Most eCommerce stores are built with Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce. While we’ll be focusing on those platforms, these product meta-optimisation techniques apply to all eCommerce platforms.
What are product meta titles and descriptions?
While you’re adding products to your eCommerce store, you’ll be giving each a title and a description. Most eCommerce platforms will automatically use this to create a meta title and description for you.
The meta title and description tags are part of the HTML code on each product page and can (and almost certainly should) be optimised separately for search engines.
The meta title and description SEO explain to the search engine what this page is relevant for and for which terms it should rank. That makes optimisation an important part of your eCommerce SEO strategy.
Product meta title length
In 2017, the recommendation for meta title length is around 55 characters.
The title length has decreased in recent years with the growth of mobile search. Where mobile devices have smaller screens and less space, longer product titles will often be truncated.
Your eCommerce platform may well allow you to input more than 55 characters, but it is possible that a searcher will not see anything beyond that in the search results. It’s important to get the main points in the beginning of your product meta-title!
Tips for optimising product meta titles
- Keep product meta titles below 55 characters
- Make each one unique – if there is a very similar product, include the size, colour or pack size to differentiate it
- Include the most likely search term at the beginning – “black cocktail dress with scoop neck size 10 – my brand” is likely to be better than, “my brand – size 10 black cocktail dress”
- If you’ve got room, include a benefit in your product meta title. Remember, it’s likely to show in the search engine results: if it’s a more compelling title, it’s more likely to get clicked! “Dresses from £7” or “free delivery” might work well
- Your eCommerce platform may be configured to automatically append your brand to each meta title, taking up some of the 55 characters – you’ll need to check configuration to see if this is the case
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Product meta description length
In 2018, the recommended meta description length is up to 300 characters, which is a reasonable amount of space!
As with meta titles, you can exceed this guideline, but your description may be truncated in search engine results, missing valuable words from the end of your text.
Tips for optimising product meta descriptions
- Avoid duplicating product meta descriptions where possible. While it’s possible that you’ll have many similar products and meta description products, include elements such as colour, size and weight in each one to help make it unique
- Include meta description keywords and the most important terms at the beginning – these are most likely to be the search term you’d like the product to rank for
- If you have space, include a call to action like “buy today, delivered tomorrow” or “find your perfect product”
Remember Google Shopping
Many eCommerce platforms use meta titles and descriptions to output a Google Shopping feed or directly to the Google Merchant Center via the API.
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Optimising product meta titles and descriptions for SEO also means that you’re optimising your product feed too. That should help your products show up more often in Google Shopping results – assuming that’s part of your eCommerce strategy, of course.
