Product Page - 5 Questions on SEO in depth

[intotheblueart]

1. When editing a Product page, what section is ranked most important to least important, in regards to SEO, meaning Google scanning and ranking your page when a keyword is searched? 

- Product Title

-Product Description

-Image Alt Tags

-Meta Title

-Meta Description

-URL Handle

I was hoping the Product Title and Description wasn't important for SEO because I don't want any text underneath each product and I want to name my products as artsy names, being it is a painting gallery. For example, a painting of penguins I would want to name this artwork 'Break the Ice' as the Product Title. But for the Meta Title I would remove 'break the ice' and use my 72 characters for keywords such as  'Penguin Print | Penguin Gift| Penguin Wall Art' 

2. My question is: Does the Product Title have any seo value? If so, would you advise me to also name it with keywords such as,  {'Break the Ice,' Penguin Print }. I would really prefer not to, but IF it has seo value - I would want to know this.

3. Which brings me to the product description - does this have seo value? If so, I could copy and paste my Meta Description into the description field. But I would prefer to leave the description up at the top, blank. 

4. Next question refers back to the Meta Title and Meta Description. Because there is a limited number of characters, I would want to use them wisely. If all keyword phrases contain the word 'Penguin', do I need to include that word over and over: {'Penguin Print | Penguin Gift| Penguin Wall Art'} or would it have the same effect of naming it {Penguin Print | Gift | Wall Art}  

5. Image Alt Tag Question: 

A) Does the image alt tag have a limited number of characters? 

b) Can I list keyword phrases for the image alt tag and separate them with commas?

c) Do I need to repeat the word 'penguin' if I include it once already? Even though the keyword phrases are penguin gift, penguin print, penguin art, ect. 

[JoesIdeas]

SEO is a mix of known best practices + opinions because we don't know the exact 100% ranking factors and weights, but here are my opinions and some data backed resources:

1. The title tag is the most important for on page SEO signals. I've had pages jump significantly just by optimizing title tags (put the heaviest weighted keywords to the front, include relevant keywords and good click through headline).

2. Yes, the product title is usually wrapped in an <h1> tag. This signals it's the main topic of the page. I like to put my most important keywords in the <title> tag, and then put the most user friendly text in the product title.

3. and 4. Product description is a good place to include additional keywords and content about the product. These will help build up the keyword signals to search engines, but I wouldn't worry about keywords much here. Just give good clear descriptions of the product for your customers, and search engines will naturally pick up on what this is describing.

Meta descriptions don't carry SEO weight, but they are an important part of getting click-throughs from search results. When you increase your click through rate, your search rank tends to increase for that keyword. So the goal of meta descriptions, in my opinion, is to try and get more clicks.

5. To get technical details like this I like the guide that Moz puts out: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo. Lot of great info there!

Couple other resources

- ubersuggest.com is a free keyword research tool. You can see estimated keyword search volume and use that to build your title tags.

- I share some resources like that + some blogging tactics and backlink tactics I've used for Shopify sites: https://speedboostr.com/seo-tools-and-tips/

- Here's a list of Google ranking factors: https://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors

[intotheblueart]

Thank you for your response. So the title tag is aka the meta title correct ? And the product title is the title at the top of the edit page ?

[JoesIdeas]

Sure no problem.

To translate from the Shopify admin:

1) The Title field in the Shopify admin will be converted into HTML by your theme on your product page.

For example:

<h1>Super cool product title</h1>
<p>$99.99</p>

2) The Page title field in the Shopify admin will be converted to HTML by your theme as a <title> element. The Meta description under that will be converted to HTML by your theme as a <meta name="description"> element.

For example:

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Super Cool Product Title Showing in Search Results</title>
    
    <meta name="description" content="This is what will show up in the description, under the title in search result listings.">

  </head>

  <body>
    <div>This is the HTML to display your page's content</div> 
    ...
    <h1>Product Title Shows Here for Example</h1>
    ....
  </body>
</html>

[intotheblueart]

Thank you for the clarification. Please advise on the below question too! 

'Penguin', do I need to include that word over and over: {'Penguin Print | Penguin Gift| Penguin Wall Art'} or would it have the same effect of naming it {Penguin Print | Gift | Wall Art}

[JoesIdeas]

As a general rule I would avoid keyword stuffing. At the end of the day, Google is trying to deliver the most relevant result to the searcher, so craft your strategy around using the words that will help the searcher to find you.

[Guinea]

Hi Joe,

I realise the conversation I am jumping onto was from a while back, but I think it answers a question I have, just that I can't quite understand the final part of your response re the "Title" and the "Page Title".

My situation is that I sell First Day Covers (Stamps), so all of my products (in the main) are First Day Covers, and they all have a "theme" eg First Flight to the Moon. I have therefore set up all of my products with the "Title" at the top of the Product page being the Theme, and the fact the item is a First Day Cover is buried in the Description. From what you say I think I need to include "First Day Cover" in the "Title", which I can do, but it seems odd to have to tell the customer that the item is "First Day Cover First Flight to the Moon", when the website is a First Day Cover website. Hopefully that makes sense? I note you refer to Title and Page Title as 2 different entities, but I'm only aware of the "Title" which appears at the top of the Product page when in Admin mode. 

My website is www.stamphawk.co.uk which uses Belle 2.1 by AdornThemes.

Hopefully you can throw some light on this for me as my daily traffic is proving painfully low even 6 months into the project, and I'm struggling to get any forward progress on my page rankings with Google.

Cheers!

[JoesIdeas]

@karensshop the answer to your question is Yes you can. I personally prefer focusing on writing those fields based on the best user experience, and changing up the fields naturally to read well and provide various keywords to rank for.

@Guinea in the case of a Shopify site:

Title = the product name that will display on your website.

Page title = the technical "SEO title" aka <title> tag, which shows up in browser tabs, search engine results, and a prime factor for on-page SEO keyword ranking.

If you're having SEO trouble, I've shared some learning resources, apps/tools, and strategies I've used to successfully improve SEO here: https://speedboostr.com/seo-tools-and-tips. You might start with the Moz beginner guide referenced in that post to get a foundation understanding of SEO... then from there you can craft a strategy to either implement internally or intelligently hire out tasks to fill in the gaps.

If you're doing these 3 things, your SEO will improve significantly much faster:

- technical SEO dialed in (the guides in that post will help, or an SEO consultant can advise)

- generating quality content

- getting quality backlinks

[Guinea]

Hi Joe,

OK that all makes sense now - thanks for clarifying. I've done some tweaking to certain pages today to see if/how they start performing differently, and once I get a feel for that I'll aim to roll out across the rest of the website. The tutorials were really useful too - wish I had found them sooner. I did actually use Moz for a while but actually found these snippets were more intuitive.

Fingers crossed for a brighter future!

Cheers

[shakedcommerce]

If you want to increase SEO scores for google index you should add Yoast as a plug in but it won’t get you to where u want. They SEO score can only go so far in e-commerce. Your best bet to increase sales and conversion rates altogether is to find a trustworthy and reliable traffic vender in your relevant niche. I have looked into your store and If you would like an offer I can get you what you are looking for at far below market value, depending on how much you are interested in investing. We can attempt a small cooperation that I’m sure you will be happy with. My email is shakedforeshop1@gmail.com

[karensshop]

Hi Joe & Into the Blue

Hope you don't mind me jumping on this thread.

Do you know if I can use the same text for my product page handle, SEO title and main image alt text?

OR alternatively use the same text for my title tag, seo title and main image alt text?

Many thanks

[jackyle]

Which of the factors you mentioned is important in seo, when you optimize the website you need to set the title of the website to hit the psychology what are users looking for data?

As for meta tags that are not important to search engines, but important to users, users will see the descriptions shown on this meta tag whether or not users want to visit the site, increasing the likelihood. push the website to the top