Product Page SEO: How to Get Product Pages Found

Eight steps for a product page

1. Give the product one main address

   Use words in the address (URL) that describe the product, as Google suggests for online stores, and keep the number of different addresses that show the same product as low as you can. If one product can be reached through several categories, mark one address as the main one with a canonical tag.

2. Write a title and description for this product only

   Google asks for a title on every page that is descriptive and concise, without repeated boilerplate. For the meta description, it says identical or similar descriptions on every page are not helpful, and suggests that product pages gather facts scattered across the page, such as price and manufacturer. Google builds the snippet mainly from the page itself, so the visible text matters as much as the tag.

3. Write your own product description

   Open with what the product is and who it is for, then give the details a buyer checks: size, material, what it works with and what is in the box. Google's rules for product descriptions in Merchant Center say to be specific and accurate, to put the most important details in the first 160 to 500 characters, and to leave out promotional text, capital letters used for emphasis and comparisons with competitors. The same habits make a good description on the page.

4. Use real images and describe them

   Google calls alt text the most important attribute for giving it information about an image. It also recommends short, descriptive file names and placing images near the text they relate to. A merchant listing requires an image in the product data too. Our image SEO guide covers file names and sizes.

5. Add product structured data

   For a page where people can buy, Google requires the product's name, an image and an offer with a price and a currency. Availability, brand, a product identifier, ratings, shipping details and a return policy are recommended. Shopify, Wix and Squarespace each document product markup of their own, so test what your pages already output before adding more.

6. Treat sizes and colours as variants

   Google asks that each variant can be identified by its own address, for example with an added parameter such as ?color=green, and that the address without the parameter is the main one. In the structured data, variants sit under one parent using a type called ProductGroup. Where every variant is chosen on one page without reloading, Google says there must be only one canonical address for the whole group.

7. Send your product data to Google Merchant Center

   Google recommends doing both: structured data on the page and a product feed uploaded to Merchant Center. Its documentation says that providing both maximizes your eligibility, and that a feed is mandatory for some places products appear, such as listings in the Google Shopping tab.

8. Link to the product from a category

   Google finds pages by following links. It recommends links from menus to category pages, from categories to sub-categories and on to every product, written as ordinary links. It warns that products reachable only through your store's search box may not be found, because Googlebot generally does not submit searches.