As an eCommerce business, you don’t always have control over how and where you first connect with your customers. Optimized product descriptions make a good first impression on those visitors who arrive on your website through a search engine query. It’s like making sure the guests who show up at your side door are as welcome as the guests who knock at your front door. Not only does this kind of content marketing effectively inform and persuade your target audience, but these optimized product descriptions will also make your content more likely to get pulled up by a search engine to help you improve your website traffic and conversion rate. 

Here’s a more in-depth look at why optimized product descriptions as part of your eCommerce marketing strategy is a must. 

Achieve Higher Ranking on Search Engine Results Pages

When shoppers are seeking a product online, most of them won’t look past the first page of search results. Writing optimized product descriptions is one way content marketing maximizes the chances your product pages land on the first page of your customer’s search engine results. 

eCommerce sites that include optimized content descriptions are easy for web search engines to “crawl” and “understand” what’s there. In turn, effective eCommerce web design, including those product descriptions, makes it more likely that a search engine will find your page to be a match for what the user is querying. 

Incorporate the Keywords Your Target Audience Will Search For

Good keyword research will help you write copy that’s aligned with what your customers are searching for. Walk the fine line of engaging consumers while optimizing your copy for search engines. You don’t want to attract one more than the other. It can be helpful to write your product descriptions first and then sprinkle keywords in headings, subheadings, body copy and image tags. Avoid overusing them which can hurt your search engine ranking. Improve the Visibility of Your Product’s Benefits

Features are important but benefits are what will sell your product. Customers need to see what’s in it for them. Use storytelling techniques as an effective eCommerce marketing tool to make your product descriptions engaging and strengthen the emotional investment of your customers. 

To help distinguish between features and benefits, remember to include the what and why in your product descriptions: what are the features and why are those benefits to your customer? Good content writing incorporates and organizes the features and benefits naturally into the text using accessible language and a tone that’s appropriate to your audience and product. If you’re not completely sure who your target audience is, reviewing your site traffic, social media metrics and keyword performance can help answer that question.

Better Connect with Your Target Audience

The product description is the perfect place to showcase what makes your product stand out from the competition, both to customers and search engines. Content writing that is too similar among multiple items will sink your search engine ranking. Write distinctive copy to achieve the best possible results. Know your product or service really well to be able to effectively describe it and sound knowledgeable while doing it. What you want is for that product description to clearly fit only that product; if it can be used to also describe another item, there’s still work to do. 

Inform Customers of Product Specs

eCommerce sites have a special challenge in that the product description has to do all of the heavy lifting in sales. This is the place to ensure your prospective customers don’t have any questions about your items, so be strategically thorough. You want to give them as much information as they need to answer prospective questions, while still keeping the content length reasonable. 

It’s typically okay to use technical specs from manufacturer descriptions but put that in your own words through content writing.  Relying on them too heavily can get you dinged for duplicate content; plus, keep in mind that the product manufacturer may already have a higher search engine ranking than your eCommerce site, which further depresses your ranking. 

To create distinctive product descriptions, content writing needs to define the product and inform the customer why they want it. Include details about how the product works and what the benefits are. Include technical specs like dimensions, speed, etc. Point out any accolades like awards received, top ten listings that include your product or scientific research that backs up why your product stands out. 

Deliver Content Primed for Customer Behavior

Even when not in a hurry, most people’s attention span is pretty short these days – less than ten seconds! Website content that’s structured with enough visual breaks makes information easy to skim. People won’t wade through blocks of heavy text.

Include optimized visuals in your eCommerce web design plans. This helps strengthen your search engine ranking, break up text and improve scannability. Use images that are clear enough and big enough, optimized for mobile commerce. If appropriate, include charts, graphs or diagrams to support your eCommerce marketing. 

Keywords Ebb and Flow in Popularity

It’s tempting to think that writing good product descriptions is a one-time thing but as keywords increase or decrease in popularity, it can affect your search engine rankings. This is why it’s crucial to work product description review and revision into your eCommerce marketing routine. By revising your product descriptions in response to changing keyword performance, you can keep your eCommerce product descriptions fresh and primed for search engines and customers. 

Writing optimized product descriptions might sound daunting but there is help. A full-service eCommerce marketing agency like iwebcontent can assist with keyword research and optimized content writing to strengthen your online marketing. Not only that, but skilled keyword research can also deliver important insights about what search terms are trending across your industry and among your competitors, too. Contact us to see how we can increase your eCommerce website traffic and conversion rate.