E-commerce SEO

SEO, which is short for Search Engine Optimization, can make a big difference when it comes to brand awareness of your webshop and to stimulating the revenue of your webshop. SEO means the optimization of the content for your products in your webshop so that your web pages will get a better ranking from search engines.

From our experiences with customers, we’ve discovered that a lot of webshops barely optimize their webshop’s content. Because of this, the companies miss out on a great opportunity to distinguish themselves from the others. The biggest problem is the fact that most of the webshop owners don’t know what the requirements are for optimizing their content for the search engines.

Optimizing your webshop has a couple of great benefits:
1. It gives your webshop more organic traffic
2. The advertising costs decrease
3. More relevant content for the visitors
4. It makes the competition more dependent to their Adwords because of their lowered SEO-ranking

To help you with optimizing your webshop, we put together a list with the most important things to keep in mind when writing the content for your website. There are eleven SEO components which have to be included into the process of writing good content for your webshop. But before we can start with the eleven components, there is another step which we have to do first before being able to continue. And that is to choose a keyword.

Choosing a keyword

As mentioned earlier, the first step in optimizing the content for one of your products in the webshop is to pick a keyword of which you think that it fits with the wishes of the customer. In other words, the keyword that you choose for your product should correspond with the keyword that your potential customers will use to search for your type of products.

For example, we are the owners of an online coffee store, called ReloadCoffee. One of our products in our webshop is real American Coffee. Because we think that our (potential) customers will specifically search for American coffee, we decided to use ‘American Coffee’ as our keyword. Now that we’ve chosen our keyword, we can start with optimizing our content.

Don’t try to optimize your whole webshop on the basis of just one keyword. This will result in the fact that your own products will compete with each other. Furthermore, it’s unknown which of your products will be the one that the customer is looking for. So you also don’t have a clue which one you want at the top of Google. Keep in mind that the chosen keyword has to match with the product and the intention of your target group.

Different keyword research strategies

The first step in research is doing keyword research and finding the right keywords you want your categories, pages and products to rank for. Here we will list different methods for finding interesting and converting keywords.

A mistake we see a lot by Magento stores is optimizing for the wrong keywords. Most keyword tutorials focus on information keywords and optimize for that. But if you are selling products you need to optimize for keywords that have a buy intention.

Categories and other pages can be optimized for information or orientating keywords that have more search volume but keep in mind that those keywords often have more competition and are less likely to convert.

So the ideal situation is this: Your category and other pages will focus on broader keywords with a lot of volume to help attract visitors and introduce your brand to them while your product pages will focus on keywords that sell.

Amazon suggest

One awesome way of doing keyword research is spying on your biggest competitor out there: Amazon.com. Just like the giant Google, Amazon gives its own suggestions while you search for a product. Thanks to this function you can discover lucrative keywords that are interesting for your business.

Example: If I am in the business of selling Nike products I head over to Amazon.com and start typing Nike in the search field. Amazon immediately tries to give me helpful suggestions and shows what other users are searching for.

Apparently Nike socks for men are a popular category on Amazon, I make sure to write this down. But I don’t stop there. Because when I fill in the complete keyword in Amazon “Nike socks for men” I get a lot of relevant other suggestions:

Now I know which products are selling best on Amazon and which sizes. This is very helpful information that I will be using to shape my inventory and site architecture. The good thing about using this Amazon research technique is that most of the keywords you will be getting are called “long tail keywords”. Long tail keywords are keywords that consist of more than 3 words. These long tail keywords have less search volume , but the competition is also less fierce and long tail keywords tend to convert better than short tail keywords.

Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword planner might be the most trustworthy keyword tool that you can use. All the data is provided by Google and as long as you are advertising with them you can use this tool to give you valuable insights in how much search volume there is for certain words and how fierce the (advertising) competition is.

Keep in mind that the keyword planner is very handy when you need to know search volumes but is not the best tool when you are still in the idea generating business. To use the keyword planner, go to your AdWords account.

Click on the top right icon with the name “Tools”.

And then head over to the keyword planner.

You now get to choose between finding keywords or getting search volume and forecast. Because we already used other methods to get keyword idea’s we click on “Get search volume and forecasts”.

Google Suggest

Askthepublic

Finding category keywords

Competitor research

11 SEO components

If we want to optimize our content for our products, we’ll have to follow these SEO components:

1. Using the keyword in the meta-title
2. Use the maximum length of the meta-title
3. Use the keyword in the URL of the product page
4. Use the maximum length of the meta-description
5. Write a catchy text for your meta-description
6. Use the keyword in the meta-description for an optimized SEO-score
7. Write a description of at least 300 words
8. Use the keyword in the first sentence of the description so that you can clarify its relevance
9. Use the keyword multiple times in the content of the product
10. Use the H2-tags in your content
11. Using images for a better SEO

Step 1 – Using the keyword in the meta-title

Use the chosen keyword in the meta-title. Preferably, use the keyword at the beginning of the sentence as shown in the example above. If you do this, your potential customers can see the keyword immediately when they see your webshop. This way they don’t have to look to see where their keyword is used because it’s shown at the start. By doing this, you also enlarge the relevance of your webpage. The meta-title is something else than the product-title. This means that you can make separate changes to both titles. For instance, the product-title can be much longer than the meta-title.

Step 2 – Use the maximum length of the meta-title

In the example above, you can see what it looks like when the meta-title is too long. What happens is that Google shortens it by using three dots (…) which means that the message that was written in your meta-title isn’t shown correctly or that it doesn’t come across as well as planned. You must prevent this at all costs! The limit for the meta-title is 497 pixels.

Step 3 – Use the keyword in the URL of the product page

In the example above with the meta-content, you see the URL: “ReloadCoffee.com/American-coffee”. Because we’ve added our keyword into the URL, the relevance of the page will increase and when potential customers search for ‘American Coffee,’ the keyword in the URL will be bold so that it stands out more and increases the relevance even further.

Step 4 – Use the maximum length of the meta-description

As mentioned earlier (in the meta-title section), there’s a maximum length which you have to keep in mind when writing your meta-description. The limit here is 920 pixels and you should stay within this limit. Otherwise, Google will shorten it with three dots (…) and that means that the message that was written in your meta-title isn’t shown correctly or that it doesn’t come across as well as planned. Some letters take up more space than the others. For example, the letter ‘m’ and ‘l’. Keep that in mind when you’re writing your meta-description.

Step 5 – Write a catchy text for your meta-description

The next step is to take care of the fact that your meta-description has to be catchy. Something we see very often is that webshop owners think that this part is crucial to get a good ranking on Google and they end up using the keyword way too much in this description. Don’t do this! The meta-description is the first impression that a potential customer has with your webshop. This means that the meta-content has to convince the customers to go to your webshop. Therefore, we recommend writing your content like a Google Adwords advertisement. Try also to use certain factors in this content, like a social proof or a call-to-action.

Also, use the 6 principles of persuasion of Ciadini when possible. Some examples of these principles are mentioning things like ‘order today, have it tomorrow’ or using social proof like ‘our customers review this product with a 9.1.’ When you use these kinds of tools, the reliability of your webshop increases. In our example, we mentioned American Coffee at the beginning of the description. This is for the same reason as we did at the meta-title; so that our potential customers don’t have to look for the keyword. We have also written a text in which customers can learn more about the product which can get their attention and can make them curious about the rest of the article.

Step 6 – Use the keyword in the meta-description for an optimized SEO-score

Add your chosen keyword to the meta-description, preferably at the start. We’ve mentioned it before. In our example it’s used 2 times. But this isn’t always a possibility. Just like it isn’t always possible to add it at the beginning of the description. When it isn’t possible to do so, try to make sure that the other principles are used in the description. Principles such as the stating of the facts/benefits, the six principles of persuasion and/or the call-to-action. We noticed that the webshops which implement this process in a correct way have an increased Click-Through-Rate, CTR, as a result. This means that more customers will come to the website.

Step 7 – Write a description of at least 300 words

Then there’s the length of the product description. Often, it’s being said that the description length has to be between 300-350 words. Because of this, we often get questions like “why does it have to be this long?” “What if I use less?” and “Why 300?” Well, the first thing you need to consider is that Google is blind. The only handhold that it has, apart from the technique and the incoming links, are the things that are actually on the website. If these texts are unique, it will see it as a source and as a unique place to find information. And of course, this handhold is content of a good quality. Google also has an algorithm which predicts the kind of words it thinks that will be used in the content. When his predictions are correct, your website will get a score and it will be considered as a valuable text.

So it’s better to have longer texts on your website. Not only to help the search engines with understanding the website, but also for the visitors who want to have the information. For example, one of our employees has his own company. On which, he sells superfoods. Each product page has a description of 500-800 words and on these product-pages, they give away information and let the customers see the reviews of others and their experiences with the product. These kinds of texts can help you with constructing a strong website. This will give your webshop the opportunity to get a good ranking in the search engines.

Another big benefit of writing good content is that it will last for years. Because of this, it can give you a good ranking on the search engines and help you with keep a good ranking for years to come! All you’ve got to do is to write the content and keep it up-to-date once-a-while.

As for the webshops with, for example 5000, products or more, don’t try to optimize each and every product at once. Our recommendation here is to choose the products that are of the most relevancy to your webshop. Your choice products can be because they’re the highest revenue or the products that sell the most.

Step 8 – Use the keyword in the first sentence of the description to clarify its relevance

First, we’re going to start with the addition of the keyword to the first paragraph. Besides the fact that this has a positive effect on Google, it also increases the readability of the webpage for the visitors. When visitors come to your website and immediately see the keyword they were looking for, they’re going to be satisfied and much more eager to stay on your website.

Step 9 – Use the keyword multiple times in the content of the product (keyword-density)

The next step, which has to do with the keyword-density, also brings up a lot of questions from our customers. It’s important that, despite the changes that you’ve made for a good SEO, your content should have a good readability for the visitors. The keyword-density of your content should be between 1% and 4%. But the keyword-density doesn’t have to be the same for every page of your webshop as long as it remains between 1% and 4%.

A common mistake that a lot of users make is that they replace the keyword with a shorter term such as ‘it’. For instance, when we take another look at our American Coffee example; “In Europe, it is the most popular in Norway and the least popular in Italy.” It would’ve been much better if we had chosen to replace it with ‘American Coffee’. This way, you use the keyword again which brings more focus to it and you’ve also made the sentence more complete and easier to read.

Step 10 – Use the H2-tags in your content and using the keyword in it

Using H2-tags in your content helps you to keep a clearer test and therefore an easier test to read. Some benefits of these headers are that thy stand out from the rest of the text and that they bring tranquillity, attention and structure. Because it gets the attention of the visitors, the visitors will stay on your website for a longer period of time. It will also help you with decreasing the bounce percentage of your webpage.

Try to add your keyword to the headers in your content. This will help with increasing the degree of relevancy of your website. But don’t force this just because you want to use your keyword in the text. That would just make the content less relevant. If your content uses five H2-tags, it’s also enough if the keyword is in one or two of these headers!

Step 11 – Using images for a better SEO

Last but not least, we’ve come the use of images for a better SEO. The first thing that’s important to know is that Google loves it when a website mixes all kinds of content. So when your product page exists just of text and doesn’t contain any images, reviews and/or videos, then your page’s ranking will decrease. Something that we happen to see a lot is that the webshop owner uploads an image in the content of the product-page, but he hasn’t optimized it yet. When you choose to use an image, make sure that you fill in the alt-tag. When you do this and you add the keyword in here, your product page will also be more findable via Google-images.

You can find the alt-tag when you go to a website and hold your cursor on an image on the website. You can also see this in the example above. The alt-tag was developed for people who couldn’t watch pictures on their pc and for people with a bad internet connection so that they could read what the picture was about. Nowadays, the search engines also embraced the alt-tag which means that this gives you another opportunity to be found by your potential customers! Also, try to add as many different kinds of content to your product-pages. There are many different kinds of users some of which who like to read and some who prefer to watch videos and some who prefer to look at pictures. To make sure that every visitor will be content with the website, it’s best to combine these different kinds of content.

The ReloadSEO extension

It takes a lot of work to improve your position in search engines. Hiring a SEO expert to do this for you can cost a lot of money. That’s why we’ve made an extension which helps you with optimizing your content yourself. All you’ve got to do is to start writing your content and our extension will give you real-time feedback on how to optimize it! This way you can make sure that your webshop is well optimized. We also keep track of the changes that are made at the search engine so that your webshop will remain fully optimized!

When you choose to use ReloadSEO, you won’t be disappointed. Our extension will help you with optimizing your keyword, Meta-data, descriptions and content so that you will be able to make the best SEO-texts possible! With this, we will help you to get higher rankings in the search engines!

Don’t know how to use ReloadSEO? We designed the app to  make SEO as easy as possible.But sometimes you just need a helping hand. This blog is even more extensive then our manual and will tell you how to use our app step by step!

Product list

6. Choose one of the products and start optimizing it by pressing the green ‘Optimize now’ button or click on the product itself.
7. When you do this, you’ll get directed to the product page. This is where you can optimize your SEO.
8. First, start by choosing a title for your page. This title will be shown at the top of the page that you’re optimizing but, it has no influence on your SEO-score.
9. Next, choose a keyword for the product. This is very important because the search engines are going to analyse your product on the basis of its keyword.
10. After choosing the keyword for your product, you’ll have to write the description of the product. There are some important things to consider when writing your description:
    • The description has to be at least 300 words long.
    • The keyword-density (percentage of the usage of the keyword in the text) has to be between 1 and 4 percent.
    • The keyword has to be used in the first sentence of the description.
    • The keyword has to be used in the last sentence of the description.
    • You have to use 2 or more headings in your description.
11. When you’re done writing your description, you’ll get to the Search engine listing preview. Here, you can see how your collection will be shown on search engines like Google.
12. Underneath this preview, you’ll find a chart where you can see how many characters and pixels are in your Meta-title and Meta-description. You can also see how many pixels you have left so that you can use as much of the remaining pixels as possible.
13. When writing the Meta-title, it’s very important to use your keyword at the start of the title. This way, it’ll have the optimal relevancy. When changing the Meta-title, you’ll see the changes you’ve made in the preview above.
14. The same goes for the Meta-description. When you make some adjustments in the Meta-description, you’ll immediately see what it would look like on the search engines. And, if you take a look at the chart, you’ll see how many characters you’ve used, how many pixels you’ve used and how many pixels there are left to use. Also, try to use the keyword in your Meta-description for an optimal relevancy.
15. The last thing that you can adjust is the URL code. It’s important that you also use the keyword in the URL. Your adjustments will be shown immediately in the preview.
16. At the right side of your screen, you’ll see the SEO-score of the product. Underneath the score, you’ll see the explanations about which parts are good and which could be improved.

 Collections list

1. Choose one of the collections and start optimizing it by pressing the green ‘Optimize now’ button or click on the collection itself.
2. When you do this, you’ll get directed to the collection page. This is where you can optimize your SEO.
3. First, start by choosing a title for your page. This title will be shown at the top of the page that you’re optimizing but, it has no influence on your SEO-score.
4. Next, choose a keyword for the collection. This is very important because the search engines are going to analyse your product on the basis of its keyword.
5. After choosing the keyword for your collection, you’ll have to write the description of the product. There are some important things to consider when writing your product’s description:
   1. The description has to be at least 300 words long.
   2. The keyword-density (percentage of the usage of the keyword in the text) has to be between 1 and 4 percent.

• The keyword has to be used in the first sentence of the description.

1. The keyword has to be used in the last sentence of the description.
2. You have to use 2 or more headings in your description.

6. When you’re done writing your description, you’ll be directed to the Search engine listing preview. Here you can see how your product will be shown on search engines like Google.
7. Underneath this preview, you’ll find a chart where you can see how many characters and pixels your Meta-title and Meta-description have. You can also see how many pixels you have left so that you can use as much of the remaining pixels as possible.
8. When writing the Meta-title, it’s very important to use your keyword at the start of the title. This way, it’ll have the optimal relevancy. When changing the Meta-title, you’ll see the changes you’ve made in the preview above.
9. The same goes for the Meta-description. When you make some adjustments in the Meta-description, you’ll immediately see what it would look like on the search engines. And, if you take a look at the chart, you’ll see how many characters you’ve used, how many pixels you’ve used and how many pixels there are left to use. Also, try to use the keyword in your Meta-description for an optimal relevancy.
10. The last thing that you can adjust is the URL code. It’s important that you also use the keyword in the URL. Your adjustments will be shown immediately in the preview.
11. At the right side of your screen, you’ll see the SEO-score for the collection. And underneath the SEO-score, you can find the explanations about which parts are good and which could be improved.

 Pages list

6. Choose one of the Pages and start optimizing it by pressing the green ‘Optimize now’ button or click on the Page itself.
7. When you do this, you’ll get directed to the pages site. This is where you can optimize your SEO.
8. First, start by choosing a title for your page. The title will be shown at the top of the page that you’re optimizing but, it has no influence on your SEO-score.
9. Next, choose a keyword for the Page. This is very important because the search engines are going to analyse your product on the basis of its keyword.
10. After choosing the keyword for your Page, you’ll have to write the description of the product. There are some important things to consider when writing your product’s description:
    • The description has to be at least 300 words long.
    • The keyword-density (percentage of the usage of the keyword in the text) has to be between 1 and 4 percent.
    • The keyword has to be used in the first sentence of the description.
    • The keyword has to be used in the last sentence of the description.
    • You have to use 2 or more headings in your description.
11. When you’re done writing your description, you’ll get to the Search engine listing preview. Here you can see how your product will be shown on search engines like Google.
12. Underneath the preview, you’ll find a chart where you can see how many characters and pixels your Meta-title and Meta-description have. You can also see how many pixels you have left so that you can use as much of the pixels as possible.
13. When writing the Meta-title, it’s very important to use your keyword at the start of the title. This way it will have the optimal relevancy. When changing the Meta-title, you’ll see the changes that you’ve made in the preview above.
14. The same goes for the Meta-description. When you make some adjustments in the Meta-description, you’ll immediately see what it would look like on the search engines. And, if you take a look at the chart, you’ll see how many characters you’ve used, how many pixels you’ve used and how many pixels there are left to use. Also, try to use the keyword in your Meta-description for an optimal relevancy.
15. The last thing that you can adjust is the URL code. It’s important that you use the keyword in the URL. Your adjustments will be shown immediately in the preview.
16. At the right side of your screen, you’ll see the SEO-score of the Page. And underneath this, you can find the explanations about which parts are good and which could be improved.

 Blog posts list

1. Choose a Blog post and start optimizing it by pressing the green ‘Optimize now’ button or click on the Blog post itself.
2. When you do this, you’ll get directed to the Blog post page. This is where you can optimize your SEO.
3. First, start by choosing a title for your page. This title will be shown at the top of the page that you’re optimizing but, it has no influence on your SEO-score.
4. Next, choose a keyword for the blog post. This is very important because the search engines are going to analyse your product on the basis of its keyword.
5. After choosing the keyword for your blog post, you’ll have to write the description of the product. There are some important things to consider when writing the description of the product:
   • The description has to be at least 300 words long.
   • The keyword-density (percentage of the usage of the keyword in the text) has to be between 1 and 4 percent.
   • The keyword has to be used in the first sentence of the description.
   • The keyword has to be used in the last sentence of the description.
   • You have to use 2 or more headings in your description.

6. When you’re done writing your description, you’ll get to the Search engine listing preview. Here you can see how your product will be shown on search engines like Google.
7. Underneath the preview, you’ll find a chart where you can see how many characters and pixels your Meta-title and Meta-description have. But you can also see how many pixels you have left so that you can use as much of the pixels as possible.
8. When writing the Meta-title, it’s very important to use your keyword at the start of the title. This way, it’ll have the optimal relevancy. When changing the Meta-title, you’ll see the changes you make in the preview above.
9. The same goes for the Meta-description. When you make some adjustments in the Meta-description, you’ll immediately see what it would look like on the search engines. And, if you take a look at the chart, you’ll see how many characters you’ve used, how many pixels you’ve used and how many pixels there are left to use. Also, try to use the keyword in your Meta-description for an optimal relevancy.
10. The last thing that you can adjust is the URL code. It’s important that you also use the keyword in the URL. Your adjustments will be shown immediately in the preview.
11. At the right side of your screen, you’ll see the SEO-score of the blog post. And underneath this, you can find the explanations about which parts are good and which parts could be improved.

It’s all about the content. Good written content will boost your SEO and therefore increase your sales. But writing unique, great content isn’t always easy. As a webshop owner, you probably have a lot of categories, products and pages. It’s time consuming business to fill each page with unique content while keeping SEO rules in mind.

With our ReloadSEO app, we try to make things faster and easier. ReloadSEO reminds you what to add where. In this blog, we will explain the philosophy of these broad guidelines and give you tips to quickly write great content for your visitors and for the search engines.

Length

In a perfect world, every content description contains at least 300 words. This gives the search engines a good idea of the topic of the page. But, as a webshop owner, you definitely know how hard it can be to write 300 words about every product or page. Sometimes, there’s just not that much to tell.

In this case, we would advise you to keep your content shorter. Definitely do NOT add unnecessary text just to get to the 300 words! The most important thing is to keep your content relevant and user friendly. Your customers just want to learn more about the product!

Tips to add more content:

1. Write about specifics of the product
2. Write about the origin of the product
3. How it’s made
4. Specifics of the brand

Duplicate content

We have talked about duplicate content in our earlier blogs. Duplicate content is something you want to avoid as much as possible. Why? Search engines don’t like duplicate content because it makes it hard for them to know which page they should rank your webshop.

We talk about duplicate content when more than 70% of content is identical to another page. The content can contain some of the same information as the previous pages such as the delivery or shipping details.

Many webshop owners sell products which are slightly different. For example: We sell a coffee cup in multiple colors. It’s the same cup with the same content except for the color. We would advise you to make this into one product with a dropdown menu where customers can select a color. This way there is no duplicate content and it also improves your webshops structure.

Sometimes, there is just no way to avoid duplicate content. In this case, you should apply canonical URLS. With canonical URLS you are able to tell the search engines which one of the duplicates is the one you want to rank for! Learn more about canonical URLS here.

Keyword density

When SEO experts speak of keyword density, they’re referring to how often the keyword occurs compared to the number of words in the text. For example, if you have 300 words of which four are the keyword, the keyword density is: (4/300)*100= 1,3333%.

The keyword density should be between 1 and 4 percent.

With a lower percentage, the search engines will not be able to understand that you want to rank for that word. In that case, they could rank you for whatever it they think suits best. A percentage higher than 3% could be seen as search spam. Always keep in mind that your content is user friendly. Don’t add more keywords than what seems normal and make sure that your content is easy to read! If so, you’ll be fine!

Structure

You can create structure in your content by adding headings and paragraphs. We explained everything you need to know about headings in this blog.

Always check how your content is shown in your webshop. Make sure it’s easy to read for your visitors and that it looks appealing!

Although optimizing images is not part of the ReloadSEO app, we find it important that you’re familiar with all the basic SEO parts. If everything is set as it should be, you will be able to rank higher than your competition. And that’s what we aim for!

A webshop without images is like a computer without a screen. Everyday more and more people search Google images to find what they’re looking for. We should make sure that our images will be seen! Unfortunately, search engines aren’t able to actually see what’s on your images.That’s why alt tags are so important.

You can add your alt tags in your webshop environment. If you add your keyword in the alt tag, you will remind the search engines once again what they should rank your page for.

Use images to spice up your blog, posts and text pages. Images can help visitors to better understand your blogs and makes them more appealing to read. When you add images, make sure that they’re relevant to your text. Using random images will confuse your visitors which isn’t good for sales nor SEO. Using images that are related to the surrounding text will rank better for the keyword it’s optimized for.

Optimize your images in just four steps:

1. File name

Make sure your image has the right file name. Before uploading your image, give it a new name that tells what’s in the image. Instead of: picture12456.jpg, give it a name like: ReloadSEO-Groningen-Martinitower-team.jpg. This way the search engines can ‘read’ what’s in the picture. Because we want to rank for ReloadSEO, it’s in the beginning of the image name.

2. Resize if necessary

Fast sites rank higher. Make sure your images are the right size. If you upload images that are larger than the required size, they will also be unnecessary big. Big files take longer to load which makes your site slower.

3. Caption of the image

The caption of the image will be shown when visitors cross the image with their mouse. Believe it or not but, image captions are read 3 times more than the actual body text. So it’s worthwhile to put a little time into it.

4. Alt tag

I mentioned Alt tags earlier in this blog. Alt tags are text that will be shown if your image, for some reason, isn’t able to be displayed to your visitor. Add your keyword to your alt tag and make sure it’s always relevant to the page’s text.

You want to rank high. You chose your keyword, wrote great content and made sure the search engines love it. That’s great!

Now we’ll have to make sure that your potential customers will click on your site when it’s shown in the search results. Make your Meta-title and Meta-description impressive as they’re the most likely to make the first impression on your potential customers.

What are Meta-titles and Meta-descriptions?

Meta-titles and Meta-descriptions are tags that every web page needs to have. You could see it as an advertisement of what is on the page that the link is referring to. A good Meta-description is written as an advertisement and convinces searchers to visit the site. How good it’s written will directly influence the volume of your traffic.

In the following steps, I will explain how to write awesome Meta-titles and Meta-descriptions!

1. Length

Before you start writing your Meta-title and Meta-description, you should know that there’s a limit on how many pixels or characters you can you use.

The Meta-title can contain 497 pixels and the Meta-description can contain 923 pixels. Make sure you use as many available pixels as possible, but not more. If you use a slight bit more than 497 pixels in your Meta-title or 923 pixels in your Meta-description, the texts will be cut off with “…”.

For example:

The first search result shows a shortened Meta-description.

2. Relevancy

Do you know the feeling when you expect something but get something that’s totally different instead? We want to avoid that feeling for our customers. So make sure that the content of your Meta-title and Meta-description is relevant to the page that it’s referring to. If visitors do not find what they expect, they’ll be disappointed and go right back to the search engines. The last thing you want is a high bounce rate, it’s not good for your SEO!

3. Tone of voice

The Meta-title and Meta-description should be written like an advertisement. It has to convince potential customers to visit your site.

4. Avoid duplicate Meta-titles and Meta-descriptions

Duplicate content is cruel for SEO. This means your Meta-title and Meta-descriptions should be unique for every page. You can use your webshops name or the brand multiple times as long as most of the content is unique and written for that specific page.

5. Content

Most importantly, add your keyword in the Meta-title and Meta-description. Make sure you mention your USP’s in the Meta-title and Meta-description. Tell potential customers why they should buy your product or visit your page. Additionally, we recommend adding a call to action. For example:

We made sure to add our keyword: ReloadSEO. Then we described what ReloadSEO is and added a call to action. In the call to action, we indicated what people will find on the page.

These are the basic aspects of Meta-title and Meta-descriptions. I hope you can put it to use while optimizing your products in ReloadSEO!