Google’s 6 SEO Tips to Optimize Your E-Commerce Website

Tips to Optimize Your E-Commerce Website

Strap: Google gives six SEO tips to optimize your e-commerce website for search results. It emphasizes using structured data and Google Merchant Center.

Google has shared a video of e-commerce SEO tips in which it explains how to optimize e-commerce websites. The search engine has mentioned the SEO tips that help improve rankings of e-commerce sites in the search engine results page, driving more traffic and increasing sales.

In this blog post we will be discussing six e-commerce tips by Google that combine structured data and merchant centers to help you get most out of your website’s presence in the SERPs.

Alan Kent who is a Developer Advocate at Google talks about each of the six tips on e-commerce SEO in detail in a new video which was recently released on the Google Search Central YouTube channel.

In the VIDEO about e-commerce business visibility Kent emphasizes using Google Merchant Center (GMC).  He says that using the GMC, retailers can easily upload product data via structured feeds. It is hassle free and takes no time. Also, it does not require special training to upload the data, using the Merchant Center.

Merchant Center feeds are designed to be read by computers, and this makes the extraction of data more reliable than Googlebot which crawl your website to find information if someone searches a term related to your business.

But that does not necessarily mean that retailers should completely rely on the Merchant center alone and neglect the use of structured data on product pages. In fact, product structured data remains crucial even if you submit data directly to Google through Merchant Center feed. Using structured data along with the Merchant Center provides you an added advantage over those who do not follow this.

Google may verify the data from the Merchant Center feed against the structured data on your e-commerce sites. Therefore, one should keep this in mind while sending data to Google through the Merchant Center.

It also provides recommendations for e-commerce sites, which revolve around how to get most out of the tools – Google Merchant Center and Structured Data.

Here are six of the e-commerce SEO tips shared by Google in a video on its website.

Tip 1. Get Your Products Indexed

Googlebot can skip on pages when it is crawling through a site if these pages are not linked to other pages. It is important to know that some product pages, on e-commerce sites, are only reachable from on-site search results.

You can use tools – XML sitemap and Google Merchant Center- to make sure that Google crawls all your product pages. If the products pages are not crawled, they will not show up in the search results.

Create a Merchant Center product feed to get Google to discover all product pages on your e-commerce site.  Here the product page urls are shared with Googlebot, which allow the search engine to crawl additional pages as well.

2. Make Correct Product Prices Show in Search Results

Check product pricing search results to make sure that Google shows correct pricing data. If the search engine giant incorrectly extracts data of product pricing from the product pages, which means it shows up the original price in the search result, not the offer price.

To make sure the correct product information such as list price, discounts, and net price is shown in the search results, it is recommended to add structured data to your product pages.

Also submit structured feeds of your product data to Google Merchant Center. This helps Google to collect the correct price data from the product pages and show in the results. For e-commerce SEO, pricing consistency is very important and you must check it on a regular basis.

3. Solve Price & Availability Lag

Google crawls web pages of your e-commerce site based on its own schedule. Because of that, Googlebot sometimes misses out on changes made on your website until the next crawl. This can lead to search results not synching with the changes, such as products going out of stock.

So it is very important that you minimize any inconsistency or disparity in pricing and availability of data between your website and how Google understands your site for lags in timing.

As part of its e-commerce SEO tips, Google emphasizes on using the Merchant Center product feeds in order to keep pages updated on a regular basis.

4. Make Your Products Eligible for Rich Product Results

Use product structured data in order to make your products eligible for rich product results.

According to Google you need to provide structured data on your product pages and a product feed in the Merchant Center in order to get the special rich product presentation format. This helps Google understand how to get product data to display rich results.

Even if you do that – submit the structured data and product feed in the Merchant Center – the display of rich results will completely depend on the discretion of Google.

5. Provide Local Inventory Feed

Make sure people can find even your in-store products when they search their queries with the phrase “near me”.

To get your in-store products to be found, first you need to register your physical store location in your Google Business Profile. Once you have done that, now provide a local inventory feed to the Merchant Center.

The local inventory feeds have product identifiers and store codes which help Google know about your inventory physical location.

In addition to that, Google also recommends using Pointy – a kind of device from Google that connects to your in-store point of sale system and automatically sends inventory data from your physical store to Google. This data is used to keep search results updated about the products in your in store inventory.

6. Ensure Products Appear in Google Shopping Tab

Check if your products show up in the Shopping tab. If your products appear in the search results, it does not mean that your products will also appear in the Shopping tab. You can check it by searching for them.

If your products do not appear in the Shopping tab, you need to provide product data feeds via Merchant Center and opt-in to ‘surfaces across Google.’

More Tips from Google for E-Commerce SEO

If you are not getting the desired results even if you have implemented these e-commerce SEO tips, here are some more tips that you can follow.

• Keep patience: According to Alan, SEO is like a marathon, it takes time for results to come. Alan says, “Some ranking signals may take many months to take effect and you see no results. Therefore, continue to work. Meanwhile, you can look for ways to get traffic from other marketing channels.
• Make it user focused: Google has said for years that user experience and need matters most to it. So, when optimizing your website, keep it in mind. Optimize your website from users’ point of view, making sure you cater to their queries best.
• Find someone to help you: If not getting the desired result that you expect, you may look for the help from others such as a Houston SEO services company to help you optimize your e-commerce website and boost sales and conversion.

At Autus Digital Agency, we can provide you with optimization of your e-commerce website. We offer customized SEO and digital marketing services for e-commerce businesses and promise to bring the best results. To learn more about us and our services; call us today at 929-357-3255 or send us an email to info@autusdigital.com.