An online shop has two jobs that pull in opposite directions. Product pages need to rank in Google, which wants words, structure and detail. They also need to sell, which wants the photo, the price and the button, with nothing in the way. A good product page does both, and most do neither particularly well.
This is the checklist we work through on every shop we build. It is in the order we would fix things, and none of it needs an app or a subscription.
First, know which page is meant to rank
Ecommerce SEO is not mostly about product pages. Broad searches, such as “women’s waterproof jackets”, are usually won by category pages, because they show a choice. Product pages win the narrow searches: a brand and model, or a precise description like “women’s merino base layer 200gsm”. Most shops put all their effort into products and leave their categories as a grid of photos with no words at all. Both matter, so this checklist covers both.
1. Write your own product descriptions
If you sell products made by someone else, the manufacturer’s description is on every other shop that stocks them. Google has no reason to rank your copy of it over theirs, and usually picks one page to show and leaves the rest out. Your own words are the cheapest advantage you can give a product page.
A good product description answers what a shop assistant would be asked:
- What it is, in the words people search for, not just the brand’s product name.
- Who it is for and what it is good at. Also, honestly, what it is not good at.
- The details that decide a purchase: sizes and how they fit, materials, dimensions, what is in the box, how to care for it.
- A comparison, if you sell similar products. “Warmer than our 150gsm layer, better for winter.”
Start with your best sellers and the products with the highest margin. You do not need to rewrite five hundred descriptions this week.
2. Name the page what people search for
The page title, which becomes the blue link in Google, and the main heading should say what the product is in plain terms. “The Ridgeline” means nothing to someone who has not heard of it. “The Ridgeline women’s merino base layer” matches what they type.
- Put the product type and its key detail in the title: material, size, colour or model number, whichever people search by.
- Keep it under about sixty characters, with your shop name at the end rather than the start.
- Write the meta description like a shelf label: the reason to choose it, and delivery or returns if they are a strength.
3. Give each product one address
Many shop platforms let the same product be reached at several addresses: once on its own, once inside each category it belongs to, and again with tracking or filter codes on the end. Shopify does this by default, showing a product at /products/name and again at /collections/category/products/name. A canonical tag tells Google which one is the original, and Shopify adds it for you, but the cleaner fix is to link to the main address everywhere so Google never has to choose.
Keep the addresses short and readable, and do not change them once they are live. If you have to, redirect the old one, as covered in how to move a website without losing your rankings.
4. Decide how to handle variants
A shirt in five colours and four sizes is usually one product with a selector, not twenty pages. Twenty near-identical pages split your rankings twenty ways. The exception is a variant people search for by name. If people specifically search for “olive green walking jacket”, that colour may deserve its own page with its own photos and description.
5. Make the photos fast, and readable
Photos sell the product, and they are also what makes most shop pages slow. On a phone, the main product image is usually the largest thing on the page, and it decides how quickly the page feels ready.
- Size images to how they are shown. A 4,000 pixel photo squeezed into a phone screen is wasted download.
- Use modern formats such as WebP or AVIF, which are a fraction of the size of a JPEG at the same quality.
- Load the first image straight away and the rest as people scroll.
- Describe each image in its alt text: “Olive walking jacket, hood up, side view”, not “IMG_4471”. It helps screen readers and image search alike.
We go into the rest of the speed fixes in why fast pages win. On a shop, the other big cost is apps: every review widget, upsell popup and chat bubble adds code that runs on every page.
6. Add Product schema
Schema markup states the product’s facts in a format Google reads directly: name, image, price, currency, whether it is in stock and its reviews. It is what allows Google to show a price, stock status and star rating under your result, which makes it stand out from the plain links around it. Product schema also feeds Google’s free shopping listings when combined with a Merchant Center account.
- Include Offer details: price, currency and availability, kept in step with the real stock.
- Add delivery and returns details. Google can show both in results, and they are often the deciding factor.
- Only mark up a star rating if the reviews are shown on the page. Marking up reviews nobody can see breaks Google’s rules.
- Test each page type in Google’s Rich Results Test after any change.
7. Show reviews as text on the page
Reviews are the most persuasive words on a product page, and they are often written in exactly the language other customers search with. If they load inside a third-party widget after the page has loaded, Google may never see them. Ask your review provider whether reviews appear in the page’s own text. If they only appear inside a frame, Google is not reading them.
8. Put delivery, returns and the full price on the product page
In Baymard Institute’s long-running checkout research, unexpected extra costs are the most common reason people abandon a basket. The cure is to show delivery cost, delivery time and the returns policy on the product page itself, near the button, rather than revealing them two steps into checkout. It costs nothing, and it stops the most common reason a sale is lost.
9. Do not delete products that are out of stock
A product page that ranks has built up value. Deleting it when stock runs out throws that away, and leaves anyone who clicks the result with an error page.
- Temporarily out of stock: keep the page, mark it as out of stock in the schema, offer a back-in-stock email and show similar products.
- Gone for good: redirect it permanently to the replacement, or to its category. Not to the homepage.
10. Give category pages words, and keep filters in check
Category pages are where the bigger searches are won, so treat them as pages rather than grids. A short introduction at the top saying what is in the range and who it suits gives Google something to rank. A buying guide or FAQ beneath the products gives it more.
Filters are the other half. Every combination of size, colour, price and brand can create its own address, and a shop with a few hundred products can produce millions of them. Google wastes its visits crawling those combinations instead of your real pages. Decide which filtered views people actually search for, such as “women’s merino base layers”, and give those proper pages. Keep the rest out of the index with canonical tags pointing back to the main category.
11. Link products together
- Breadcrumbs at the top of each product (Home › Women › Base layers), with BreadcrumbList schema, so Google understands where the product sits.
- Related products and accessories lower down, linked by name rather than “you might also like”.
- Links from your guides and blog posts to the products and categories they mention.
Check a page now
Our free website audit checks a shop the same way it checks any site: speed on a phone, titles, broken links, schema and whether search engines and AI assistants can read it. Run it against your best-selling product page as well as your homepage, since that is where the money is made.
Every Onlineify online shop ships with product schema, proper titles and a sitemap built in: a storefront designed for your range, with Shopify running the checkout, and every account in your name.