How to Optimise Your Product Content in the Shopify Admin

You’re looking to deliver a one-two punch with product content:

Pound out SEO content that improves organic search traffic and;
Create a delightful customer experience that converts.

That’s what we’re getting to grips with today. By the end of this article, those search engines will be wrapped around your finger!

Product Descriptions

A good product description informs your lead about the product and why they need it in their lives.

Having the best product description can convert leads and convince them to choose you over your competitors. Compell your readers with your brand’s unique voice. However, there’s a little more to it than just words. You’ll also be needing the inside track on keywords, meta descriptions and alt text to climb the SERPs.

I’ve also included two examples to killer product descriptions at the end. I break down the components that make them so brilliant so you can implement them in your own site.

Keywords

95% of searches don’t go beyond the first page in Google.

Half of all clicks are reserved for the top three results.

By conducting simple keyword research, you can create a listing optimised for both bot and buyer!

Here’s how to get there.

Answer the Public is where you need to be if you want to up your keyword game.

It’s a straightforward keyword research tool. And the basic version is free and not in a free-but-we-still-need-bank-details way and before you know it, the money’s out of your account.

It plays on conversational marketing strategies, which is a one-to-one approach to capturing an audience. In choosing our keywords, we think about:

what questions a human would type into Google,
that relate to our product,
And how we make our listings relevant to these searches.

I typed “socks” into Answer the Public’s Get Questions box, and this is what I got:

Instead of assuming that our product will organically find its niche, we can look at what people are already searching for online.

Some popular questions;

“What socks to wear with Toms?”
“Which socks don’t smell?
“Which socks are best?”

If my jumper apparel store fits the bill, then it’s time to start keyword adapting the keywords “wear with Toms”, “pair with Toms”, “don’t smell”, “odour control”, “best and so forth.

Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner are other bonus tools to figure out what your audience is searching and develop a consistent, SEO-friendly website

What is HTML and do I need to learn it?

In plain English, HTML (hypertext markup language) is the language for creating websites. It’s the pizza base, and all the other codes like CSS are the fancy toppings.

It’s not at all necessary for Shopify merchants to know how to use HTML. Websites today rely on Wordpress and other website building platforms with their friendly, usable interfaces.

However, there is an instance where HTML can kick up a fuss when creating product descriptions...

An HTML pitfall for product pages

If there’s one HTML issue we see more than any other, it’s this: style inconsistency.

Here’s how it happens.

Say you paste in a product description created in external platforms.

Unless it’s a very basic text editor, you’ll often bring the baggage of unwanted styling into your description field within Shopify. Descriptions imported from PDF’s are usually the worst culprits!

You know your text has been preformatted when you click into the HTML view of your product description (see image below). If this happens, it can mean that your product description won’t display as you want it to in the front-end of your store. Eek!

How to go about fixing it.

Remove the text and paste it in again without any formatting (no bold or coloured text). When you paste in the description, it’s good practice to highlight the text and click on the Clear Formatting button. This will likely remove any unwanted HTML from your description.

It’s also handy to use the WYSIWYG (‘what you see is what you get’) editor to edit your description if you’re in any doubt.

Next, ensure that your description is formatted as proper paragraphs. You can do so by highlighting your text, click on the Formatting button then selecting Paragraph.

If your content is formatted correctly as paragraphs, you will see your content contained with the <p> and </p> tags within your HTML.

If you’re concerned that you may have pasted in some unwanted HTML code (and unsure how to get rid of it), you can clean your content by using the HTML Cleaner website. For this, all you need to do is copy your HTML and paste it into the box on the right, then select the Clean HTML button.

Nailing this fundamental aspect of product descriptions results in a clean, professional finish to your page.

Product Images

Show your products in their most flattering angles, not that they have a bad side! Images are powerful aids to convert leads once you know what to watch out for when uploading your photos.

Image file size

We’re all culprits of sticking to the default options when editing photos. But, if your page loads are a little on the slow side, giant image files are often to blame.

In general, we recommend sticking to JPEG. This bad boy delivers sufficient quality but doesn’t delay page loading times. Amazon reported that if their listings loaded only a second slower, they lose out on $1.6 billion in sales!

We always recommend resizing your image outside of Shopify before importing and selecting ‘Original’ as your file size.

Image Alt Text Attributes

When a browser can’t load an image, it provides the alt text instead. Another function of alt texts is that they help with SEO. It’s how you can get your products on the Google Images page.

Search Engine Listing Preview

Page Titles & meta descriptions

Shopify will automatically copy a portion of your product description into the meta description field. However, this field is editable.

Basically, you get 160 characters to tell the internet about your product. Meta descriptions need to be snappy and informative.

They also really, really need a CTA (call to action) to increase your CTR (click through rate).

For page title, don’t go too “out there”. For best SEO results, try deciding on an obvious title that says things exactly how it is.

How to create a winning product description

Most products on the market are easily recognisable. People know a toaster and what it does when they see one. It’s important to realise that most readers will skim or ignore content that states the obvious. Instead, you need to capture the essence of your product.

Let me show you what I mean with an example.

H&M have boldly stuck to a one-liner here.

When creating your own store’s listing, you might think this is madness and a waste of page space.

However, these leggings are a basic necessity. Crowding the page with unnecessary waffle isn’t going to convert leads.

Seriously.

Over-marketing a product actually does the opposite. It raises warning bells in people’s head and pushes them to find flaws in the product rather than to throw of plain-Jane leggings into their cart. And this was their purpose all along.

However, if you have a product that is a little more out of the ordinary, more innovative or has strong USPs then you need to express these to your audience.

Enter Biolite.

This isn’t something most of us would look at and know its exact features or, you know, what it actually does.

A lot of stores would fall at the copywriting hurdle here by flaunting all the tech-specs which surppasses most people’s technical know-how.

So, here’s how they’ve informed their audience on the uniqueness of their visionary product.

#1: Give them the impressive overview

It’s fun, light and informative. There’s no jargon. The dimensions are “the size of an ice cream sandwich”.

It’s everything you’d want a product overview to be, but what makes this product description stand out as being a converting machine is in the layout of its features.

#2 Features strengthened by visuals

What they’ve done here with the high-quality, sleek feature listings is secure the SunLight as a durable, effective and innovative product.

The fact that you’re at the end of the article proves you are a go-getter looking to improve your Shopify store. If you need a consultation to rocket launch your store, you can click here to touch base and begin your Elkfox site makeover.

Our blog posts come out a few times a week because there’s never a quiet day for a Shopify store owner!