SEO is often an afterthought for manufacturers in their online retail business.
But there are things manufacturers can do to make their content as search-friendly as possible before passing it off to retail partners. Strong SEO makes product pages visible on search engines, and keeping it in mind when creating product content will better your chances of your products being discovered and purchased.
Here’s how manufacturers can play an active role in setting their products up for SEO success.
SEO Should Play an Important Role in Your Overall Product Content Strategy
While some aspects of retailer SEO are out of the manufacturer’s hands, it doesn’t undermine the general importance of SEO as part of a product content strategy.
After all: 5.6 billion searches are performed on Google every day, according to HubSpot. And on the consumer front, 59% of people perform some type of online search before making an online purchase.
SEO can help you show up higher on search engine results page (SERPs), and considering that the majority of users don’t even scroll past the first page on the search engine, it’s incredibly important to rank as high up on the page as you can.
When done correctly, SEO-driven traffic can convert at a rate up to 14.6%. So having SEO-rich product content plays a big part in the visibility—and sales—of your products.
Optimized Content Will Make Your Products Easier for Shoppers to Find
Paying attention to SEO when developing product content is an important step for manufacturers to take. Here are a few ways to do just that:
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the backbone of any strong SEO strategy and should be viewed as the first step in creating content. This research is what helps manufacturers and retailers alike find the right keywords to make their product listings visible.
In the early stages of keyword research, first, identify a keyword tool that works well for what you want to accomplish. There are many free and paid options at your disposal, such as SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner and others.
When you start the research, target keywords based off product type, product materials or the locations a product might be used in. For example, for a pendant light, try targeting keywords like mini pendant light, living room pendant light or indoor brass pendant light. These types of keywords are not only descriptive in a way that helps the consumer, they’ll help strengthen search visibility.
Product Copy
Robust, SEO-rich product copy is a non-negotiable in today’s ecommerce landscape.
Using the results from your keyword research, you can use search terms to create strong product titles, bullet points and romance copy.
Retailers may or may not use your copy—some prefer to write their own—but for the ones that do, you’ll want to make sure it leverages the keywords that shoppers are using.
Imagery and Video
Search engines love content, so the more of it, the better. Product imagery and video are other types of content that add additional SEO value because they show additional authority around a certain keyword, product name, category, etc. Having a robust collection of visual assets as part of your product content will only support your SEO efforts.
Retailer Enhanced Content
Retailer enhanced content is a storytelling element that uses a mix of written copy, imagery and video. It’s an excellent way to add SEO value to the product page, as it allows for more opportunities to utilize keywords and creative assets. With enhanced content, you can create additional modules on the product pages that provide additional detail, tell the story of a product’s design or production, provide style inspiration and more.
Enhanced content is available on Amazon and Wayfair, but it’s worth asking your retail partners if there are ways to add more product content on their PDPs to ensure you’re maximizing opportunities.
SEO shouldn’t be an afterthought for manufacturers. By conducting keyword research, using targeted keywords in product descriptions and taking advantage of enhanced content opportunities, manufacturers can set their product content up for better discovery and rankings on search engines.
