Strategic Product Page SEO: A Roadmap for Growth
- Implementing SEO for industrial product pages is challenging but delivers tremendous visibility.
- Effective product information optimization requires understanding core strategies across keyword research, content production, and technical enhancements.
- Adhering to best practices promises greater discoverability, qualified traffic, and sales.
In this Article
How much time to do you spend on “product page SEO”?
Do you struggle to get your product pages to rank favorably in search results? It can be frustrating when your meticulously crafted product descriptions fail to capture attention and drive conversions.
Product pages serve a crucial purpose – to compellingly showcase your products so shoppers become buyers. However, search engines can’t appreciate clever copy or stunning visuals. They prioritize pages with optimized content and structure.
Inadequate (or improperly implemented) product page search engine optimization (SEO) has serious ramifications. This means your products will be buried many pages away from the front, leading to lost traffic and sales opportunities.
Product page SEO is critical. It is the reason internet surfers will see your products when they key in specific search terms. However, some industrial marketers may need hand-holding to implement the optimizations. If this is you, count this a lucky day because this guide teaches the strategies for transforming product pages from overlooked by search engines to unmissable.
Navigating the Search Engine Landscape: A Primer for Industrial Brands
An industrial marketer is nothing like a regular professional who worries about consumer sentiment and preferences. In particular, a typical industrial marketer deals with other businesses (business-to-business, B2B) and relies heavily on building enduring relationships with accounts. The bottom line is that this category of marketers is often shallowly versed in technical concepts like search engine optimization (SEO).
However, the market is undergoing shifts that make SEO knowledge indispensable. For instance, a Forrester report reveals that most B2B buyers (60%) conduct self-directed research before settling on a preferred vendor. This implies that the digital content you put out there is more likely to earn you a customer than attending trade shows and sharing print ads.
Industrial marketers should prioritize knowledge of how search engines work to navigate the landscape quickly.
So, let’s establish an essential context for how search engines discover and rank web pages and content.
These are some of the key features you’ll find in Vendor Central:
A central orders area where Amazon sends you the purchase orders.
- Product content area where you provide the important product information including descriptions, prices, assets like images, etc.
- Marketing tools
- Payments area where you can check your payment status for all orders shipped to Amazon
- Advertising console where you get to manage all your advertising activities.
- Reports with comprehensive analytics on how your products are performing.
- Built-in safeguards designed to protect vendor’s product trademarks from hijacking, counterfeiters, and competitors who may be trying to pose as genuine vendors of the same products.
The ordering process is largely automated, meaning your aggressive marketing and dedication to building great products are vital for success.
What's a search engine?
A search engine is a software application designed to help users locate information on the internet. It indexes and organizes vast amounts of web content into a database, making it easily accessible to users who enter specific queries or keywords.
These platforms use complex algorithms to analyze and rank web pages based on relevance to a user’s search. The algorithm’s behavior depends on factors like keyword usage, content quality, and the overall authority of the web content.
Think of search engines as tireless librarians of the digital realm. Their job? To sift through the mountains of information and surface the most relevant, high-quality content for every query. These librarians, however, don’t wear glasses and shuffle dusty folders. They run on complex algorithms and intricate rules that determine which pages deserve the coveted top spots in those search results.
These algorithms are the gatekeepers of visibility in the front of search engine results pages (SERPs). They’re constantly evolving, adapting to user behavior and new trends. While their inner workings are often highly technical, we know that they love high-quality, informative content that answers users’ questions and solves their problems.
Some key elements include:
- The actual content on the page – algorithms analyze page content to check its relevance for search queries. Useful, informative product descriptions tend to perform better.
- Quality of inbound links to a page – pages to which authoritative and high-quality sites link tend to rank higher.
- User engagement signals – time on site, bounce rates, etc. help search engines gauge the quality of pages.
Understanding these basics is essential for industrial brands looking to improve product page visibility through SEO. Tactically optimizing pages as per what algorithms reward leads to higher rankings.
Why Optimize Product Information for Search Engines?
SEO plays a critical role in lead generation. For example, 57% of B2B marketers surveyed by Junto disclosed that they generated leads using SEO more than any of their other marketing campaigns.
And it doesn’t stop there. HubSpot and 99 Firms affirm that, if done right, SEO can convert at least 14.6% of leads into customers.
The data says that optimizing your product pages for search engines pays handsomely. Here are additional reasons for industrial brands to pursue SEO:
Reaching niche audiences
Industrial purchasers typically have specific needs and search with precise keywords around these requirements. They seek specific solutions for their unique challenges – generic advertising won’t help them.
SEO allows you to align product information with such niche keywords to get products in front of interested buyers. However, you should research keywords carefully and create content that meets unique needs.
Targeting buyers at different stages of the buying journey
The industrial buying process is typically characterized by a longer and more complex journey than consumer-oriented markets. Optimizing product information for search engines allows you to nudge visitors to specific sections of product pages that hold answers to their questions.
This nudging should aim to catch buyer attention early in their buying stage and guide them through the decision-making process. This holistic approach ensures that your brand remains top-of-mind throughout the buyer’s journey.
Building trust
Another crucial aspect of the B2B buying process is how deep buyers get when researching potential vendors. The main reason for this high level of thoroughness is that the purchasing process is risky and could collapse an established business if not done right.
In other words, industrial buyers don’t just buy products; they invest in partnerships. They entrust their operations and reputations to the brands they choose. Therefore, establishing an environment of trust is paramount.
SEO is your best ally when creating the right conditions for a long-term business partnership. For example, ranking high in search results for relevant queries earns credibility. This visibility signals potential customers that your brand is a serious player within the industry.
Implementing SEO Strategies Has Challenges
SEO promises a huge payoff, which means all industrial marketers should be laying out meticulously planned strategies to exploit it, right? Apparently not. Data shows that only 79% of industrial marketers are invested in SEO. What about the remaining 21%?
Some industrial marketers may have been overwhelmed by the challenges around SEO strategy implementation. Some unique obstacles that industrial enterprises encounter in this regard include:
Complex product information landscapes
The most distinguishing factor of industrial marketing is that it deals with product catalogs that often contain many products with hundreds of attributes and technical specifications. The body of information grows when each product comes in various configurations and variations.
Challenges arise when these attributes and specifications consist mainly of jargon. Imagine optimizing a high-pressure valve – its intricacies wouldn’t fit neatly into a catchy tagline. Keyword research quickly becomes a treacherous experience.
Keeping track of constant product changes
Manufacturers often add new products or modify existing ones to address specific needs as they arise. Brands deal with frequently changing specifications, compliance standards, and components. Keeping the sheer scale of catalog data updated alongside these changes is taxing.
Inconsistent and siloed content
Naturally, frequent changes in product information create inconsistencies. The problem worsens when a brand lacks a robust product information management system. The inconsistency adds another layer of difficulty. Imagine one product page boasting keyword-rich descriptions while another languishes in keyword poverty. Such inconsistency throws wrenches into SEO efforts, confusing search engines and frustrating customers.
If your organization operates globally through separate brands, content often ends up in silos. This augments the inconsistency issues when updating product details. Such fragmentation means missed optimization opportunities.
Keyword cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization is the scenario that results from multiple pages on a website targeting the same or similar keywords. This can lead to a situation where the site’s pages compete against each other for search engine rankings, diluting the website’s ability to rank effectively for targeted keywords.
With large catalogs covering many product variants, industrial brands often unintentionally cannibalize keywords.
For example, a power tools company may optimize separate pages targeting “circular saws,” “cordless circular saws,” and “worm drive circular saws” individually. Since these essentially describe similar saw products, it splits the keyword targeting and traffic.
This duplication of efforts targeting near similar keywords results in a fragmentation of potential traffic and dilution of rankings for primary power tool categories.
3 Areas to Focus on to Improve Product Page SEO Right Now
1. Keyword research
Thorough keyword research lays the foundation for optimizing product pages for search engine crawlers. This involves:
Competitor and buyer keyword analysis
Researching keywords is a critical strategy – it helps to uncover relevant gaps and optimization opportunities. On the one hand, keyword research is all about examining the keywords that competitors are targeting. The insights obtained provide a clear perspective on industry-specific terms and consumer preferences. For instance, if a competitor consistently uses keywords related to sustainable practices, it might indicate a growing demand for eco-friendly solutions within the industry.
On the other hand, buyer keyword analysis helps identify consumers’ most pressing needs. The insights from this examination are crucial even if your brand isn’t consumer-facing. They allow you to anticipate B2B demand shifts – demand often flows upstream from the final consumer to bulk purchasers.
Prioritizing specific long tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are specific, niche phrases that cater to a more targeted audience. This could involve incorporating detailed product specifications or use cases into keywords in industrial business contexts.
For example, a supplier of industrial-grade air compressors might target a long-tail keyword like “energy-efficient rotary screw air compressor for automotive manufacturing.” Such specificity attracts a more relevant audience and enhances the likelihood of conversion as users have a more explicit intent.
In addition to these strategies, it helps to group keywords by themes around product categories, applications, buyer types, and funnel stages. This allows the creation of optimized, intent-driven content. For example:
- Problem-solving keywords: “Industrial lubricants for high-temperature machinery.”
- Solution-based keywords: “Cost-effective energy management solutions for manufacturing.”
- Comparison keywords: “Pros and cons of robotic welding systems for automotive assembly lines.”
2. Content optimization
The next step is turning these keywords into optimized content that converts. Content optimization involves strategically incorporating identified keywords into various elements on a product page. This includes:
- Title tags and meta descriptions: Crafting compelling titles and meta descriptions that incorporate target keywords.
- Header tags (H1, H2, H3): Structuring content with headers to improve readability and signal the importance of specific keywords.
- Product descriptions: Creating detailed, informative, and keyword-rich product descriptions that address user queries and concerns.
This process might appear complex, and it is if you do not use specialized tools like keyword research tools and product information management (PIM) systems.
Some standard keyword research tools include Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush. Google’s Keyword Planner provides insights into keyword search volume, competition, and potential impact. Similarly, SEMrush enables users to analyze competitors, track keyword strategy, and identify gaps in their own content.
On the other hand, PIM solutions provide unique features and capabilities that power content optimization in a way that is unlike keyword research tools. For instance, Catsy PIM allows mass updating of titles across catalogs. The platform consolidates and manages product information centrally, creating a hub from which users can syndicate data to channels seamlessly.
Centralized product data management helps solve a vital channel: keyword cannibalization. Since the central hub holds all the relevant product details that will be pushed to different channels, there is no chance of diluting the website’s ranking on SERPs.
Catsy also provides templates for creating standardized product content. These templates enforce quality guidelines when adding essential details for new products, including titles, descriptions, and specifications.
Product pages also include images and videos. So, you should think about how to optimize the digital assets. Catsy provides a built-in eCommerce digital asset management (DAM) tool to complement the PIM capabilities. The DAM can enrich images and videos with optimized alt-texts and metatags. This improves context and enhances the assets’ visibility to search engine algorithms.
3. Technical SEO
Besides content optimization and keyword research, many more things happen behind the scenes that optimize your product pages for search engines. These optimizations affect aspects like the speed at which your site loads, which has been shown to impact conversions. The optimizations are what is called technical SEO in SEO terminology.
Technical SEO targets ‘technical’ aspects of the website, such as the code and infrastructure. The objective is to improve crawling, indexing, and ranking factors for search engines.
While content plays a significant role in SEO, search engines rely on technical signals to assess a page’s value and relevance. The technical elements directly impact user experience and how machines parse a page.
When it comes to product pages specifically, some crucial technical optimizations include:
Website speed
Site speed is a critical ranking factor, as faster sites provide a better user experience. Some ways to optimize speed include:
- Compress images to reduce the bandwidth required to load the page faster. Smaller images make websites lighter. However, use handy tools like Catsy DAM to standardize the compressed images to avoid potentially embarrassing inconsistencies.
- Leverage the website’s content caching capabilities and asynchronous image loading.
- Optimize the underlying code.
Structured data
Schema markup enables search engines to interpret context through machine-readable data better. For product pages, this element of technical SEO enhances the visibility of critical information in search results.
Some key schemas include:
- Product schema: Specifies details like name, image, price, and availability.
- Review schema: Displays product ratings and reviews in search results.
- Breadcrumb schema: Enhances navigation display in search snippets.
How does schema markup benefit the product pages?
- It creates richer search snippets, increasing click-through rates.
- It makes it easy for search engine crawlers to understand product information.
User-friendly navigation and internal linking
Even the most compelling content becomes lost without a clear map. You need to do more than just optimize content for search engines; human visitors also matter.
So, keep the visitors engaged with user-friendly navigation and internal linking within product pages. Some best practices include:
- Design a clear and logical product page hierarchy.
- Implement breadcrumb navigation for easy backtracking.
- Ensure navigation is user-friendly on various devices.
- Link to related products, creating a seamless user journey.
- Use descriptive anchor text for clarity and SEO benefits.
PIM can be handy in this regard. For example, Catsy PIM provides features for creating structured product taxonomies. This ensures the navigation is organized logically, enabling the use of descriptive anchor text that aligns with the product categories and attributes.
For example, a power tools manufacturer can create nested category trees in the PIM that users easily understand, such as: “Power Saws” > “Circular Saws” > “Cordless Circular Saws.”
These standardized categories and descriptive names propagate across all channels connected to the PIM. This means product pages follow the logical information architecture while linking to related products.
Beyond architecture, Catsy PIM optimizes link anchor text for usability and SEO. For example, the product page body copy can include links like:
“For applications requiring more power, consider our Heavy-Duty Circular Saws range.”
Here, “Heavy-Duty Circular Saws” serves as a clear, beneficially SEO-optimized link instead of generic text like “click here.”
PIM’s connective tissue enables cohesive, intuitive product navigation and linking using search-friendly terms. This improves discoverability and on-page user journeys.
Key Takeaways
In closing, it is imperative for industrial marketers aiming for maximum visibility and conversions to embrace search engine optimization for product pages. Although this can seem overwhelming initially, this guide has shown that you can do it.
However, the key is utilizing handy tools, including keyword research solutions, to identify specialized commercial terms to target and PIM and DAM systems for efficient scaling and propagating complete and high-quality product information across channels.
The core elements are informative title tags, strategic keyword targeting in descriptions, alt text optimization of images, structured data markup, site speed optimizations, quality internal linking, and intuitive information architecture.
Leverage keyword research tools like SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner to analyze search volume data and competitor rankings. Also, search directly in Google to identify relevant long-tail variations. Determine broader themes and higher intent variations.
While B2B marketing often relies on targeted outreach, a strong SEO presence attracts qualified leads organically. Top SERP rankings mean more website visitors, higher brand awareness, and increased sales.
Complex product information, technical jargon, and siloed data can make it difficult for search engines to understand your content. Additionally, niche audiences require targeted keyword research and content strategies. Most challenges, such as fragmented data, can be resolved with tools like PIM and DAM. These systems create a single source of truth from which you can syndicate product details to connected channels.
PIM systems centralize product information, ensuring consistency and allowing for optimized metadata, titles, and descriptions. They also streamline keyword implementation and bulk editing, making SEO management more efficient.
