Online pet shops are big business. In fact, the online pet market is thought to have nearly quadrupled since 2013, making it one of the largest and most lucrative markets out there. The problem is, there are some gigantic players in this arena, and they’ve cornered much of the market. Investing in your SEO is even more important than usual. We helped disruptor FirstVet with their pet product SEO, providing a few different types of content to help them rank their online pet shop.
SEO for Online Shops – the Basics
Pet owners, or any customers, searching for a pet product online are unlikely to move beyond the first 2-3 shops on Google results. They might move past a shop they’ve had a bad experience with, or one that has bad connotations, and they’re likely to compare costs across a couple of websites unless they have brand loyalty. So they’ll likely look at the top 2-3, maybe a little further if the top result isn’t a shop they like. To be in with a chance of making the sale, your website needs to be in the top five search results for the product. Remember, pet owners might search ‘pet shop online’ but they’re just as likely to search for the individual item they are after – ‘buy dog food online’ or even ‘buy Royal Canin dog food online’. That means you need to rank for the individual product, not just ‘pet shop’ – and that’s where pet product SEO comes in.
Product Category Texts
Product category texts are SEO heaven. They’re packed with keywords and information about the products to be found in that category. This area should be used to explain the types of pet products that can be found in the category, as well as when each might be useful. Our vets add an extra dimension to a category text, as it’s easy to tell the product category text is written by someone with real veterinary knowledge, not just SEO expertise. That’s not to say pet shop SEO isn’t at the fore of what we’ve done here for FirstVet. In fact, we followed careful instructions with long lists of keywords to be included, but still managed to make it readable, and useful for the pet owner.
You can find the pet shop category texts at the top of the page. As you can see, the client has ‘hidden’ most of the text – proving that this exercise is as much for pet product SEO and Google ranking as it is for the pet owners using the shop.
Brand Texts
A lot of people buy into a brand, not necessarily their product. Commonly searched-for brands include the big dog food companies (Royal Canin, Hills, Purina) or those with a major market share of treats or toys. By having a short description about each brand, you can increase your keywords around that brand whilst helping your customers understand who they’re buying from. We are currently helping FirstVet increase their SEO and rankings for major pet brands by writing their brand texts.
Buyer’s Guides
Buyer’s guides are another great way to help your customers work out exactly what to buy. Buyer’s guides can be lengthy and explain what features of a product pet owners should be on the lookout for. They’re something we’ve done a lot of here at The Veterinary Content Company, which just goes to show how valuable they are for pet product SEO and aiding customer decision making. After all, you want to solve your customer’s problems – not leave them confused by all the options available to them.
You can read more about writing buyer’s guides in our separate post.
