Optimizing Your Catalog For SEO
- Mahtab Haj Ali (Deactivated)
Search Engine Optimization
Whether you are the manufacturer and distributor of your own products or you utilize drop shipping services to resell 3rd party goods, attracting new customers is always a challenge. Organic traffic from search engines is still the one of the best returns on investment. Search engine optimization of your product catalog including brands and categories is a great way to build and maintain healthy organic traffic to your site.
This article will cover some best practices utilizing the Jasper PIM to create engaging and unique content to set you up for success in the long term.
The Challenges
SEO is a constant battle for position among the search engines across the internet. Being unique is the best way to be noticed and ensure that customers find you organically. Lack of care for your product listings often leads to poor rankings and a struggle to attract new business without spending money on costly pay-per-click campaigns.
The Good News
Jasper PIM provides tools to manage your SEO efforts all in once central place across all your sites and platforms. Best practice SEO is a balance between efficiency with automation and manual care to separate yourself from the pack with unique content. Below are several areas in which Jasper PIM allows you to stay ahead of the curve.
Brands
Unique Brand description
If supported by your e-commerce platform or marketplace separate from your meta description
Keyword
Choose an appropriate page title on the SEO field using your shop name to distinguish from others
Meta description
Meta description with carefully chosen brand specific keywords (certain models you specialize in or value added services associated with the brand) and action oriented language
If you are reselling 3rd party goods or using the PIM to sell more than one brand, you will want to optimize your brand pages. To do this, navigate to the correct brand edit page and take note of the description field on the details tab and the SEO tab. If your e-commerce platform supports on page descriptions for brands fill in the description field.
A properly formatted brand description will ideally contain appropriate keyword references to the category of products offered in the brand. Using action oriented language is a good way to draw attention. These are on-page descriptions, meaning they will be visible to customer's who have already landed on the brand page. You can add current featured products, promotions and other topical information here. Search engines will also see this content so it is important to keep this separate from other SEO related fields.
On the SEO tab, the two most important fields are Page Title and Meta Description. It is a good practice to add your store/site name to each brand page title to make it unique among other listings. {Brand Name | Site Name} is a common method of achieving this.
The meta description will appear beneath your link in search results. This is your only opportunity to separate your brand pages from any others in the list of results. Make sure to use engaging language and get straight to the point. This should be one or two sentences explaining the products sold by the brand and asserting any unique value proposition you may have. End the description by including your site name in context. {Discover the hottest trends in cycling with equipment by [brand] available at [site name]} would be an example of an extremely focused meta description.
Categories
Description
It is key here for not only SEO but marketing efforts as well. With a full WYSIWYG editor accepted by most e-commerce platforms use the category description to really focus your marketing efforts for effective landing pages.
Page titles
They are important as the keywords are typically too broad to be effective without an area of focus that sets you apart from others selling within the same vertical.
Meta description
Meta description provide more opportunity to provide value add apart from your competitors. What do you sell? Why should they buy from you? Finally, use action oriented language to engage beyond search engines and speak directly to the customer looking at your link.
When optimizing your category pages it is important to choose category names that strike a balance between high search volume and low competition. Numerous tools exist to check keyword search volume and competition levels. If possible, it is a good practice to research these prior to creating your category structure. However, since this is not always possible, you can use the results of these tools to appropriately use in your category description and meta descriptions to set yourself up for better ranking.
Similar to your on page brand descriptions, you can use keywords to highlight the offerings in each category. Make sure to keep these descriptions fresh to entice customers to return. Search engines will also keep track of this content and elevate you according to how fresh your content is.
The two most important fields on the SEO tab are again the page title and meta description. As with the brand pages, it is important to add your site name to both the page title and the meta description (in context). The meta description is your one sentence pitch to potential customers. Keep things focused and use active language.
Products
Description
Descriptions are likely the most time-intensive but important way to distinguish yourself from the competition. There is no substitute for product-by-product unique hand-written descriptions that highlight not only the products unique features, but your take on the product and any value added services or products you provide. This is difficult for large catalogs, but well worth the effort in the long run. Short descriptions if supported are a greatest hits of sorts often mirroring the meta description minus the references to your shop.
Image
Having high-quality unique images for your products is another way to stand out in not only organic SEO efforts, but PPC campaigns as well. Customers are often drawn to the thing that stands out in a crowd and unique images is the perfect way to achieve this. Don't forget to add name and descriptions (alt text) to your images to further distinguish them.
Page titles
Page titles should be informative and succinct and include your store name. Brand, model, category, keyword and your store name tends to work best.
Meta descriptions
They are short advertising pitches to customers that are filtered by the search engine first. Standout with action oriented language highlighting your unique value proposition and the store name. Remember, customers can typically see these descriptions prior to clicking on your link.
Managing individual product SEO offerings can be a daunting task for those with large catalogs. As such, many people take a programmatic approach to product SEO. This can have a decent return on investment, but even a small measure of individual attention can help move the needle. Jasper PIM gives you several tools to create unique content for your product offerings.
The first place to start with product optimization is the General > Details section. The short description functions much like your on-page brand and category descriptions. These days much of your customer base will be on mobile devices and can easily scroll past long drawn-out descriptions. Utilize the short description field to hook them with the most important notes about the product (not all ecommerce platforms natively support short description fields).
The long description is perhaps more important for search engines than it is for your customers. If too much of your description is similar to other sellers most search engines will demote your listing for "duplicate content." Spending some extra time to write descriptions using your own language helps bypass this issue. You can use brand/model or brand/category keyword pairings to help search engines identify your product, but be careful not to "overstuff" as that is equally frowned upon by search engine algorithms.
Product imagery plays another key roll in separating yourself from the pack. Unique images instantly draw attention when a customer is browsing multiple shopping listings for the same product. Additionally, the use of unique image titles and alt text will help distinguish your listings from others when your site is being indexed.
Image titles and alt text can be as simple as the product title and a one or two word description of the image. For example {Title - Front View} would be enough to separate yourself from a listing lacking a description.
The SEO tab again allows you to control the page title, meta description and if applicable the meta keywords. Appending your site name to the title and the description (in context) is a good way to set your listings apart. Additionally consider adding your unique value proposition to the meta descriptions.