So you’ve built your new Wix eCommerce store and are ready to start shipping orders. But how do you go about getting your products to show up on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)?
To do this successfully you’ll need to develop and optimise a sophisticated Search Engine Optimisation strategy that includes both on-page and off-page SEO. The good news is that by choosing to build your eCommerce store on Wix you have all the tools available to optimise your product pages so that they start showing up quickly.
We have written extensively about how to optimise your off-page SEO. So here we are going to focus on on-page SEO specifically for eCommerce product pages. While there is no silver bullet, implementing these strategies on your Wix product pages today should see a dramatic improvement in your SEO rankings.
Optimise Metadata
Meta tags are one of the most important things to get right when it comes to optimizing on-page SEO. But what are meta-tags and how do you optimise them?
Meta-tags are snippets of information that describe the page content. They are invisible to the end-user, but they are used by Search Engines bots to obtain specific information about what the page is about.
There are several meta-tags, so we’ll look at the most important ones individually:
Title tag
The title tag is the name of the page, usually appearing in the tab on top of each browser. The title tag should be unique for every page on your website. This is difficult for eCommerce sites because they often have products with similar names.
For this reason, it’s a good idea to develop a naming convention for individual products. One such naming convention is to use the brand-name - model - item type recipe.
Using this naming convention your title tag will look something like this:
<title>Adidas short sleeve sweatshirt - Blue</title>
A naming convention like this will greatly reduce duplicate product names. This in turn will ensure all title tags are unique, while also increasing the chances of your products showing up for searches that include brand names.
Meta description
The meta description is the product description as displayed on the page. This is one area many new eCommerce websites either get wrong or miss altogether.
The most important rule here is that the product description should be UNIQUE to your website. So don’t use the manufacturer's own description or copy it from another website.
Take the time to write your own description and make sure it contains several keywords about the product itself. The longer and more descriptive the text the better. But keep it to the point and don’t stuff it with keywords.
URL Slug
The URL slug appears in the address bar of the browser. This may seem irrelevant, but it is one of the most important things to get right. By default Wix tags your product name on the end of your URL like this:
shopname.com/category/product-name
This is actually quite a good start, much better than other CMS platforms such as WordPress that use numbers by default, for example. But we can do much better.
Your URL slug, much like your title, should be unique and be optimised for relevant keywords. This is another reason why naming conventions are important. The URL should also be descriptive, so don’t be tempted to use anonymous IDs in product titles.
Here is a good example of how your product URLs should look:
shopname.com/sweaters/adidas-short-sleeve-sweater-black
Wix makes it easy to optimise the above meta tags through the SEO panel on each individual product page.
Manage Canonical URLs
Canonical tags identify the primary URL for each page, the one that you want search engines to index. You might think you want search engines to index all your pages. But you don’t, especially not on an eCommerce site that contains hundreds of duplicate pages.
Think about the product listings page, for example, this can be reorganised by the user for price, colour, size, availability and more. Each of these pages is seen by the search engines as a separate page, even though they are essentially the same.
So you need to make sure that the canonical tag is set to show the most important URL for pages with multiple versions. Wix does this for you by default, but it’s a good idea to make sure it is showing the correct page.
The canonical data for each page can be found in the Edit SEO Settings > Advanced > Canonical tab.
Optimise Alt text for product images
Image Alt text is a form of metadata, but it’s so important that we had to put it in a section by itself.
Why? It sounds ridiculous, but search engines can’t see images. So you need to tell Google what each image on the site contains. A brief description will do, don’t overdo it. But make sure it contains the primary keyword and any other relevant information.
Alt text can be edited by highlighting the image in your editor, then clicking the settings icon and completing the description under What’s in the image? Tell Google.
Implement structured data markup
Structured data gives search engines detailed information about your product. This data can then be shown in SERPs helping your products to stand out against the many other competing products also listed.
Wix creates structured data by default, but individual settings can be changed. Common preset product page markup includes:
Product “name”
Description “Product Description”
SKU “Product SKU”
Brand (“@type”: “Brand”, “name”: Product Brand)
Offers (“@type”: “Offer”)
Price “Product Price”
Currency “Price Currency”
Availability “Product Availability Schema”
To edit structured data for each product page click “Preview Markup” on the dashboard. The structured data will be highlighted under “Dynamic code preview”.
Add a brand product attribute
Big brands convert better than no brand, so if your store sells branded products you should add the brand to your product title, description and metadata. This will help search engines determine what branded products you sell.
Wix makes this easy by allowing you to write unique product titles and descriptions. There is also a “brand” structured data tab (see above) which will make your branded products stand out in SERPs.
Make products easy to share
Social sharing is a great way to get the word out about your products. When users find a product they love, they will share it on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. So the easier you make this process the more you will benefit.
Once again Wix makes this easy by allowing you to add social share buttons on each product page. But you can take it a step further by editing the product og:image, og:title and og:description tags on the Product Page > Edit SEO Settings > Social Media tab.
This data is shared on social media, so it should be tailored to meet the needs of users on each platform. For example the og:description should invite the user to check out the product for themselves on your website.
Need help getting your products to show up in Google?
If you would like help getting your products to show up in Google and other search engines. Get in touch with the search engine optimisation specialists at Wix SEO Guy.
We use cutting edge on-page and off-page SEO techniques to improve search engine rankings for eCommerce product pages. Want to know how we do it, and what we can do for your website? Complete the contact form to arrange a free Zoom call today.