Improving E-commerce SEO with AI Tools

Using ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity for E-commerce SEO

This article outlines a strategy to help you define your target audience, optimise SEO, and improve product descriptions and category pages for better customer engagement and search rankings using AI tools.

I can’t stress enough though, that AI tools are still tools, and it’s essential that you use the combination of your brain and your product knowledge when using them in order to help you get the best results.

Train your chosen conversational search engine to embody your audience.

I refer to ChatGPT throughout the article as an example; however, I do recommend that you play with Gemini, Claude and Perplexity as well, until you find one that you enjoy and gives you the best outputs for your business.

Using ChatGPT or Gemini to Help You Define Your Target Audience

Firstly we need to use ChatGPT, to help you define your target audience. Remember that you know your audience and who you serve, and why, better than any AI tool ever will. We are using ChatGPT to help us clearly define our demographic so we can train it to embody our audience and from there, we can ask it questions about our strategy.

The more information you give it about your target audience, the better the conversations are going to be that you have with it.

Brainstorm information about your target audience to the best of your ability in order to start the conversation. Below is an example that I wrote on behalf of a client after having a conversation with them face-to-face and then supplementing that with information from their website. Please take this as inspiration, make it your own and remember it’s a good idea to include what you don’t want your brand to be seen as, as well as what you do.

Example Brand Description

We are a responsible brand and love having fun with the personal style we create. We don’t like the cyclical nature of fashion that causes so much waste, and for that reason we don’t do seasonal style and are not dictated to by the established fashion calendar.

Our business was born because we couldn’t find bedding or sleepwear that matched the combination of bold aesthetics and attention to detail that we enjoy in the way we dress both ourselves and our home. We can describe our designs as ‘well-made things that have personality’ Our notion of beauty is very different to the regular form of beauty.

Our sleepwear brand is designed to be at the intersection of art and utility. The sleepwear is lightly tailored and is designed to be both practical and flattering. It is all manufactured in 100% certified organic cotton and manufactured in India using certified organic cotton in SMETA-regulated factories. As well as being beautiful to sleep in, many of our customers wear the sleepwear out in the day. It really is suitable for 24 hour, seven-day-a-week fabulousness.

Our ambition for our company is to make fabulous and durable products in a responsible manner. We also have a bedding and homeware range that is based around where you would wear your pyjamas. E.g in the bathroom, the kitchen and the bedroom e.g tea towels, wash bags and hot water bottles.

Any tiny scraps we have left are manufactured into small items such as neckties for humans and for animals.

All our garments are packed in compostable garment bags and our postal bags are recyclable. Our packing tape and address labels are also compostable.

In our marketing we don’t want to say that we are an ‘eco brand’ and neither do we want to use the words luxury, funk, jazzy or designer. We are not a fashion brand and we don’t do seasonal fashion.

Words we would use to describe ourselves might be, design-led brand, slow fashion, responsible brand, genderless brand, bold prints, dopamine dressing, tailored pyjamas, work wear, french workwear, day wear pyjamas, 24/7 pyjamas, well-made pyjamas pyjamas to wear as uniform, joyful pyjamas, fun pyjamas, pyjamas that spark joy, bold art for your bed,

Our customers are woke, they are queer and body positive and we are building a community of people buying designs. They are 80% – 90% women covering age range is 30-55.

If you like the sound of the brand above, and what they stand for resonates with you, check them out! Irregular Sleep Pattern

Prompt to define the audience of your brand

I want you to act as an experienced digital marketer specialising in e-commerce. Please help me define the audience of my brand. (copy and paste the above description in) Please ask me any questions if you need help doing this.

Response from ChatGPT

Based on the information you’ve provided, we can define your target audience with a deep understanding of their demographics, psychographics, and behaviour. Here’s a breakdown of your potential audience:

ChatGPT went on to really define the target audience covering Demographics, Psychographics, Values, Lifestyle, Interests, Shopping Behaviour, Behavioural Traits, Social Media Usage, Content Consumption, Buying Motivation and Key Audience Segments.

It also went on to describe the brand messaging and tone, and how the company should position themselves. It was extremely thorough, and although not 100% in line with the customer, it definitely gave us a lot of valuable information and ideas.

Since originally working on this project, I have gone back to ask ChatGPT in December 2024 if I hadn’t given it any information at all about the client, what would have been the breakdown of information it would have wanted from me. I’ve updated the prompt and outlined what it would find helpful.

Give your ChatGPT Conversation a title e.g Audience – (your brand)

Once you’ve read through and finished your conversation so far, I really recommend that you rename the conversation so you can come back to it at any time.

If you have used ChatGPT, you can click on the three buttons next to the conversation and rename it.

You can now always return to that conversation anytime you want to ask questions about your clients and better understand their mindset or even use it for Facebook Ad ideas etc.

You can either copy and paste the conversation into a new chat, and prompt ChatGPT to act like them, or expand on that original conversation e.g

Prompt to ask ChatGPT to act like your target audience for keyword ideas

I want you to act as my target audience. Now you understand my business, what keywords should I be targeting when optimising my category and product pages please?

Response from ChatGPT

As your target audience, here are the keywords and phrases that would resonate with us when we search for products like yours. These keywords align with our values, lifestyle, and what we look for in products: (I’m not going to list all the keywords to protect my client but these were the headings that were generated.

Types of Keywords Generated

Core Product
Material and Sustainability
Lifestyle and Values
Homeware and Bedding
Brand and Ethos
Emotional and Experiential
Niche and Long-Tail

These keywords should be incorporated into your category and product pages to optimise for search engines and ensure that your brand reaches the right audience who values sustainability, design, and individuality in their purchasing decisions.

Next we want to look for ideas of blog posts to attract your ideal audience.

Blog Post Ideas

Prompt

Thank you for these keywords, we will incorporate them into both our category/collection pages. As well as transactional and commercial keywords, we also want to write articles to generate website traffic and provide information whilst adhering to our brand values. Can you give me some ideas of titles which will supplement and complement these keywords please? We want to apply an internal linking strategy so please bear this in mind when you give me suggestions.

With each idea of a title please back that up with which keywords it is complementing or targeting.

ChatGPT Response

Certainly! Here’s a list of article title ideas, each paired with the specific keywords they complement or target. These suggestions also consider your internal linking strategy, helping to guide readers from informative content to relevant product or category pages.

This is really helpful from ChatGPT, however, understanding ‘intent’ is crucial, so the next step is to manually check these keywords to see if they all have the same intent. Are there any other nuances that would be important to consider or can we go ahead and start writing blog posts and articles?

Informational content

Informational content should be your secret weapon and is one of the best ways for eCommerce brands to build and demonstrate E.E.A.T – Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust.

Without informational content, you are in danger of being pretty much like for like if you sell the same or similar products to your competitors.

You should write & publish content that helps your customers across each stage of the funnel, from when they’re researching, to after they have purchased. Keyword research tools are great, however, you should write the type of content that your customers want to read, not just what the tools tell you you should be writing.

This is a great article to help you understand E.E.A.T better from MOZ

Simple E-commerce To Do List

Optimise Category Pages

Category pages target the keywords that your potential customers search for most frequently, but optimising category pages for organic search results can be tricky because they tend to hold less text than product pages. Having said that, there are elements that will help you to compete for competitive search terms.

Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

What is the title tag/meta title?

A title tag is one of the best indicators to search engines on a page’s content and is an important ranking factor.

The blue words you see in the search results are your meta titles, and the words underneath are your meta descriptions.

The title also affects click through rate from the Search Engine Results Page so should be written with that in mind.

Make your Headings Relevant (H1, H2,)

The H1 tag (heading 1) is the main heading title on your page and is a really significant indicator to search engines about the content on the page.

You need to start at the top of the visible page and optimise your heading tags – H1, H2 etc. This will help search engines understand the context of the content in that particular section. The primary heading, which will usually be the H1, will usually reinforce the meta title, which is your theme for the entire page and the H2 & H3 headings will support this.

So, for example, instead of having the work ‘Bedding’ as your main heading (H1), changing it to a keyword such as ‘Unusual Bedding Sets’ or ‘Interesting Bedding Sets’ will give the search engines a better understanding of the type of bedding you are designing and selling. Another example might be ‘Modular’ changing that to ‘Modular Kitchen Designs’ really is much more helpful for both your visitors and the search engines.

Include Text

Text on category pages is critical for organic search performance. It doesn’t need to dominate the page or even appear right at the top, but a short phrase is better than nothing.

An idea here would be to do some manual competitive research, looking at what’s ranking and look to see if there are any keywords you could include. The text doesn’t need to be multiple paragraphs and it should focus on using descriptive keywords that fit naturally without repeating them artificially.

You can use AI tools to help you with this, a prompt that you might consider using once you have identified your competitors could be:

Prompt for analysing competitor category page text.

I would like you to act as an experienced eCommerce SEO Strategist to help me optimise my category pages. Please conduct a competitor keyword analysis for [competitor’s website URL or name] and identify category-specific keywords they rank for that I could target on my site, [your website URL or name].

Here’s what I’d like you to focus on:

Identify high-ranking keywords for their category pages that are relevant to my products.
Suggest primary and secondary keywords for my category pages, along with their search intent and potential traffic volume.
Provide suggestions for H1 titles and other headers (H2, H3) that incorporate these keywords.
Recommend how to structure a paragraph of descriptive text for my category pages, including an example optimized with the suggested keywords.

Please also consider:

Ensuring the tone and style align with my brand voice.
Avoiding overly competitive or generic keywords that may be difficult to rank for initially.
Highlighting opportunities to differentiate my site from the competitor.

If there are tools or techniques that would provide additional insights, feel free to include them. Thank you!

When you’re reading through your category page content, also look for any opportunities for linking through to your products. You can do this manually by use the site: command in front of your URL which will bring up all your pages that contain the words you are looking to create authority on, or you can use an AI tool to help you with this.

Product Page SEO

Product descriptions describe the product and outline its benefits.

The best product description will:

Highlight the features and benefits
State why the product is the best option
Indicate the problem it solves.

How long should product descriptions be?

As always, it’s going to depend. Product descriptions can fit into one or two sentences, but it very much depends on the product specifics. Without good copy, you are going to struggle to not only be found in the search results, but also to resonate with the reader which in turn will result in few sales.

Before you start to use the AI tools to help you with this, I recommend that you put the search term into Google and look at the pages Google is ranking for that product description. If your competitor has a detailed product description and you don’t, you know what you need to do.

If Google is ranking products with minimal copy, it’s highly likely that the copy is scannable, readable and contains all the relevant information. Compare it to yours and see if you can identify any gaps.

Your description needs to give the potential buyer confidence to buy yours over your competitors.

Write for your persona

You need to make sure that your AI tools can imagine the world from your customers eyes, not yours. Use the word ‘you’ when you write and imagine you are talking to them directly. Remember they are looking for a solution to their problem and you need to make sure you are answering all the questions they have about it. They are not necessarily using the words that you do when they are looking for the product you sell. You have already done a lot of work on your brand voice so remember you can ask ChatGPT to take this into consideration.

Suggested Prompt for Product Description

Please remember that you are free to change these prompts to make them work for you. If you use them and you want to tweak them, make sure you save them so you can come back to them time and time again.

I would like you to act as an experienced eCommerce copywriter to help me write a compelling product description for [product name]. Here’s what I’d like you to focus on:

Highlight the Product’s Unique Selling Points (USPs):
- Describe what makes this product special or different from competitors.
- Include details about materials, craftsmanship, functionality, or design.
Appeal to the Target Audience:
- Ensure the description resonates with [specific target audience], addressing their needs, preferences, and pain points.
Incorporate Emotional and Practical Benefits:
- Highlight how the product solves a problem or enhances the user’s life.
- Use language that evokes emotions (e.g., comfort, joy, elegance).
SEO Optimisation:
- Suggest keywords and phrases relevant to the product and audience.
- Structure the description for readability and include bullet points if appropriate.
Tone and Style:
- Write in a tone that aligns with my brand’s voice, which is [describe your tone, e.g., playful, professional, warm, sophisticated].
Call to Action (CTA):
- Conclude with a strong, persuasive CTA that encourages the customer to take the next step (e.g., “Add to Cart,” “Discover More,” or “Experience the Difference”).

Product Details for Reference:

Product Name: [insert product name]
Materials: [describe materials]
Features: [list key features]
Target Audience: [describe audience]
Price Point (optional): [insert price]
Any Specific Messaging or Keywords to Include: [list here]

Please craft the description with both online shoppers and search engines in mind, ensuring it’s engaging, informative, and optimised for conversions. Thank you!

Once you have the results back from ChatGPT or Gemini, please make sure you read through them to make sure everything has been covered. e.g

Things to think about when you are writing your product descriptions:

What are the demographics of your audience? (gender, age etc?)
What benefits would resonate with them most?
What words would they use?
What words would they avoid? (ChatGPT can be very guilty of using the weirdest of words!)

Who, What, Where, When, Why

Who is the user of the product? We covered this in your customer persona.
What are the product details? – Highlight the basic features, materials and functions.
Where will they be using the product? Is it industry or niche related? Do they use it outdoors? Must it be kept in the fridge? Is it for a special occasion? How long will it last for?
When should you use it? Is it a one off use? Is there a usage frequency? Is it for night time etc
Why should they buy it? What are the benefits? Is it better than the competition and is it value for money?

Brainstorm the Benefits

Features are great, of course they are, but it’s the benefits of the product that are going to sell. Imagine your customer standing in front of you asking ‘What’s in it for me?’

Your Customers need to imagine themselves with the product in their hand.

You need to appeal to the user and they have to desire to own and use the product. Appeal to their emotion – ‘Imagine the delight of your mother in law when she opens the box’ etc

Remember you can always go back to ChatGPT to double check: ‘will this description resonate with my customer persona?’ it will come back and give you suggestions if not.

Conclusion

Kindly written by ChatGPT 🙂

Crafting a successful eCommerce content strategy requires a blend of creativity, data-driven insights, and a customer-focused mindset. While AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity can greatly assist in ideation, keyword research, and optimising product pages, they are most effective when paired with your deep understanding of your brand and audience.

By clearly defining your target audience and leveraging AI to embody their perspective, you can generate impactful keywords, blog post ideas, and product descriptions that resonate with potential customers. Optimising category and product pages with relevant keywords, compelling titles, and user-friendly content ensures better search rankings and increased engagement.

Remember, the key is to combine technical precision with authenticity, ensuring your content reflects your brand’s values and speaks directly to your audience’s needs. Regularly review and refine your strategy, staying aligned with industry trends and customer behaviour, to continuously drive growth and build lasting connections with your audience.

The Ultimate Guide to Using AI for Audience Insights and E-commerce SEO