Creating an SEO-friendly product description is something that many ecommerce sellers struggle with.

On the surface, it seems like a piece of cake.

After all, the only thing you have to do is write good sentences that convey the essence of your product in a simple, short format. 

Wrong. 

Writing an SEO-friendly product description requires you to think a little differently. 

That’s because keywords alone don’t do much for your product’s visibility in search results. 

Writing a good SEO-friendly product description is not merely about focusing on keywords and phrases. 

Instead, you have to think about the user experience, the intent of the buyer, and the overall intent of your listing.

If you’re ready to take your ecommerce selling to the next level, keep reading the ultimate guide on how to write SEO product description that improves your visibility and conversions.

So if you’re ready, let’s begin!

What is an SEO-Friendly Product Description? 

Product descriptions are an important element in driving traffic and making sales. 

They give shoppers more information about what they're buying, but they also play an important role in helping search engines understand what those products are so they show up in the right searches.

A well-written description can help you rank for relevant keywords, boost your conversion rate, and ultimately increase your sales, but writing them can be daunting because there's no magic formula or standard ruleset that works for everyone.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a collection of strategies used to improve the visibility of a website in search engines' organic search results. 

In other words, SEO makes it easy for people to find your website in search engines.

An optimized product description is one that has been written with a specific audience and purpose in mind. 

This means that the copy should be customized to suit your brand's tone and meet your target audience's needs.

Why is SEO-Friendly Product Description Important? 

When writing a product description with SEO in mind, you first need to consider what customers are likely to search for.

This information is usually called “search intent,” and there are several reasons why people might look for something online, which is why SEO-friendly product descriptions are important.

For example, search intent of potential customers might be:

  • To learn something (informational)
  • To do/buy something (transactional)
  • To go somewhere (navigational)
  • For inspiration (inspirational)

Even if you don't have any experience writing SEO-friendly content, creating optimized product descriptions for transactional intent doesn't have to be hard. 

In this post, we'll break down everything there is to know about writing product descriptions that boost sales and search engine rankings.

How to Write an SEO-Friendly Product Description - 9 Proven Steps

There are two main components of a product description: technical and creative.

The technical part includes relevant keywords that help users and search engines find your products easier, while the creative part describes your product to make it stand out from the competition.

1. Optimize the Description for SEO

To optimize your product descriptions for SEO, you’ll need to do research and make sure your descriptions not only match the content on the page, but that they contain keywords that your customers are searching for. 

search-results-serp-page

Here are a few tips for writing SEO product descriptions:

1. Research keywords

Start by researching keywords that your potential customers use when searching for products similar to yours. 

You can use Keywords Everywhere (free) or Google AdWords Keyword Planner (free) to see how many times your keywords are searched each month and how difficult it will be to rank in search results.

Once you’ve chosen your keywords, make sure they appear throughout your product description in a natural way. 

Don’t force the issue, just include them as much as possible without making it sound unnatural.

2. Product Description Length

Google recommends a minimum of 300 words per page, but most ecommerce product pages fall short of even this minimum.

To get an idea of what you should be aiming for, conduct an advanced search in Google using “allintext:product name” to see how many words other sites use when talking about the same product.

Note: Write your product descriptions for customers, not for Google.

2. Don’t duplicate content across pages.

You might assume that posting unique product descriptions for every item in your inventory is good for SEO, but this isn't necessarily the case.

Google's Panda algorithm penalizes sites with a large number of duplicate pages. In fact, one of the top five reasons for Panda-related traffic loss is thin content.

google-duplicate-content-robots-penalizes

Duplicate content on ecommerce sites can come from:

  • Product descriptions copied from manufacturer sites.
  • Product images copied from manufacturer sites.
  • Pages generated by URL parameters

If your product descriptions are duplicated across multiple pages, not only will this hurt your site’s SEO, but it will also confuse the search engines and harm your conversion rates. 

Duplicate content is when you have the exact same content on more than one page of your site (or someone else's). This could be the result of poor writing, or it could be intentional — plagiarism — which is a big no-no in Google's eyes.

If a customer searches for your product on Google and more than one of your pages comes up in the results, they’re more likely to click on the page that has been optimized for SEO rather than the page that hasn’t. 

Also, if you have two pages on Google with a lot of duplicate content, chances are high that only one of those pages will appear in the result. 

This could put you at a disadvantage against your competitors who may appear in the results instead of you.

If you're selling products that are available from other vendors or sourcing them from elsewhere, chances are you'll see similar descriptions across multiple sites — and this is where things get tricky. It doesn't necessarily mean the copy was plagiarized, but it will still hurt your rankings in search results.

When writing your own product descriptions, try not to use the manufacturer's description word for word or paraphrase it too closely. 

You want to use your own words and give people a real sense of what they're buying and getting.

3. Don't overuse keywords

Keyword stuffing is a trick used to boost search engine rankings by packing as many keywords into an article or web page as possible. 

This can be done by repeating the same word over and over again until it makes up a significant percentage of the content.

keyword-stuffing-example

Keyword stuffing can have a negative impact on your SEO and your conversion rate, so it's best to use keywords sparingly and naturally.

You shouldn't overuse keywords because:

  • It's not good for SEO - Overusing keywords makes your page look like spam in the eyes of Google
  • It doesn't look natural - Your customers will notice an unnatural amount of keywords stuffed into a product description. It could also lead to grammatical errors which makes your site look unprofessional
  • It's not good for conversions - Customers will leave your page if the product description isn't clear

Remember that product descriptions are for customers, not Google. 

It's important to remember that the goal of a product description is to sell your product, not to rank high in Google search results. 

As a result, it's a good idea to avoid keyword stuffing, which can make your content sound unnatural and out-of-place.

The problem is, keyword stuffing is considered spamming by search engines like Google. In fact, Google will penalize you for being "overly SEO-optimized" if you use this tactic.

We don't want your product descriptions to be flagged as spam. So how do you avoid keyword stuffing?

The answer is simple: Keep your content sounding natural and organic.

If you're trying to rank for "red blouse," there's no need to use that exact phrase more than once in your description. It's better to simply write naturally about your red blouse, mentioning things like its color, size and fit.

4. Focus on the benefits describe the product's features in detail

A good product description should be able to let your customers know what they're going to get if they buy your products and how it will affect them in one way or another.

In other words, you need to let your customers know how your products will make their life better or solve their pain points by providing enough detail about its features, pricing, and so on.

features-vs-benefits

6. Optimize for Mobile

When it comes to your product descriptions, people are often thinking about search engine optimization instead of mobile optimization. 

After all, you need to find a way for the search engines to know what your products are about and be able to rank them accordingly.

What most people don't realize is that optimizing for search engines also means optimizing for mobile.

If you're not careful, your product descriptions could suffer both in terms of ranking and in terms of conversions.

This makes it more important than ever to make sure that you fully understand how you can optimize your product descriptions for mobile shoppers as well as on-site SEO.

google-mobile-friendly-optimization

Here are a few tips that you can use right now to get started:

• Don't use too much copy. Nobody wants to read a novel on their phone, so keep it short and sweet. You'll have better results if you keep things simple and easy to read on a mobile device.

• Include images wherever possible (more than one). Images allow you to show off your products without writing paragraphs of copy. It's an effective way of getting the attention of the reader without overloading them with information.

• Keep the reader involved with bullet points or numbered lists. If you want people to stay interested in what they're reading

7. Compress Videos and Images for better responsivness.

If you don’t compress your images, and you have a lot of them, you’re going to be making your visitors wait.

Compressing your images and videos will make them load faster on your site, which is crucial for a good user experience. Optimizing your images and videos will also help with your SEO, since Google has confirmed that page speed is a ranking factor.

The best way to compress images and videos is by using an image compression plugin or tool. There are free options available, but the best plugins will set you back a few bucks per month.

Using an image compression plugin or tool is the best option because it compresses all your images while leaving their original quality intact. You’ll also be able to resize your images to the exact dimensions they need to be on your website, which will make them load even faster.

When you’re compressing an image, there are two main file types that you can choose from: JPEGs and PNGs. 

You should always use the least amount of compression possible while keeping your images under 100kb. 

Compress too much, and they’ll start looking bad. (This is why it is so important to optimize images before uploading them.)

If you want a background image to fill the entire space behind an element, use CSS instead of relying on the image itself to do the work. 

Otherwise, as the browser window grows or shrinks, the image will continue to expand or contract, distorting its proportions in the process. Using CSS can help prevent this problem by separating the style from the image itself

8. Write Compelling Title and Meta Descriptions

A page title is the first thing a user sees in the search result. It is also the headline of your product description.

To make an attractive title, you should do the following things:

  • Use 5-10 words (or 55 characters, whichever comes first)
  • Put keywords at the beginning
  • Make it catchy and descriptive

Your product title should be short and descriptive. Avoid vague terms like "digital download" or "best seller." Instead, use specific keywords that describe what your product does or how it works.

For example, if you're selling a digital photo frame, you could include keywords like "LCD display" or "WiFi connectivity" in your title.

This will help search engines understand what your product actually is and match it with relevant queries.

If you have multiple products in the same category, avoid using the same keywords in all of them.

If every one of your pages has a title that includes the words LCD display, Google's algorithm will have trouble deciding which products are most relevant for certain searches.

It's better to mix up the keywords you use so they get matched with more diverse search queries.

The product description also needs a meta description. Meta descriptions are usually used to describe its page content in 160 characters or less. 

But as Google sometimes truncates descriptions that are longer than 160 characters, it is best to keep it between 50-160 characters.

9. Test and improve it

To know if your content is working, testing different sizes, formats, words and more can be very insightful to understand what your audience is looking for.  Don’t forget to track your KPIs and compare results.

Benchmarking based on competitors is a good way to find out the average copy lengths.

This can vary greatly depending on the product type and industry.

sandwich-writing

This can be a great way to be aware of the direct competition, how they present their products and what is working since they’re in the top position in search. 

How TextCortex puts all these techniques into one solution

As a general rule of thumb, the more product descriptions you write, the more you’ll improve.

The more you practice writing product descriptions, the easier it will become to write them in an engaging way that is useful to the customer and search engines alike. 

And as you get better, you can start adding more product pages to your website.

It might take a while for your new pages to rank well on Google and Bing, but if you keep writing high-quality product descriptions, eventually, your rankings should improve.

And to simplify the whole process, you can use TextCortex.

TextCortex is an AI writing tool that simplifies your writing process and helps you create SEO-optimized content within seconds.

It offers the web app and the Google Chrome Extension you can use within any textbox online.

How does it work?

All you need to do is enter the details about your product, its name, and once you’re done, hit “Create.

Not only will it create compelling content for you, but it will save you a lot of time and money.

And in case you wanna rewrite it, you can do that within seconds.

Just highlight the part you wanna rewrite and hit the “Rewrite” button.

Tons of content created in seconds - it’s easy as that.

If you want to create your product description at scale, download TextCortex Chrome Extension, and see how it immediately expands your click and conversion rates out of proportion.