We’ve been working with Andrea Pascale of Word Decor ‘n’ More on her forthcoming baby products website, Rock a Baby Wall Quotes.
The new site uses a proprietary CMS (content management system, the system that lets you put content into your website yourself) to create a store. This means that the shopping cart and inventory management are all set up and Andrea and her web pros input all the content, including pictures, prices, and descriptions of the products.
The site design is by Elle Ink. Oyova is building a special tool to allow customers to order custom wall quotes, and I’m writing alluring descriptions of the products while Andrea gets all the images finished and puts in prices and other basic data. Launch is in sight.
So what’s the trick to writing product descriptions that make all your hard work worthwhile?
- Include the right keywords. Research shows that people searching for wall quotes will look for “wall quotes,” but also for “wall decals” and “wall stickers.” I’m using all of those terms. I’m not using terms like “vinyl quotations” because no one is looking for that term. While many businesspeople have gotten nervous about the term “keyword” because they see it in phrases like “keyword stuffing,” we’re just helping the search engines match us up with people who want what Andrea has to offer. The object is to help people looking for your product to find you.
- Avoid duplicate content. It’s possible, when you have a number of similar products, to find yourself rattling off the same phrases over and over. However, that can cause search engines to decide that you have a spammy site. At best, they’ll ignore most of your product pages instead of indexing all of them and giving you credit for a larger site. So, even though I’m using the same keywords as the main nouns in my sentences, I’m writing about them differently every time. Even switching from, “Choose from our wide range of colors” to “This wall quote is available in 46 different colors” helps to differentiate the pages. Think of something new to say for each product.
- Write well. That is, use correct grammar and spelling, active sentences, and lively language. It’s tempting to figure that product descriptions just aren’t that important, so you can dash them off, delegate them to someone with limited skill, or even just cut and paste. However, in a serious e-commerce site, product descriptions may be most of your content. If they’re not good, then your content is not good. Focus on the benefits of your products to your visitors, call their attention to other items that work well with the one you’re describing, and you’re likely to have more conversions as well as better search results.
Your store’s homepage has to be well optimized for search, of course, but good optimized content in your product descriptions gives you more landing pages, and better overall SEO.
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