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The Four Worst SEO Mistakes Shop Owners Make All the time

Getting your products to show up in search is vital to the growth of your online shop. Showing up in search can expand your reach from hundreds of people on social media to basically the whole world of people who use Google to find products that meet their needs.

Beyond following the four main rules to get your products to show up on the search engines, there are some major no-no’s when it comes to creating listings so your products show up.

Here are the four worst SEO mistakes shop owners make all the time and how you can fix them.

1- Copy and paste-ing the same thing over and over again.

Google has told us that they don’t like repetitive content, they like unique content. Even on your own shop, they want unique content between pages.

That means you need to be using product descriptions and page descriptions for every instance your shop. The most common mistake show owners make is copy and paste the same description in every place on their website. Especially, when it comes to describing your shop in page descriptions.

The fix: Write unique descriptions for products, titles, and page information on your online shop. Never copy and paste.

2- Stealing other people’s product descriptions.

You’ve probably searched for products that are similar to your own from a different shop and that’s ok, even good! It’s important to do market research and competitor analysis. But there’s a big thick divider between research and stealing other people’s work. Using another shop’s description of a product is Intellectual Property theft and it’s not ok. Ethically, or for your SEO. Like we mentioned above, Google penalizes websites for repetitive content.

The same goes for using the descriptions provided by your vendors, they may have given you permission to use them, so it’s not theft, but it's still repetitive information and not good for your search engine optimization and could be hurting your ability to rank on Google.

The fix: Write your own descriptions for everything. Research what competitors are doing without writing down any details or wording, just use their information for inspiration.

3- Using non-descriptive product titles.

This is a very common mistake. When you are creating the titles for products on your shop, you’ll want to be sure to include keywords and phrases that describe the product in a way that people are looking for it.

Let’s say you have a floral print t-shirt that you call the “English Garden Tee.” While it’s totally ok to give your products cute and catchy names, your product title needs to include the actual keywords people are using to search for it also. So instead of English Garden Tee, you would say something like “Gray Floral Women’s T-shirt” and if you still wanted to include the words English Garden, you could tack them on at the end.

This is important for two reasons, the title of the product usually shows up in two ways on your website. One as a headline, and secondly in the url structure. Both are major deciding factors in your ability to have your product show up in search. Here are details about getting your products to show up.

The fix: Use keywords that describe your products in the product titles to show up in search.

4- Keyword Stuffing.

If you haven’t heard, this term is when you list out a ton of keywords in hopes of getting found more. This use to be the norm, but the thing about algorithms is they are much smarter than we are, so there’s no fooling them!

This doesn’t work because it’s not helpful for shoppers, especially if you are stuffing your product listings with words that don’t even describe your product. Using irrelevant keywords does not benefit your store.

The fix: When you are writing descriptions, you should use your keywords often but in a way that seems normal and conversational.

If you need more direction and want to get the news straight from the horse's mouth check out this article from Google, Steps to a Google-friendly Site.

Does this make you feel totally overwhelmed? We get it. And we can help! From auditing your site to helping you make these improvements, we can help your products show up on Search engines with our Simplified SEO for Shop Owners Course.

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