TLDR Summary:

I get it – most ecommerce entrepreneurs don’t like to write long product descriptions. And the truth is, most website visitors don’t like to read. That is one of the reasons why video has become such a significant factor for search engine optimization. It’s also the reason that most website owners use as an excuse for not writing long descriptions.

But here’s the thing: the average article that ranks on page 1 of Google contains 1,447 words! Neil Patel wrote a great (and lengthy) article about word count and the impact on search engine rankings.He breaks this down by industry, which is really helpful. The graphic on post length and the amount of traffic generated is really eye-opening: Posts that were 2501-3000 words generated by far the most traffic. The overall conclusion is that Articles with 1001-1500 words tended to have a lot more page 1 rankings than shorter articles. Articles within the 2501-3000 word range also did well. The shorter your article means fewer words and less valuable content you are able to include. So, in theory, you would see fewer page 1 rankings on Google. However, after a certain point such as with 1001-1500 word posts, Google has seen enough “words” to determine what your article should rank for. The conclusion: It’s clear that if you want to be in the top 10% in your industry the chances are your article will be at least 500 words and probably under 1500.

My last post on sales funnels versus shopping carts was only 1,191 words, and you probably thought it was long. I use a plugin called Read Meter, which displays an estimated reading time for each post, which for that article was 5 minutes.

I decided to compare this with a random product on Amazon to see how lone the description was. I chose “Organic Maple Syrup” as this seemed like a fairly simple product that didn’t require a lot of technical specifications. This was my test page: https://amzn.to/3sVy0m5. The word count on that page, not counting customer questions or custom reviews, just product information supplied by the seller, was 1,154 words – about the same as my previous blog post.

Now it’s obvious that Google likes long form copy. It really helps the search algorithm understand what a page or product is about and thus can help it determine where to show it in the search results. You may not like writing long form copy, and you might think that your customers don’t like reading it, but as long as Google likes it, you should get in the habit of writing detailed descriptions. As the renowned copywriter Ray Edwards says, “There is no copy that is too long – there is only copy that is too boring!” Case in point: the Harry Potter novels were 4,101 pages and avid readers wanted JK Rowling to write more! Here is an example of long form copy on a product page that shows you what you should be striving for: https://zomasleep.com/mattresses/zoma-mattress

All that said, the fact remains that many people do not read detailed descriptions and specifications unless they are really interested in something. So how can you get your message across in as succinct a way as possible?

Let’s start with the headline or title

The title is the primary piece of content that gets read first on a page. If the title doesn’t entice the visitor to read the rest of the copy, it has failed in it’s job. So, make the title interesting enough to get their attention.

Google likes titles that are 47 to 60 characters long, including spaces and special characters like colons and parenthesis. That is what they display on the search results page. If a title is any longer than 60 characters, it tends to get truncated or rewritten. If it is shorter than 43 characters, it probably won’t make the first page of the search results.

The next piece of content is the subheading or short description. This should be a single sentence that supports the title and invokes credibility or curiosity to keep reading.

The Body or Long Description

Because humans don’t like to read, but Google does, I recommend starting the product with a series a bullet points that the visitor can quickly skim. Often, even with blog articles, this is a good idea. There is an acronym that has become common which is TL;DR. It stand for too long; didn’t read. There is a website called “TLDR this” that uses AI technology to take your long article and create a short snippet that you can include at the beginning of the article. Here is the website: https://tldrthis.com/#get-started.

Using this site to create a short snippet on my previous post, this is what it generated:

Do Sales Funnels Work Better Than a Shopping Cart or Website?

 Time Saved: 4 mins

Obviously, it isn’t perfect, but it is a pretty good start. It needs to be cleaned up to tell the readers exactly what you want them to know if they don’t read the entire article. For example, the single biggest take-away from that article is the fact that you can create a sales funnel right inside of WordPress / WooCommerce without having to invest in a funnel builder software that typically costs between $100 to $250 per month. All you need is a link that allows you to add a product to the shopping cart from a button. If you didn’t catch that article, you can read it here: https://webstoresltd.com/do-sales-funnels-work-better-than-a-shopping-cart-or-website/

If I was going to re-write the TL;DR recap for that article, this is what I would say:

Do Sales Funnels Work Better Than a Shopping Cart or Website?

Following the TL;DR summary, you could then proceed to include the long form content that Google (and interested consumers) want to read, such as specifications and enough detail that they can make an informed buying decision. And as we’ve discussed, always make sure you include a video – both for the benefit of search engine rankings and for your visitors who prefer to watch the internet rather than read it.

Oh, by the way, the length of this article is 1,219 words (not counting the tdlr summary).

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GregJameson

Greg Jameson has been writing blog articles on ecommerce and internet marketing for over 10 years. Learn more about Greg at https://webstoresltd.com/about/