It’s All About Titles – Perfecting Your Product Titles for Optimum Exposure

On February 10, 2018May 26, 2018 By jaydee

Since I help Etsy shops get started on Shopify, I wanted to share some tips with you about optimizing product titles for SEO and user experience. Here we go…

If you’re familiar with Etsy, you’ve probably seen products listed there that have r-e-a-l-l-y long product titles. You know the ones, where there are a lot of extra keywords in the title – often with those same words repeated, sometimes more than twice in the same title. Right?!

Bridal Earrings Dangle Earrings Cubic Zirconia Earrings Crystal Earrings Bridesmaid Jewelry Wedding Jewelry Bridal Jewelry Set

Shop owners on Etsy often use these very long, keyword-filled titles to try to help customers find their products.

What they may not realize is that those long titles are not user-friendly, can make it harder for a customer to pinpoint exactly what the item is, and can also be bad for SEO.

Trust me. You don’t want titles like that on your Shopify website!

Tips for Product Titles on Shopify

Here are some tips and notes about perfecting your titles on your own website:

When writing or modifying your titles for your own website, make sure the title clearly describes what your product is.
Use your focus keywords within the first three words of your title.
Do not use a keyword in your title more than once, unless absolutely necessary (see example below).
Keep your titles to a maximum of 70 characters.
If you have two or more products that are similar, make sure they each have a unique title. Do not duplicate your product titles on two or more products. Having duplicate titles is not good for SEO, nor is it good for your customer – how will they really know which product is which?
Write your titles in a way that customers would actually look for them – you will rank better using logical long-tail keywords.

Example Titles (found on Etsy)

Let’s look at this product title:

“Bridal Earrings Dangle Earrings Cubic Zirconia Earrings Crystal Earrings Bridesmaid Jewelry Wedding Jewelry Bridal Jewelry Set”

This title uses the word “earrings” 4 times. Google doesn’t like that, it’s seen as “keyword stuffing”
This title doesn’t read well – too many “filler” words

Here are two better title examples for this product:

“Cubic Zirconia Dangle Earrings Bridal Set”

With this title, the focus is on “cubic zirconia” and this product will rank better in searches for “cubic zirconia”, OR…

“Bridal Dangle Earrings in Crystal Cubic Zirconia”

The focus with this title is on “bridal dangle earrings” and again, it will rank better in searches that customers are typing for “bridal dangle earrings”.

Here’s another example of a poorly written product title:

“Vintage 60’s Aluminum Ice Cube Tray – Kitchen – Ice – Ice Maker – Freezer – Cocktail Party – Serving – Metal Ice Cube Tray”

This title uses the word “tray” twice
The title includes words unrelated to WHAT the item is

A better title for this product might be something like:

“Vintage 60’s Aluminum Ice Cube Tray”

None of those extra “filler” words are necessary, OR…

“Vintage Aluminum Ice Cube Tray, 1960s”

This title very clearly states what the item is.

Etsy search does not use the product descriptions at all – only product titles. However, search engines use BOTH product titles AND product descriptions to help customers find what they are searching for. Therefore, all those extra “filler” words that were used in the two bad examples above, should only be included in the product description on your Shopify or other ecommerce website.

Following these tips, you’ll be able to successfully title and describe your products to ensure your customers can find them easily!

For more detailed information on crafting a product title and meta title for your products, click Search Engine Listing Preview – Very Important Settings for Your Products and for some tips on improving your descriptions, click QUICK TIP Misspellings and Multiple Spellings in Product Descriptions