For example, if the user filters the laptop category to only include HP laptops, does the heading and page title change from “Laptops” to “HP Laptops”? If not, you could be missing out on keyword opportunities – but don’t go overboard with extremely long titles.

Image Alt Tags

All images should feature image alt tags to help with SEO as well as accessibility, for example for visually impaired users. As with your meta descriptions, do your image alt tags include all relevant product manufacturer names and codes? And can you standardise them across page types to make for easier implementation?

Schema Markup

The final thought for the day is on schema markup. Schema.org markup, also known as structured data, can improve your SEO and click-through rates because they help search engines to understand your page content and display it better on SERPs. You can add these tags within your code to tell Google when something is a business name, address, phone number, book, product price, description, colour, size, brand, and much more. Not only can you mark up all of your products with this, but also other content such as reviews, FAQs and blog articles.

Find out more in our article How to Improve Your SEO With Structured Data.

Read our next article in this series where we cover blogging, featured snippets, duplicate content, internal linking, breadcrumb trails and link building for your ecommerce website.