Project Catalo is a new way for independent professionals like you to build your business and build new income streams such as You predefine the scope, cost, timeline, and package of deliverables. Businesses can then browse and instantly buy the projects they need. Work begins as soon as the client provides the information you need to get started. To find these new client relationships, however, your project needs to be discoverable. And that means crafting effective SEO product descriptions to pitch your most in-demand services.
In this article, we’ll look at what it takes to optimize a high-quality description that’s original, unique, and gives potential clients the information they need to decide to start working with you.
The importance of SEO-friendly product descriptions
When businesses turn to Project Catalog to find the expertise they need, many of them start with a search. Whether your project comes up as a potential solution hinges on your ability to:
- Understand how to write effective product descriptions that perform well in search
- Speak to your customers’ needs and show them why your service is the one that can help
It takes an SEO-friendly product description to convert people who see your listing into new paying clients.
7 Best practices to keep in mind when writing a Project Catalog product description
When you submit a project to be added to Project Catalog, Upwork walks you through each section of the listing to make sure the most critical information is included.
This gives each listing a solid start, but it’s up to you to put together the best SEO product descriptions for your projects. And there’s one critical point to keep in mind: A generic description won’t get the results you’re looking for.
By following best practices for marketing and search engine optimization, you can create a compelling project description that highlights the best of what you have to offer.
1. Cater to your target client
Who is your ideal client?
Your product description’s main job is to get that person’s attention, explain why you’re the best fit for their project, and convince them to engage you to do the work.
To do this, it helps to understand not just who you want to reach but also:
- What pain points prompted them to check out Project Catalog
- How you can use your expertise to help them succeed
- Why they should work with you
This clarity is key if you want to avoid blending in with everybody else.
But wait. Don’t you want to appeal to a broad range of businesses? After all, you want as many new clients as possible. Right?
There’s a quote from travel entrepreneur Meredith Hill that explains: “When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.”
If you gloss over your unique qualities to appeal to as many people as possible, what you’ll end up with is something generic and forgettable.
If you excel at moving creators from Etsy to high-converting Shopify stores, pitch your services directly to the overwhelmed artist who is struggling to sell their work.
If you’re also a pro at helping nonprofit organizations incorporate e-commerce platforms into flagship fundraising events, set that up as another project. You can have up to 20 different product listings.
2. Mention the benefits of your services
Shining a spotlight on your credentials is great, but potential clients want to know one thing: “What can you do for me?”
Describing not just the product details but also the benefits of your services gets to the root of that question.
For example, a search for “content marketing strategy” brings up several possible solutions. A potential client could opt for:
- A consulting session
- SEO keyword research
- Setup on a leading content marketing platform
- Plans tailored for each of the leading social networks
- Original high-quality content
They need to decide which option offers the straightest path to the results they want. Bullet points that highlight the benefits of working with you cut down on guesswork, especially when you know who your target audience is and can speak directly to their needs.
Potential clients want to know one thing: “What can you do for me?”
So don’t just commit to delivering three well-researched, original, optimized 800-word drafted blog posts in one week. Talk about how a series of well-crafted articles can help to educate their customers, share new ways to use their product, and generate top-of-the-funnel leads that can help their sales team meet their targets.
3. Understand how you provide value to the client
We just talked about the benefits of working with you. Value is closely related—but it isn’t the same thing. As digital brand strategist Peter Thomson explained, your value proposition is “the magic fit between what you make and why people buy it.”
That magic comes from a combination of facts and feelings that come together to make your client’s life better. This includes:
- Features: The details and attributes of your service
- Benefits: What your service accomplishes for your clients
- Experience: How working with you will make things easier
It’s also shaped by the emotions of your potential customers. What are the things they want, need, and fear?
When you understand the advantages you can offer as well as the emotional impact of knowing the work will be done well, you can write more concisely to get that point across.
Let’s say you’re an instructional designer. One of your services is to consult with talented professionals to move their idea for an e-learning course from concept to a fully launched product.
- Benefits: You take an idea that can be intimidating and equip your clients with a plan to navigate each step of the process and get closer to success. This is what your clients will receive after working with you.
- Value: You help your clients get clarity around how they can create an e-learning course and position it to become a scalable income stream. By leveraging your expertise, they can create a high-impact course that will ultimately enable them to reach more people in a meaningful way. This is the meaning your work can have for professionals who choose to work with you.
That’s powerful stuff! Now you just need to figure out how to get that message across.
4. Use plain language
Whatever your skill set, use plain language to make your description as clear as possible.
If you’re a highly-skilled engineer who’s worked on a lot of complex projects, your knowledge and expertise will stand out. Your use of big words and convoluted sentences probably won’t—especially if your target audience doesn’t work in the same field or understand what you’re talking about.
So, keep your copy plain, simple, and conversational. Not only will this keep your service easy to understand, but it will also help you write an effective product description that sticks to the type of language your potential clients might use in their search.
5. Write unique and distinct copy
For a direct service like those offered on Project Catalog, the underlying assumption is that your product description is unique to your business. For a potential client, spotting repetition can be a red flag. It can also work against you when it comes to search engine optimization.
Why? Because both bots and human readers recognize and reward distinct information.
Even if there are a thousand other projects that seem similar, every professional has their voice: The language they use, their tone of voice, and how they describe their work. And, of course, the benefits and values that come from working with them.
Don’t get derailed by shortcuts. Your work is original. The way you promote each one of your products should be, too.
6. Leverage SEO basics
The goal of search engine optimization is right in the name: It’s all about making sure your efforts can be found through search.
You can use the basics of SEO to compose a description that attracts more traffic and creates more opportunities for you to convert.
For example:
- Identify the most important keywords for your work, then add them strategically to your title and the body of your project description.
- Include additional keywords and keyphrases (i.e. long-tail keywords) that are related and relevant to your main target keywords.
- Take advantage of search tags to emphasize up to five keywords (i.e., translation languages, file types, operating systems) that can help improve your project’s searchability.
7. Include a call to action
A call to action is a feature of marketing that tells users the next step to take, such as “Click on the sign-up button,” or “Contact us to make your appointment.”
In Project Catalog, there are a limited number of next steps for a potential client to take, such as sending you a message, clicking “Continue” to move their project forward, or clicking through to check out your entire profile. What you want to avoid, if possible, is for them to leave your profile altogether.
Make it easier for clients to take the next step by eliminating the guesswork: Move them toward the next action that makes the most sense for your service.
It may seem like a small thing, but when you explain what to do next and what to expect, your audience may feel more comfortable continuing with you.
What should you avoid when creating a product description?
With these best practices in mind, you can optimize a description that is well-targeted, interesting to read, and provides the information a potential client needs to decide whether they’re ready to move forward.
But there are some words of caution, too—mainly to encourage you to respect both your reader and your work by making thoughtful decisions as you put your product listing together.
Don’t use product description generators
Optimizing your description for search hinges on unique and original writing. And your target client is more likely to buy from you if you provide the information they need to make a decision, rather than something generic.
Relying on a product description generator downplays both of those factors.
Even if the generated copy makes sense—and there’s a risk that it won’t—a generic description won’t leave much of an impression.
In short, using a generator may seem like a good way to start your description—but you risk creating more problems for yourself. You’ll do much better by investing the time to make your description from the start.
Don’t write unnecessarily lengthy descriptions
There are some boundaries for your project description: It needs to be longer than 120 characters and can be as long as 1,200 characters. That gives you up to about five paragraphs to sell your services.
There isn’t an ideal description length—but you do want to avoid making it unnecessarily long.
While including keywords and key phrases in your description is important, remember that your main audience is the decision-maker who’s looking at your product—not the search bot.
Your description needs to add value and should take just as long as needed to explain who you are, what you do, and why it matters to them. Anything beyond that risks being superfluous words that don’t matter and distract from your overall pitch.
3 Examples of SEO-optimized Project Catalog product descriptions
Sample project description 1: You Will Get … Professional Amazon Product Images for Your E-commerce Store
(1,120 characters)
Get more attention and sales for your Amazon product with a high-quality main image and set of product photos that will engage your customers and provide the information they need to convert and “add to cart.”
When we work together, you get more than 10 years of e-commerce graphic design experience, including packaging and label design, product photography, and 3D mockups.
In just a few days, you’ll receive high-quality images with different angles and close-ups that:
- Highlight key features and functionality
- Provide clear measurements
- Show the scale of your product
- Are corrected to show colors with better accuracy
- Show your product in context with mockups or lifestyle images
And you can be confident that the basics are covered: Every photo will meet Amazon’s product image requirements, including a white background, realistic color, and appropriate cropping.
Images can be provided in TIFF, JPEG, GIF, or PNG format.
Choose the service tier that best matches the number of products you have and the type of images you’re looking for, then click on “Continue” so we can get started. I look forward to working with you!
Why it works:
- The target client is an Amazon store owner.
- Keywords include “Amazon product images,” “image requirements,” “product photos,” and relevant file names.
- Benefits are highlighted in the bulleted list.
- The value provided is indicated through the benefit of years of experience, confidence that the images will meet Amazon’s requirements, and the advantage of a quick turnaround.
- Ends by clearly describing the next steps to take.
Sample project description 2: You Will Get … A Branded Presentation or Presentation Template
(1,198 characters)
You need a professional presentation design—or presentation templates—that will impress your audience, whether it’s for a client pitch, your next team meeting, or an upcoming webinar.
I create eye-catching presentation slides that use a variety of design elements, follow formatting best practices, and include effective slide layouts to enhance your content and data.
You’ll get an engaging presentation that:
- Incorporates your company logo and meets brand guidelines
- Uses an on-brand color scheme
- Is created using the presentation software of your choice (i.e., Microsoft PowerPoint, Keynote, Canva, Google Slides, Prezi)
- Incorporates your images or appropriate stock photography
- Is optimized for social media use, if required
All I need to get started is the data or content to be included in your presentation. Once you have your stunning presentation in hand, all you’ll need to focus on is your five-star delivery.
Choose the service tier that best fits your project scope or requirements:
- A basic slide deck
- An interactive presentation
- A business presentation that includes supporting materials (i.e., infographics)
Please send me a message if you have any questions or click “Continue” to get started.
Why it works:
- The target client is a manager at a small or midsize business.
- Keywords include leading presentation programs, “templates,” “presentation software” and “webinar”.
- Benefits are noted in the bulleted list.
- The value provided is highlighted after the deliverable is mentioned: “…all you’ll need to focus on is your five-star delivery.”
- Ends by clearly describing the next steps to take.
