I’ve been on a bit of an SEO crusade lately, trying to further optimise Madeit to improve our search rankings for loads of different keywords. While I’m on that bandwagon I thought I’d share a few tips on how you can improve the SEO of your Madeit store and product listings.
If you’re not familiar with SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and it’s all about things you can do to show up in more searches of the web, rank higher up on the page of results, and encourage the maximum clicks through to your web pages from those results.
SEO is a competitive, complicated, and ever-changing beast, so this is not a comprehensive manual, but more of a guide to maximise impact for the least amount of effort and know-how for your Madeit store. It’s the low-hanging-fruit, if you will.
I thought by being on a marketplace platform I wouldn’t have to worry about SEO
Sure, there are some real traffic benefits to being on a marketplace. On Madeit we take care of a vast majority of the onsite and offsite SEO concerns; things like inbound link-building, building a strong domain authority, delivering great user experience and load times – all things that impact on search rankings of the site as a whole, and your store pages.
However, you control the content of your own store, so you ultimately control the searchability of your brand and products. Your products are unique, so being conscious of how your store setup and listing information impacts on the searchability of your store will ensure that you get found more often by the exact people looking for what you offer.
So here’s five simple changes you can make to your store and listings to make Google your friend:
Turn your product titles into great Meta Titles
Meta what? A Meta Title is the bold blue text that Google (and other search engines) display as the heading for each search result in a list.
On Madeit, the Meta Title for your shopfront is: Your Shop Name | madeit.com.au The Meta Title for your product pages is: Product Title | Shop Name | madeit.com.au
Meta Titles are the most important part of your listings as far as improving your search ranking (the order in which search results are displayed by google).
They are also important for encouraging searchers to click through to your product or store page, because they’re the first thing searchers will read. Including important, relevant keywords in your title is so very important!
So, to write a great product title, include the most relevant keywords to your product first, and keep your titles under 60 characters. If you want your store name to display at the end of your product titles in search results, your product title + your store name should be 60 characters (or less) in total.
Update the Meta Description for your store page
The piece of text that Google displays beneath the title of a search result is known as a snippet, and this is usually pulled from the Meta Description for the page, although Google may display another piece of text from the page content if it is more relevant to the search.
Meta Descriptions do not affect search result rankings, however they are still super important, because the extra information you provide here has a huge impact on Click-through-rates (CTR). The Meta Description for your store should provide a convincing and relevant description of what can be found in your store.
On Madeit, the Meta Description for your shopfront is your store announcement, so to improve click-through rates on searches your store appears in, optimise your Store Announcement (in the Store Information section of My Madeit) to, provide value to searchers and encourage them to click on your link.
Including relevant keywords here is also important, because Google will highlight a searcher’s search terms in bold in the snippet, so the more bold keywords that show in your snippet, the more likely you’ll attract searchers’ attention, but be sure to weave them into a meaningful and relevant description of what they’ll find if they click through to your store.
Keep the most important information up front, as snippets can be truncated somewhere between 50-300 characters in length.
Make your first words count
The Meta Description for your product pages is made up of the first few sentences of your Product Description.
So optimise the first couple of sentences of your product descriptions to encourage searchers to click through to your product page. Give a nice summary of the product, including keywords searchers are likely to use to find this type of product, and again, usually between 50 and 300 characters is ideal.
Don’t use double quotation marks in this first part of your description, as Google will truncate your description at the first double quotation mark.
Say plenty about your product & employ keywords meaningfully
Beyond that first 300-odd characters that will make up your product snippet, be sure to include more information about your product. Google prioritises longer content in search results, but it is also super important that you answer all potential questions about your product to encourage shoppers to click on the ‘Add to Cart’ button.
Moreover, employing plenty of relevant keywords and phrases in your description will help you rank higher in search results (as keywords in page content play a major role in determining relevance, and therefore result rankings).
BUT, and that’s a big but, DON’T just list a bunch of keywords at the end of your product descriptions! Besides the fact that this is difficult for customers to read and therefore doesn’t help to sell your products, Google HATES keyword stuffing and you WILL be penalised for it in search rankings.
So what to do instead? Write useful descriptions in full sentences, that describe your product, how it can be used, what occasions it’s suitable for, etc. and weave your keywords into the description.
Yes, it takes time, but most worthwhile things do, and you’ll find that it not only improves your chances of being found, but it also enhances the likelihood that customers will be convinced to buy your products once they’ve found you. You don’t have to be a great marketing copy-writer, just write naturally in the type of language your customers are likely to use when searching for your product.
Don’t duplicate content!
Duplicate content is the enemy of search. When Google sees two pages with the same content, it treats both as copies, and doesn’t show either in search results. That means if you’re creating multiple listings with identical or almost identical product descriptions, or you publish listings on multiple platforms and the product titles and descriptions are the same across platforms, you risk your products not showing in Google search results at all. And that ain’t good!
The solution is to ensure you customise product descriptions to be specific to each different listing, and when listing the same product across platforms, customise your description for the platform, re-sequence some sentences, paraphrase your own words, and just mix things up a bit so they’re don’t appear identical.
Implementing changes
It’s worth noting that as you implement changes to your product listings and your store, don’t expect instant results. It can take up to 30 days for Google to recrawl the website to pick up your latest information so changes your titles and descriptions won’t show up straight away. It’s a game of patience, but start now and you should start to see benefits before Christmas.
Words by:
Editor,
Louise (a.k.a. “Mrs Madeit”)
Wordsmith, art & craft enthusiast, and grand-visionary.
