Recently we started working with a merchant who sells products on their site but they had not been including the type of product in the title/name of the item on the site or to the shopping engines. It was obvious at their website what they sell, but they weren’t conveying to the visitors, what the products were by their titles. Thus I was inspired to share and post.

If you sell mattresses, you better include the word mattress in your product title. If you sell electric toothbrushes, you better include the word “electric toothbrush” in the product title. If you sell Levi’s Jeans you better include “jeans” in the title. While you the merchant might think it is completely clear that AffordablePortableWidgets.com only sells a specific type widget, the shopper may not when searching on a comparison shopping engine. If you (the merchant) leave out the type of item, all a shopper is left with is a product result that leaves the shopper blind to the whole look, feel, and evidence of a theme on your website unless they click the listing and visit. Don’t just use a brand and a model number, but be sure to include the product “type” in the product name. By including the product type in the name, shoppers get confirmation that this indeed is the item they are looking for, and merchants get their products included more frequently in searches. I’m not going to go into the lengthy explanation of how search phrases and queries change and get more specific through the shopping/buying cycle online, but many merchants often miss out on being displayed for a product search simply by assuming the shopper knows what they want and are at the end of a search buying cycle. The CSE’s give you more of an opportunity to use “broad” type keywords that would typically cost much more than an exact match keyword in Google Adwords. Take the opportunity to include more generic keywords like the product type in the titles on the shopping engines.
Examples:

- a nameless merchant who sells only toothbrushes and teeth cleaning products has a “Oral-B Vitality Sonic” for sale, but they should be listing the product as “Oral-B Vitality Sonic Electric Toothbrush”

- another well known merchant who sells golfing equipment is listing a “Titleist Pro V1″ but doesn’t include the product type such as “Titleist Pro V1 Golf Balls”.