Steersman Webpage and Product SEO Configurations

Websites that have been optimized for better search engine ranking attract the most organic- or “free”- traffic, which in turn leads to improved brand awareness and increased sales. Steersman ecommerce makes it easy for our clients to optimize their website content for SEO, and in this article, I’ll walk you through the various settings and what each one does.

Web Page SEO

There are several different places where metadata and other settings can be managed, but I’ll start with the various settings that can be configured for each page on your website. When a new page is created, in addition to the Content tab, which contains all the page elements and the actual page design, Steersman also provides an easy-to-configure SEO tab.

Page URL & Meta Tags

The Website Slug field will be automatically generated from the Name assigned to the page. Still, as the page name is an internal reference (unless it’s set as the H1 – see Options below), users are encouraged to update the slugs to whatever text would make the most sense for the site. You’ll want to ensure that the resulting URLs are concise and accurately describe the page content.

The Meta Title and Description for the page are both easily editable here. At the end of each line is a built-in character counter, which makes it easier to conform to text length standards. Title tags should generally be between 50-60 characters long. Search previews may be cut off in the middle for titles that are longer than this range. You’ll want your Meta Descriptions to be as descriptive as possible, but again, make sure that you’re limiting the length to 155-160 characters to avoid truncation.

For optimal SEO, I recommend taking the time to edit/populate the Website Slug, Meta Title, and Meta Description fields for every page on your website.

OpenGraph / Facebook

The following section on the page allows you to specify the Open Graph protocol, which enables you to control how links to this page from Facebook appear and behave. You can select the Title, Description, and Image that will show up by default in any post that features the URL. This section is entirely optional, but it allows you to control precisely how links to the page will be displayed in Facebook posts.

Twitter Card

Much like the OpenGraph/Facebook section mentioned above, the Twitter Card allows users to control how links used in Twitter posts appear. You can leave this blank to enable Twitter to decide how to display the link for you, set it to match what you’ve set up for Facebook, or curate the content for the platform, if it makes sense to do so.

Indexing Options

The Options section gives users even more control over how the page behaves. By default, the Name you provide the page will be displayed as H1 in a thin header at the top. If this doesn’t make sense for the design you have in mind, the Disable H1 setting allows you to remove that page element.

If the page you’re working on is still in progress and you’re not ready for Google to index it, you can check Disallow indexing until the page is ready. If the page has already been indexed and you want to remove it, you can set the Unavailable after date to a date in the past, and the page should be removed on the next pass.

Change tracking

Several fields in the SEO tab are tracked, so any time a user makes an update, a note is saved with the details of the change, ensuring you always know who made the change and when.

Product SEO

You can also configure/customize all the same Metadata settings for each product, in the same way as I described above for the web pages. You can access the settings by clicking on the Website tab from the product page.

Consider a strategy to populate Website Slug, Meta Title, and Meta Description for all active products in your catalog, as this will help potential customers find your products through organic web searches.

Additionally, as with web pages, specifying the Title/Description/Image for Facebook and Twitter, as well as configuring the indexing settings, is entirely optional; however, it will display product links in a more attractive/controlled way on the social platforms.

Product Category SEO

Each product category page can also be optimized in a similar way to web pages and product pages, with the addition of a description field that allows you to incorporate keywords and phrases for even better SEO.

Steersman provides markdown support for this description, allowing you to make it not only functional but also visually appealing. In the example below, you can see a few of the markdown options implemented within the description text:

And the following is how the various formatting elements mentioned above would appear on the website:

Just below the description field, you once again have complete control over the meta tags and all the OpenGraph/Twitter/Indexing Options settings, same as on the product pages.

Blog Category SEO

If you choose to organize the blog on your website into categories, you’ll once again have the ability to specify all the same Meta tags/OpenGraph/Twitter/Indexing Options as on the web pages.

Media SEO

Finally, you can also control the Alt names and Website slugs of all the individual images and documents you add to your ecommerce website using Steersman’s product information management (PIM) tool. Giving your images unique and meaningful names and slugs enhances the site’s overall SEO and ensures that each element of your site is searchable and discoverable by various search engines.

Well-structured data and rich results

I’ve emphasized the importance of specifying names/titles, meta descriptions, and descriptive slugs for all products, pages, categories, and images, as these comprise the three major pieces of data that Google displays in the vast majority of results. However, in addition to allowing our users to optimize these elements, Steersman has ensured that all results for our sites don’t just appear as typical snippets, but are extensively enriched.

Steersman leverages structured product markup and adds relevant HTML schema to all product and category pages, ensuring that Google can provide extra details in search results that make our links stand out. Whether the user is conducting a typical search or searching by image, the added information attracts potential buyers and improves the organic click-through rate (CTR).

For example, the following is a typical search result for a website selling a particular type of respirator:

The same search result for one of Steersman’s sites has the additional price data displayed directly in the results:

The price information is also easily seen in the image search:

The link to the product page, when tested by Google’s Rich Results testing tool, shows that the schema and breadcrumbs on the page are well-formed to show Google everything needed for more detailed search results and better ranking.

The category pages are just as robust and pass Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool’s scrutiny with flying colors.

Steersman for better SEO

Steersman has developed tools to optimize content SEO for your web pages and products, making the process intuitive and straightforward. We’ve also considered all the technical SEO requirements for your site. Our lightning-fast website speeds, mobile friendliness, clean code for easy digestion, site security, and well-structured schema that’s easy for Google and other search engines to understand all contribute to better ranking SEO. Steersman ensures that your customers can easily find your site and products and have a pleasant shopping experience. If you’d like to read more about what exactly SEO entails and learn other things to consider when looking to improve your site’s ranking, take a look at our Ecommerce SEO strategy - What is SEO article.