Shopify SEO: Product Variant Pages And How To Optimize Them

Table of Contents

Intro

Product variant pages are an interesting type of Shopify page. What makes them so interesting is that Google and other search engines index them. But because they’re not catalog pages, they’re often overlooked by e-commerce managers focused on improving their catalog pages. In this blog post, we’re going to explore the importance of product variant pages, how to optimize them, and how to promote them. Continue reading to learn more about Shopify SEO product variants.

In this article you will learn about the following:

• Shopify SEO product variants
• Shopify app
• Shopify variants
• Product options

What are product variant pages?

Product variant pages are paginated secondary product pages within your e-commerce site. What’s the difference between catalog pages and product variant pages? They each have one thing in common: they include product SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) that you cannot list on your product catalogue pages. These variants contain different SKUs, logos, graphics, etc. Product variants aren’t usually discovered by customers until after they shop for your products. But they are actually pretty easy to promote. The most important thing to remember about product variants is that they serve an essential purpose: they trigger off product page content. What that means is that if your product page content doesn’t link back to product variants, there’s a good chance customers won’t visit them.

What makes them so interesting

Product variant pages are similar to the catalog or catalog variants in that they’re shorter than a standard product page but longer than a product. The main difference is that product variant pages display the products in a two-column format. There are three main types of product variant pages: Product variants where only one option is available. Products where more than one option is available. The most common product variant, called multi-variant. Each of the three types has its own advantages and disadvantages. Since Shopify doesn’t offer any plugin or extension to add product variant pages to your product pages, this blog post will focus only on the different types. Product variants Each variant has its own unique selling proposition.

Why they're overlooked

Most e-commerce sites focus on creating static catalog pages, which are typically not indexed by Google at all. Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals know that the phrase “category” is part of many search terms. For example, if someone says, “medical devices”, you can see that the keyword “medical device” is one of the top-ranked searches for the term. That is also the reason why categories are such a crucial part of an e-commerce site. A sales manager needs to ensure that the right product shows up in the search for the right keywords. Because the inventory on store pages is so limited, they’re not always placed in the right categories, for example.

Why product variant pages are important

Before we talk about how to promote them, it’s important to understand the importance of product variant pages. For a start, they’re very different from product catalog pages. For one thing, they’re much more useful for search engines. With catalog pages, you need to spend a lot of time and resources to ensure your products are in the right order, displayed properly, and that the images are size-specific. With product variants, though, all you need is a product page template, and a copy of the product description. Most e-commerce websites include a few different listing templates that are added to the product detail page. While these might be useful to e-commerce managers, they don’t allow the e-commerce website to rank highly in SERPs, because they don’t include the variant page.

How to optimize product variant pages

Here are a few suggestions for getting started: 1. Have customers drop a code into the field below the key. If your product variant page provides links to add-ons, as we mentioned earlier, add a small snippet of code to let users select a product variant. Then send the visitors to your website and feature it on the listing page. This way, the product variants will show up on Google Search. 2. Copy your competitors. I won’t tell you to copy everything your competitors are doing. However, there are a lot of tools to analyze competitors’ websites quickly. There’s a site called Similarweb that offers an easy-to-use tool to find the average site ranking of competitors, their backlink profile and analyze competitor keyword density. Curious what a competitor’s page looks like?

How to promote product variant pages

Have you ever tried to sell your product via product variants? If you haven’t, the practice may seem strange. Let’s explain. How do product variant pages work? In Shopify, each product variant is a product page and is page 48 of your catalog. Each page typically features a product image and a title for the product. The product description may be short, and the image and title may be optimized. This is the standard product variant page for a single item. But if you sell multiple products, like shirts, pants, sunglasses, etc., you’ll need to make a new page for each variant. These product variants don’t normally have a picture or description on their standard page. These variants instead appear in the Add to Cart and Shipping Center pages (the ones shown above).

Conclusion

Have you made any significant improvements to your e-commerce website recently? And has it paid off?