Setting up shop online is the sweet spot retailers large and small hope will move them from locally liked to globally adored. But to be fabulous you first have to be found. To borrow a 1940s Ella Fitzgerald tune, you ain’t got a thing if you ain’t got that Bing.

Ecommerce marketers inevitably come to understand the value of SEO (search engine optimization) to the life of their business. It’s crucial. Preparing content in accord with Google’s algorithm and their busybody bots increases a website’s traffic significantly by delivering new visitors and boosting search ranking.

Unique is What Bots Seek

Fortunately, websites that sell lots of products already satisfy one big SEO requisite; content, content and more content. The quality and originality of these site pages are integral to your ranking in search results. Consequently, they should be informative, relevant and, whenever possible, unlike anything the competition is posting.

The days of cutting, pasting and changing five percent of the best product presentations on the web is over. Sophisticated plagiarism detection software like Copyscape will find you and lawyers will follow up. Don’t do it. Create your own writing and sleep easy at night.   

Special K: Longtail Keywords

Keyword research takes the guesswork out of how users search for products and services like yours. Cleaners? Dry Cleaners? One-Hour Dry Cleaners Nearby That Take Coupons? If you know exactly which phrases they’re using, you can optimize product descriptions by peppering these proven high-traffic keywords throughout

Mastering the game is more complicated than people think. Keywords for ladies shoes might be pumps, flats and high heels. These are the kind of generic words or phrases used by just about everyone in the business. The purpose of switching to longtail keywords is to drill down and narrow the field to attract  some customers away from the bigger brands that consistently rank first.

Longtail keywords offer options to people who are already quite far along in the buying process. These shoppers are seeking and serious about finding something quite specific, in this case ladies shoes. It’s as if they are thinking, “I’d like some summer shoes but I’m not sure what. I know Nordstrom sells them, I see they rank first, but do I really want to wade through dozens of styles? Oh, look, espadrilles! I didn’t think of that.” Click.

Describing your items a bit different, but still registering with your audience, has the potential to increase the response rate, deliver first-time visitors and produce conversions. Don’t be afraid to take a chance. If you sell platform shoes, try calling them Nostalgic ‘70s Hippie Platforms and see what kind of interest you generate. Remember you can also put longtail keywords in titles, call to actions (CTAs), meta data, social posts and image alt tags.

Surround Descriptions with Complementary Content

It’s just good design to make the most of the space devoted to describing products. Sometimes you may have to flesh out the area with additional information to compensate for short listings and limited selections. A good art director can arrange the page visually to make it appealing. Customer reviews, how-tos, blog entries and product FAQs placed in the vicinity of the product specifications add variety and value, thereby serving the customer better and earning higher rankings.  

Use Rich Media Markup For Prime Positioning

You’ve probably noticed those horizontal bars of products that show up in search results now. Google has the ability to display mini-ads or snippets of your product descriptions including pertinent information such as star ratings, prices, brand names, logos and even inventory levels. In addition, images appear in these rich search results.

Using markup to enable rich product results has the potential to pop your company’s merchandise in a premier position and highly-visible format. As usual, keeping your SEO content accurate and engaging will go a long way toward getting picked up for this prime promotional location.

Be Sociable and Sincere

A product description is not usually the kind of content that lends itself to retweets and Instagram intrigue. Generating backlinks is tough and building a buzz on social media is, well, challenging.

Even if you’re writing sexy, sizzling sales copy for start-ups like UNTUCKit, there’s no guarantee bloggers, reporters, pundits and brand ambassadors will link to or tout product pages because that’s all they are, selling pages.

UNTUCKit happens to have a unique story: shirts cut to be worn untucked. They do a great job supplementing their product pages with enhanced content such as diagrams with callouts, which increase the chances of someone from the fashion world linking back to that interesting product page. Not surprisingly, they ranked first when I searched men’s shirts recently.

They also have a presence on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and Google+, offering helpful insights and humble interviews instead of hyping and over-linking to their own brick and click stores. Building a distinct brand and positioning the owner as an industry expert can sometimes encourage users to investigate and hopefully link back to product pages.

Content marketing is an ongoing, ever-evolving business practice. The payoff comes when you start to see your company move up in search results and when you sell more products as a direct result. Make time to try some of the suggestions here. If you require assistance, our SEO writers have perfected the fine art of product descriptions. You may want to have a word (or a thousand) with them.