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Why is the quality of your product pages so important? Simply because it influences whether or not your website’s visitors will convert to real customers. You should structure your page and present your products or services correctly in order to make them appealing, so your visitors will be willing to purchase them.

This is easy to say! Still, some ecommerce websites suffer from low conversion rates; they fail to attract and retain customers. So what are they doing wrong? To figure this out and help online retailers, we invited to our SEMrush Chat Artur Kosch @ArturKosch, an online entrepreneur and SEO expert. He and our other participants discussed common problems of ecommerce websites and shared some product page optimization tips.

A comprehensive website audit is a must. When performing in-depth analysis of your site, you should pay close attention to your product pages. First of all, as we’ve already mentioned, your online performance and visitors’ behavior depend heavily on these pages. Second of all, product pages are where many mistakes are usually found. That’s why we decided to start with a question about indexing and crawling problems that ecommerce websites can have.

A1: Many pages to crawl, due to a big crawling budget for search engines. Paging & categorization will help the crawler. #semrushchat

— Artur Kosch (@ArturKosch) March 16, 2016

Your website’s navigation should be simple. Organize the structure of your product page by creating several categories that will help crawlers easily understand the content on this page and a your whole website. But if you do this, remember another important thing, as Express Writers @ExpWriters suggested: “Duplicate content is definitely an issue for ecommerce websites, as products may be listed in various categories, etc.” Nevertheless, you can take the appropriate measures.

A1. Duplicate content -- many products are the same or very similar. But canonical tags are effective for sorting that out. #semrushchat

— Ecreativeworks (@ECWseo) March 16, 2016

That’s it! Don’t forget to use canonical tags in order to show crawlers which of your pages you want to be indexed.

A1: Multiple product pages for the variations of the same item is typically an issue. Develop faceted search properly to solve #semrushchat

— Dario Zadro (@DarioZadro) March 16, 2016

Faceted search, or faceted navigation, can be really helpful for users, providing them with several visible options for filtering a large amount of results. This is the best choice for ecommerce and product-related websites.

A1 eccommerce sites often have multiple ways to sort and filter products which may cause indexation issues that need addressing #SemRushChat

— Bill Slawski (@bill_slawski) March 16, 2016

There are several common issues that can cause incomplete indexing, such as poor website architecture, crawls errors and duplicate content, as we said earlier. To start with, you should understand how many of your webpages should be indexed. In order to fix indexing issues, you can take the following measures: use robot.txt files to indicate to web crawlers what areas of your site shouldn’t be scanned or canonical tags to show web robots what pages you want them to check.

A1: Promoting products via social but not addressing what happens when URLs for those products are removed from site #semrushchat @semrush

— Laurel Marcus (@ljmarcus) March 16, 2016

This happens quite often, and it can negatively impact users’ experience with your website and ultimately with your product. So, don’t forget to check your pages after removing their URLs. Here’s a good piece of advice from WooRank @woorank: “Make sure you double check all URLs for ‘dead links’ and add enough description to minimize page-to-page similarities.”

These are the essentials of product page optimization, so don’t forget about all the points mentioned above if you want to prevent your website from having any crawling and indexing problems.

Many of our Chat participants said that duplicate content is a common issue for website owners, which can be a huge headache! So, what should they do to fix this problem once and for all?

A2: Keep all variations of a product like color & size in just one url to avoid duplicate content. #semrushchat

— Artur Kosch (@ArturKosch) March 16, 2016

Creating multiple pages featuring the same product but with small differences is one surefire method that leads to duplicate content. It’s better to keep different product variations all in one place. Also, ThinkSEM @ThinkSEM advised using rel=canonical tag: “Proper rel=canonical for search/variations of product listings is a must in ecommerce.” Just choose which one of your pages will be the canonical one.

A2: Don't really avoid it, go ahead and use the factory descriptions but add your own take in the description and get reviews. #semrushchat

— Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) March 16, 2016

Some of our Chat participants think that you should only use your own descriptions, as Rohan Ayyar @searchhook suggested: “Write your own descriptions -- for each product. Solicit reviews and display them on the same page.” A product description is content. And what do we repeat day after day? That we should provide unique and valuable content. Nevertheless, Patrick Stox @patrickstox and other specialists assume that we can use ready-made descriptions, but accompanied by your own interpretations. As for reviews, we’ll return to that question a bit later.

A2 Limit the use of boilerplate text you might insert into product pages to reduce similarity between pages. #SemRushChat

— Bill Slawski (@bill_slawski) March 16, 2016

One more vote for unique content. At least, try not to use obvious samples and a bunch of clichés that can spoil your entire page. Also, Bill Slawski @bill_slawski advises using Schema.org: “Use Schema vocabulary on every page that clearly identifies the products on those pages, and disambiguates.” Along with Sergio Redondo, who said that using schema can help Google better understand the content on your page: “Schema markup can facilitate Google’s understanding of our product pages.” Chris Desadoy @EliteYouTubePro also shared his sources of knowledge:

A2.. Treat product pages as landing pages. Read this book https://t.co/pTdf2z2eo4. Make better product pages @oligardner #semrushchat

— Chris Desadoy (@EliteYouTubePro) March 16, 2016

The thing is that Google is always getting better at identifying duplicate content and, as a result, penalizing websites for this. So, make sure you do everything you can to prevent your rankings from dropping.

Thanks to our participants, we could create a whole list of measures you should take in order to avoid duplicate content on your product pages! We also decided to talk in detail about what a perfect product page should look like.

SEO is crucial, especially for ecommerce websites; but at the same it’s more challenging. There are many elements that can impact your online performance and, in turn, your visitors’ behavior. You should do your best to convert them to your real customers. We hope that the following tips will help you correctly optimize and organize your product pages.

A3: Product name (h1 tag), product picture/video, unique selling points, price, CTA, unique description, testimonials ... #semrushchat

— Artur Kosch (@ArturKosch) March 16, 2016

I think these are the essentials that should be applied to every website without any exception. Artur Kosch @ArturKosch added two more things to the list: “For SEO use Schema.organd rich snippet markups.” And here’s a list of necessary elements for your product page from Patrick Stox @patrickstox: “product name, features, benefits, details, price, a way to buy, answer their questions, social proof, and add value.”

A3. When people add in reviews and FAQs, that's an added bonus for me, but mostly the important info has to be available. #semrushchat

— Reva Minkoff (@revaminkoff) March 16, 2016

Some people absolutely forget about FAQs, but they can be very helpful both for your visitors and for SEO purposes. But you should think about including an FAQs section only if you already have more important information on your product page, such as descriptions, testimonials, selling points and prices.

A3: User-friendly. The perfect page is set up to give your customers the info they need and makes it easy to buy. #semrushchat

— Netvantage Marketing (@netvantage) March 16, 2016

If the process of purchasing is difficult, your visitors simply won’t be willing to buy and they’ll just leave your page. Make the process easy and smooth in order to make your visitors’ experience with your website pleasurable. And make sure that users can easily leave their reviews and feedback, as Devin @DevDawg recommended: “Enabling user reviews and feedback is important.”

A3:a perfect product page must have product ratings & reviews, good shots, easy to pay system, rich video & descriptive content #semrushchat

— WooRank (@woorank) March 16, 2016

I noticed that, by far, not every online store has product ratings. But they should, because users want to know which product is better. This can help them decide to buy your product. Jurga @jurga suggested one more option: “Signposts to other related products -- improves internal linking and shows the relationship between pages.” Maybe this is not a necessity, but it’s definitely not superfluous either!

Today the number of users who purchase products with their smartphones is steadily increasing. This compels online retailers to optimize their websites both for desktop and mobile users. And this is what our next question was about.

Thanks to all Chat participants! We made a comprehensive checklist of product page optimization tips for mobile users!

If you are an online retailer, you probably want your website to rank well in local search pages. For this, you should by no means do local SEO. We decided to ask our guests to share their local SEO tips.

First of all, your content should be relevant for local customers, and sometimes it must be optimized for a specific country. Alright, what’s next?

A5: Every location should have a single page on your website with further informations about the store. #semrushchat

— Artur Kosch (@ArturKosch) March 16, 2016

As Artur Kosch @ArturKosch advised: “Use a clean structure for the location pages, like the title tag, for example: brand -- sector -- location. Place all locations in your Google My Business account with all information needed. Do the same with your Facebook pages.” Clean architecture is important for every site, but for those companies that are targeting several locations, it’s a necessity. So, don’t let chaos happen on your webpages, organize and systemize them.

A5:(1) Fixing G+ listings Google My Business is #1 priority, even though with multiple owners it can resemble herding cats #semrushchat

— Netvantage Marketing (@netvantage) March 16, 2016

Google My Business is an interface that is designed specifically for local businesses. It helps online retailers provide their visitors with up-to-date information at the right time. Sergio Redondo @sergio_redondo is on the same page here: “International SEO done correctly (proper handling of hreflang tags), and good configuration of Google+ My Business Pages.” He also recommends that you build links in relevant directories:

A5: When doing linkbuilding, it's very important to earn 'local backlinks' for each location version of our pages #semrushchat

— Sergio Redondo (@sergio_redondo) March 16, 2016

Provide the following local information on your website: company address, phone numbers, and prices in local currencies. Also, don’t forget to localize your URLs, meta tags, image alt texts, etc.

A5: They should create a folder for each location and have them as a subdirectories instead of a subdomains to gain SEO power. #semrushchat

— Amel Mehenaoui (@amelm) March 16, 2016

Let’s sum up the local SEO tips that we got and move on to the final question.

And always double check whether or not you included all the necessary information.

For every ecommerce website, it’s crucial to have a product review page -- impartial opinions help build trust with your users and prove to them that your service or product is actually worth trying.

So, what would be the best way to encourage your users to leave a couple of words about your product? Well, it might sounds obvious, but you have to ask for it first of all! And there are a lot of way to do this. The first one:

A6: Ask your customers on the phone about the feedback of your product. Ask for permission to publish this feedback. #semrushchat

— Artur Kosch (@ArturKosch) March 16, 2016

But of course you can use the whole assort of marketing channels -- “via email marketing, via social media, and by sharing existing product reviews,” says Daljeet Kaur ‏ @DaljeetkKaur.

Set up a process for collecting reviews and make some improvements in your customer support service, if needed:

A6: Have a solid onboarding process, simple and clean follow up emails, great customer service, excellent response times, etc #semrushchat

— Dario Zadro (@DarioZadro) March 16, 2016

A6. I am not a fan of paying for reviews. Make the best product and make it easy for your fans to share and engage. #semrushchat

— Chris Desadoy (@EliteYouTubePro) March 16, 2016

Great way to encourage users to leave a feedback -- is to cheer them up with some surprises or bonuses.

A6: Send a free goody the customer can use with the product. Give more than the customer expect - the wow effect. #semrushchat

— Artur Kosch (@ArturKosch) March 16, 2016

But be very careful on this path -- don’t overuse this trick, because probably later on your audience will get use to it and refuse to do anything (leave a review or purchase) without being rewarded.

Q6. In my old job we used to incentivise customers to do so with vouchers. After all people don't tend to do things for free. #semrushchat

— Cat Goulbourne (@catgoulbourne) March 16, 2016

You can try another way of encouraging customers “to leave feedback by make them feel part of the project. A good idea can be to include something like:'This new feature thanks to our friend NAME'.” -- Sergio Redondo ‏ @sergio_redondo.

Many thanks to our guest, Artur Kosch @ArturKosch, and our other Chat participants. We received a lot of valuable advice! So, I hope from now on it will be much easier for you to correctly optimize your product pages.

Don’t miss our SEMrush Chat this Wednesday!

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