Writing category and product descriptions is a vital, yet often-overlooked skill. It’s something that everyone involved with SEO for an ecommerce website is likely to encounter at some point.
Perhaps you’re here because you’re just now encountering category and product description writing for the first time and are looking to learn some best practices. If so, welcome.
Or perhaps you’ve done it a million times before but without an SEO focus, or without putting much thought into the mechanics of optimising this type of content. Whatever your reason for reading, I hope you can take something away from this guide on product page SEO. Feel free to use the jumplinks to skip to the relevant sections if you’re here for something specific.
- Why you need to optimise ecommerce content on your website
- Keyword research is the start of SEO for ecommerce product pages
- How to optimise category pages
- How to optimise product pages
- How to optimise your ecommerce website with Impression
Why you need to optimise ecommerce content on your website
Written content is the lifeblood of SEO. It is one of the easiest things for search engines to interpret, and they keep getting better at it over time.
Category and product content help search engines and Large Language Models (LLMs), like Chat GPT, Gemini, Perplexity etc, make sense of your product offering. Where an image might be hard for a search engine to interpret, a paragraph of text is an opportunity for them to pick up clear keyword signals and to understand the context of your offering. Google’s John Mueller confirmed as much in 2020 when asked about category content by Marie Haynes.
I’ve seen the impact of adding category content countless times. Take a look at one of our client’s rankings for ‘paper cup’ after adding new content to their category page:
They went from ranking around 75th in the SERPs to almost appearing on page 2 or 3 almost instantly, and now hover around page 1. For many less competitive but related terms, they even rank in the top 3 of all competitors. We have seen fantastic results for many more clients. Check out how we helped our luxury soft furnishings client, Abigail Ahern, increase their ecommerce revenue by 179%.
Optimised ecommerce content is also vital for users. Product descriptions communicate key information about the item in question, while category content gives visitors a chance to be exposed to more of your range and to get a feel for your business.
I’ve encountered the opinion that this kind of content is ‘just for SEO’ too many times. That attitude will lead to poorly written content that’s never going to look great for your website. The best ecommerce content is written for a human audience, without neglecting SEO best practices. I’ll go into the specifics in much more detail shortly.
Before I get to the practicalities of writing content and implementing SEO for category and product pages, we need to take a brief look at keyword research. You can’t write optimised content if you don’t know what your audience is searching for.
Keyword research is the start of SEO for ecommerce product pages
Keyword research takes an important role in ecommerce SEO strategies. It is not only helpful for identifying what your audience is looking for, but how you will get the results you want. You’ll often be limited in the ways you can refer to different products and categories, but good keyword research can help you maximise your options and optimise your product pages whilst still keeping them informative and readable for your users.
Transactional search intent
Ecommerce category and product pages are always best suited to transactional keywords(the terms that people search when they are ready to make a purchase). Some distinctions are obvious:
- [buy breath of the wild switch] – clearly transactional
- [breath of the wild walkthrough] – clearly informational
In the above examples, you definitely want to pay attention to the ‘buy’ term for your product page, and you can safely ignore the ‘walkthrough’ query. But what is someone looking for when they search for [legend of zelda breath of the wild]? If I search for it, starting from position 2, I get a strange mix of branded results, People Also Ask, Wikipedia, and Amazon.
So, should I target that query from a product page? Or maybe with the products’ main category? Or should I have a different landing page altogether? A keyword this broad should rarely be the focus of a campaign unless you consider it vital to commercial performance. It will not only be highly competitive, but also may not be entirely relevant to your product page. Focus instead on those that have clear transactional intent and relate strongly to your content.
Keyword research for ecommerce content writing is as much about understanding the context of your keywords as it is about understanding individual volume and difficulty scores. You’re not just providing SEO for product pages for the sake of optimisation, you’re providing information for your users, and if that information isn’t relevant to their intent, then there’s no point having it.
A tip from me: Watch out for aggregators that might be ranking as they can make achieving your goals more difficult. Sites like Which? (and many others) will often take the top spots for queries that include words like ‘best’ and ‘cheap. If we consider that users are still in the research phase when they are performing those types of searches, we know that they are not quite ready to buy. You can work to compete for those keywords using an informational content strategy. You can learn more about keyword research and search intent in this article.
Keyword targeting and automating metadata
The keywords that you should focus on when optimising your category and product pages are those that clearly have a purchase intent. Generally speaking, a product page should be targeted to terms relating to a particular item, like [nike react vision], as that gives you a very clear intent of what the user is looking for, while a category page should be targeted towards general terms like [mens trainers]. This has a slightly broader transaction intent – they know what type of item they want but not the exact product. Every single page that you sit down to write content for should have a clear, unique target keyword (or multiple keywords if there are close variants) that relates to what the user would be looking for.
If the size of your site allows it, setting out a keyword targeting map that assigns all pages their primary keywords is the best way to focus your activity before you start.
At the very least, each page should have unique, targeted metadata. This can be auto-generated for larger sites, as long as there is some way of pulling in your keyword targets. You can often use the page header as the source of this unique keyword, so long as it is concise and focused. This example from SportsShoes is spot-on:
To do this quickly, I recommend setting up a spreadsheet with URLs and page headings in columns A and B. You should be able to export these from a technical SEO tool like Screaming Frog or Deepcrawl. Then, in column C, use a simple CONCATENATE formula like the example below to generate a title like the SportsShoes example above:
=CONCATENATE(B2, “ | SportsShoes.com”)
Alternatively, if you are looking to join more cells to add more variety to the outputs for a larger batch of pages, you can speed things up with TEXTJOIN.
The TEXTJOIN formula is a function in spreadsheets e.g. Google Sheets that is designed to combine text from multiple cells, ranges, or strings into a single text string, with two major advantages: you define the separator only once, and you can easily ignore empty cells using the argument, TRUE.
For example, if I wanted to join text in row 2 from columns A to I, my TEXTJOIN formula would look like this: =TEXTJOIN(” “, TRUE, A2:I2)
If you don’t have optimised headings, there’s really no better way to start than to create these first and use them in new title tags as you go.
Next, let’s cover some additional aspects of targeting and optimisation for both products and category pages.
How to optimise category pages
Don’t write ‘SEO content,’ write good content
You may also encounter the term PLP or ‘product landing page’ for product category pages. A PLP is an e-commerce page that displays a list of products within a specific category, like “Women’s Shoes.” It’s called a PLP because it lists the products.
There aren’t many category page best practices to follow, but if you take one thing from this article, it’s this: write good content. Everything else will follow. I’ve seen countless category pages with a couple of sentences or even paragraphs smashed together ‘for SEO.’ Content ‘for SEO’ isn’t helpful to humans and usually goes against Google’s quality guidelines. As a result, commercially valuable pages struggle to rank well and may be pushed out by competitors or less relevant pages on your website.
High-quality category content, on the other hand, can achieve a number of things:
- Showcase your best-selling products
- Point out products your customers might not have thought of
- Link to related categories to help users continue to browse
- Tell your customers why they should buy from you (e.g. fast delivery, handmade products, price match, payment plans etc.)
To achieve high-quality category content without falling prey to the Scylla and Charybdis of ‘SEO content’ and completely unoptimised content, keep it short and focused. If you limit yourself to a few sentences (100-200 words is a good range if you like absolutes, though there really is no perfect word count) and make sure that all of those sentences communicate something of value to potential customers, I can almost guarantee that you will end up with good category content that stands a strong chance of ranking well.
Internal linking is also important
Category content is a great place to highlight next steps for your visitors through internal links, which is another very important part of SEO for ecommerce websites. If someone already knows what they want, they’ll skip right past your category content to the product pages, so we can assume that anyone reading the content wants some more guidance.
Imagine that you’re a sales assistant in a brick and mortar electronics store and a customer asks for guidance on HD TVs. You might point out a couple of popular brands, give them examples of a good TV at a couple of different price points, or show them some different features.
Your category content can do the same thing, only instead of physically walking a customer to a product or display in the shop, you’re providing them with a link through to a product page or sub-category that gives them the right information and guides them closer to a purchase.
Internal links serve as a roadmap for both users and search engines. By embedding contextual links within your category content, you achieve two key objectives. First, you help search engine bots discover relevant, deeper product pages or supporting content they might otherwise overlook. Second, you establish thematic relevance by connecting related content within your site. This consistent linking structure reinforces the site’s hierarchy, signaling that the category page is the authoritative hub for its associated sub-topics and products. A helpful salesperson isn’t always giving you the hard sell, they are supporting you in making a decision and building a relationship so that you are confident in your choice, which is the role your category page needs to play.
How to optimise product pages
Product pages often have an easier time ranking for specific keywords than category pages, as products are so much more specific and fewer sites sell exactly the same things. The main goal of a product page is for it to appear when someone searches for that item, like [buy castles of burgundy board game], rather than a more general search like [buy board games].
You may also see product pages called ‘product display pages’ or PDPs and they are the same thing.
Product pages also tend to be quite well optimised naturally in terms of SEO. Most sites already include the name of the product in their metadata and reference the name of the product a good number of times in the page copy. However, there are still a handful of tactics you can employ to improve your product page optimisation and steal a march on the competition.
Avoid duplicate content
Many ecommerce sites fall into the trap of using the same product description on multiple product pages or the same description as other sites. The problem of duplication throughout one site usually occurs where there are variant products, such as different sizes or colours. The solution to this particular SEO issue is technical rather than creative and involves setting up variable products or employing some kind of canonicalisation (creating one “canonical” page that all variants point to).
The issue of duplicate content across multiple sites is easier to address and falls more cleanly into the scope of this article. It usually comes up when multiple sites are selling the same products from one brand, common in a huge number of industries like fashion, electronics, sports, gaming and many more.
In many cases, product manufacturers or suppliers provide standard descriptions. If this is the case with your products, I recommend rewriting the standard content if you want to see the best SEO results for your product page. Where duplicate content exists, priority will usually be given to the most authoritative site or the site that published it first, which is unlikely to help you.
If you need to keep the description intact for whatever reason, ensure that the rest of the page is completely unique. Add your own intro paragraph, add customer reviews, add your own USPs – do as much as you can to differentiate the page from those of your competitors. The best ecommerce product pages, according to search engines, are ones that are unique and authoritative because if you’re just a copy, you’re not worth showing.
Manual changes can be difficult for large ecommerce sites, so consider automated, auto-filled solutions for new or additional content that autofills a sitewide template with different product attributes such as ratings, price and brand.
Experience – Expertise – Authority – Trust
E-E-A-T is Google’s acronym, and while often called a buzzword, it represents a foundational concept within the Search Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG). It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. The core idea is correct: Google places tremendous emphasis on a website’s demonstrated ability to provide high-quality, reliable, and safe information.
E-E-A-T’s role in search ranking
It’s important to clarify that E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor built into the algorithm itself. Instead, it is a set of standards used by human Quality Raters to evaluate search results, which then helps Google’s engineers refine the core ranking algorithms. Google’s significant updates over the past few years have indeed focused on rewarding high-quality content that demonstrates strong E-E-A-T, particularly for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics, where health, financial, or personal well-being is at stake.
Demonstrating trust on ecommerce pages
To build demonstrable E-E-A-T on product and category pages: Transparency is paramount. It is vital to clearly and concisely communicate all pertinent commercial details. This includes showing recognised payment providers (e.g., Visa logos), explicit delivery times and costs, clear return policies, and robust guarantees.
Proof of Experience and Authority should be prioritised. Integrate verified customer reviews, display trust seals, and include highly visible, easily accessible contact information (phone, email, or live chat) to show customers they can rely on your business. You don’t need to over-explain it all, but the information should be present and simple for any curious customer to locate.
You can learn more about E-E-A-T in our ultimate guide.
Make the most of your unique selling points
Finally, use your product pages to shout about what makes your site better than the competition. A short list of USPs is a great way to ensure that a customer chooses you rather than a competitor selling the same thing. If you know you’re not as competitive on price as some other sites, USPs can help you make up that ground, and they can help set you apart from ecommerce giants like Amazon.
Is your product handmade? Say it. Eco-friendly? Say it. Made in the UK? Say it.
Do you offer additional services? Say it. Fast delivery? Say it. Easy returns? Say it.
You get the picture.
As with E-E-A-T focused content, USPs don’t have to be unique to each product. It’s great to emphasise specific product qualities where they exist, but you’re absolutely fine to include the same company USPs across multiple pages without running afoul of duplication issues (so long as the rest of the content is unique).
My final tip, which is pertinent to this point and to all that I have written so far, is to let your brand’s personality come through in everything that you write. Whether you’re the sole marketing manager for a small business, or you’re part of the content team at an international ecommerce giant, your company will have a voice and (hopefully) that voice will appeal to your target market. Avoid templated, lazy content where possible and express your brand in a way that compels users to engage with you.
If you do that, and if you write content that actually helps people, you’ll be in a great position to see gains in organic search.
Optimise your ecommerce website with Impression
Still unsure of the best way to go about SEO for ecommerce websites? Impression can help with all your SEO queries across category pages, product pages, and more. Learn more about how to audit your ecommerce website, or how to optimise your product pages for events like Black Friday. Need more help? Get in touch today and make your ecommerce website the best it can be.
