Author: Ryan Walsh

Date: 21/03/2026

You may feel you have a superior product, yet you’re scratching your head about why it’s not ranking at the top of Google’s search results.

You’ve added good images of the product, written a good description and been tweaking the meta titles for days- but nothing.

Well, in this article, we will endeavour to assist you.

Plus, we shall explain in this article how Google ranks product pages. We shall also give you some food for thought to improve your business’s e-commerce SEO.

 

E-ecommerce SEO is mighty competitive.

E-commerce SEO is hard work, and for good reason: the competition is fierce.

Therefore, the website needs to be clearly structured, have strong authority signals such as backlinks, and be built around providing helpful information.

 

Search Intent and Google’s Helpful Content Updates

Some agencies refer to a problem in e-commerce SEO as search misalignment.

Basically, someone asks a query, and the page does not quite answer it.

Therefore, this is really important to note, especially after Google’s Helpful Content Update and the advice around Google EEAT.

That is, a page is selling a product, that’s its core purpose; however, it must also do a lot of other things, such as:

– Answer commonly asked questions regarding that product
– Have a unique and helpful product description
– Have good on-page SEO cues, such as H1-H6 and alt text to describe the product
– No duplication
– No cannibalisation issues
– Be able to hold the shopper’s interest, displaying a high dwell time
– Have good design and information so the user doesn’t leave quickly, causing a spike in the bounce rate

 

First things first, are there any technical SEO issues

So, let’s describe a real-life scenario we encountered: a website where the business had previously invested in content marketing.

That content marketing was meant to drive sales to the main pages, yet all had code added so that Googlebot would instantly know not to index the pages.

This is called a “no-index” issue.

Now, sometimes a no-index tag is needed; it can help preserve what’s called a business’s crawl budget.

However, if you’re burning the midnight oil, plus writing content marketing that’s thousands of words long, you’re going to want it to show up in Google.

Therefore, that’s an example of a technical SEO issue: unless we fixed it, many articles that had taken hundreds of hours to create wouldn’t have been crawled and indexed by Googlebot.

Leading digital marketing companies will therefore run a “technical audit” which includes:

 

“No index” tags

As we mentioned earlier, this is a big one; check to see where no-index tags have been applied.

In some instances, no-index tags can be used for good; for example, your website developer could apply them to pages such as your business’s terms and conditions page or your CMS login page to help preserve the website’s crawl budget for the pages you do want indexed.

 

Crawl errors

Crawl errors are a bit like warning lights on your car, so do go into your Google Search Console account and work out what could be causing them.

It could be that the product manager has axed a bunch of old product pages, causing a spike in 404 errors. However, a savvy SEO consultant will tell you there are better ways than just deleting pages and heading for an early finish at the local pub.

Instead, think about it well, were those pages positioned well in Google before?

If there were, what was the organic traffic like?

Would it be better to add some redirects to the new product page that sells the new, upgraded version of that product? Therefore, a rather handy 301 permanent redirect might be the angle you need.

 

Slow page speed

Let’s face it, we are all impatient today.

I, included, slightest delay in traffic, and I am about to honk that horn!

However, when driving, we all need to chill out a bit, but when it comes to e-commerce SEO, we can’t afford to slow down the speed at which an e-commerce website loads.

The reason is that if a website slows down or becomes painfully slow during, say, a sale period, it results in a poor user experience.

A bad user experience means, well, shoppers leave. The bounce rate increases, the dwell time decreases, and fewer sales are made.

Therefore, E-commerce managers globally use Google Page Insights, GTmetrix, and other tools to monitor page speed.

 

JavaScript rendering problems

JavaScript is a bit like that drink you have on a night out, yet you know the next day it’s going to give you a sore head.

In SEO and e-commerce SEO, well, JavaScript can cause rendering problems.

It can slow things down.

 

Duplicate Pages

This might be considered more of a content marketing issue; however, it could also overlap with technical SEO.

The reason is that if Googlebot is forced to crawl and index a bunch of pages that all say the same thing, it can struggle to work out which one to index.

Therefore, as a best practice, each product should have its own unique description and wording. Therefore, don’t replicate it; duplicate content causes Googlebot a bit of a headache.

The reason for the headache is that Googlebot can’t figure out which pages to rank if, say, 10 pages all have the same text.

Googlebot is therefore likely to choose a business that has better technical SEO and fewer duplication issues.
Tell me more about how we can improve the on-page SEO for our e-commerce store.

 

A unique product description

A unique product description is super-important. We know it’s probably tempting to copy and paste directly from the manufacturer, right?

Well, a lot of businesses do this; however, so do potentially hundreds of other e-commerce stores.

So, they’re all saying the same thing, citing the same text, so if they’re all offering the same advice, why should Google rank one over the other?

Exactly, they can’t, therefore this is why the content marketing, which includes product descriptions, must be:

– Unique
– Helpful
– Have a good read about Google EEAT, as it’s always a good idea to show your knowledge of the products

 

Meta title and meta description

It’s a good idea to put some time into rewording your meta titles and meta descriptions.

The reason is that your meta titles and meta descriptions are often what a shopper scans to see if the page will answer their query.

So, you could write a really good blog post or have the right product on your e-commerce store, yet without the right meta description, you might not gain clicks.

 

Content thin pages

Okay, so if we were asked to describe a really common problem with e-commerce SEO, it’s this: “content-thin pages”

Businesses that try to sell a huge collection of products but don’t have the time or marketing budget to optimise each page.

What happens is that the page is content-thin, meaning it contains hardly any information.

Worse than that, some businesses then splatter AI content all over the shop, which damages the SEO.

So, instead of content-thin pages, you need pages which offer heaps and heaps of really useful information. Again, have a good read of Google

EEAT guidance, because you need to show on the page that you’re an expert on that particular product; that’s critical to ranking high on Google.

 

Backlinks are still a major factor.

Okay, so it’s near impossible to get an e-commerce product page to rank without good links.

The top brands, the businesses ranked position 1 on Google, well, they normally have good quality links.

However, here are a few things that you should know about links, before you go building them:

– They need to be from relevant pages/businesses
– They need to be of really good quality
– You need a mixture of do-follow and no-follow
– Vary the anchor text
– Don’t buy them, earn them

 

A lot of information on the product needs to be offered:

To decrease bounce rates, increase dwell times, and make more sales, a lot of time and effort needs to go into each product page.

Therefore, this is why on the top retailers you normally see:

– Customer reviews
– Detailed product descriptions
– However, bullet-pointed product descriptions as well
– Original imagery of the product
– Product knowledge, through offering advice on what makes that product so good.

 

Use your Google Analytics account.

We recommend using a paid SEO tool, such as Ahrefs, in conjunction with Google Analytics.

 

You’re going to want to keep an eye on:

• Bounce rates
• Dwell times
• Conversion rates

 

How we can help:

How many words should each product page be?

Adding a lot of words to a page doesn’t guarantee high rankings.

In matter of fact, adding a ton of text, so that a shopper is greeted by thousands of words will be off-putting.

This could cause, yep, that again, a rise in the bounce rate.

Therefore, it’s about making the page as helpful as possible. For example, sometimes a product can be described in 300 words or less.

However, another product may need more, more FAQ questions, and information on the product for example.

It therefore depends, it’s a balance between being helpful, answering all the commonly asked questions, and also making sure the web design offers a good U.X.

Should I add FAQ section at the bottom of each page?

Yes, but this doesn’t have to be thousands of words of text.

For example, if you know as a business, a lot of shoppers ask that question, why not answer it on the page?

This may stop some shoppers from going elsewhere to find an answer.

Does Google rank product pages on price?

This seems logical, but we would say no.

The reason we would say no is that Google is interested in supplying the best possible answer to a question.

Therefore, if that page supplies the best answer, is the most authoritative answer due to links, plus has a really low bounce rate, that page is likely to rank higher.

Another business may sell the same product; it might even be priced less. However, if the page doesn’t offer helpful information, well it’s not going to rank on page 1 of Google.

So, in a nutshell, even if it says £50 quid cheaper on a bike, but the product page has duplicated text, offers a poor user experience, due to being super slow, there’s also no on-page SEO to optimise the product, well its likely to never reach being ranked on page 1.

 

How our team of boffins can help

We work with e-commerce shops; we have a minimum pricing of 1k a month for e-commerce SEO.

We have heaps of SEO experience, therefore why not give us a call today.