Ecommerce SEO is an interesting enterprise. Not only do you have to account for the big players in search – Google and Bing – you might also have to account for on-site surge engines when selling on platforms like Amazon. Ecommerce SEO also depends on a different kind of content.
Google has done ecommerce operators a big favor by compiling a ton of relevant information designed to help them succeed on the world’s largest search engine. A good place to start in an effort to understand how Google approaches ecommerce is to take a look at their best practices. You can find them here. Below is a brief summary of each one.
1. Learn the Surfaces
Google’s first ecommerce SEO best practice is to learn about the various surfaces on which ecommerce content can appear. Organic search results are a given. Other surfaces include Google Lens, Google Shopping Tab, and the Google Business Profile. Understanding each surface is the starting point for learning how to guarantee your content gets viewed.
2. Share Your Product Data
Google encourages ecommerce operators to share product data with them in order “to increase eligibility for richer appearances and on more surfaces.” Sharing data includes providing structured data for product pages and telling Google and about specific products you want to highlight on the search engine. This can be done through the Google Merchant Center.
3. Include Relevant Structured Data
Google’s algorithms understand ecommerce websites better when their crawlers have access to structured data offered in a standardized, machine-readable format. Sound structured data can improve Google’s accuracy.
4. Learn How to Launch a New Website
Next, Google recommends learning how to properly launch a new website. Topics to research include verifying site ownership, submitting your site to Google for indexing, tracking indexing results, and so forth.
5. Write High Quality Product Reviews
Product reviews are an ecommerce operator’s primary tool for describing products to potential customers. Learning how to write high quality reviews can make an enormous difference. Google recommends using reviews to demonstrate knowledge about the product and present a user’s perspective.
6. Design and Ecommerce URL Structure
The shared volume of some ecommerce sites can make crawling and indexing difficult. Therefore, Google recommends designing a URL structure using a standard specific to ecommerce sites. An ecommerce-based structure makes indexing a site easier and more effective.
7. Help Google Understand That Structure
In order to facilitate even better indexing, Google recommends creating a site navigation structure with links between pages. Google’s algorithms will attempt to understand structure by analyzing things like the number of links necessary to find a particular page. Simply put, site structure should be crawler friendly.
8. Implement Sound UX Practices
Finally, Google recommends implementing sound user experience (UX) principles. Two specific suggestions are pagination and incremental page loading. The two practices can enhance UX through faster load times, a better mobile experience, and improved backend performance. These are all things Google looks for in hopes of serving users the best results possible.
A Word About Other Search Engines
As we wind down, it is important to note that these best practices may or may not apply to other search engines. We chose to focus on Google here because they are the dominant leader in search. If you are selling on a site like Amazon, their on-site search engine works a bit differently. You will need to learn how it works to maximize its usefulness for your business.
If you need help with ecommerce SEO, give us a shout. We would be happy to explain what we can do for you.
