Google shares technical SEO best practices for e-Commerce sites in an informative video released recently. We have summarized the main points so that you can boost your e-Commerce website’s rankings easily by providing relevant product information the way Google prefers.
“Remember that SEO still matters for organic search. Make your product details, such as images and descriptions, appealing to your customers.”
Alan Kant, Google Developer
Recently, Google provided new information and guidance to SEOs and e-commerce site owners on Google technical SEO best practices in relation to products. There are specific ways to provide the search engine with updated and correct information about products that is essential for success in rankings.
When Google has updated and correct product data then the search engine can better format search results for products to more easily assist users.
Google can display additional data for product pages such as ratings and stock levels. When this information is displayed in search results will likely increase traffic from Google to e-commerce sites. Google is also capable of displaying product information in other results pages like Google Images, Google Maps, and Google Shopping, but only when that information is available.
Alan Kent, a Developer Advocate at Google, shares the main advice for SEOs and E-commerce website owners to provide this information to the search engine, which he considers essential to technical SEO.
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Differences Between Product Data and Other Data Types
The main question is why does product information need to be provided in a different way. For many other types of data, Google can get it on its own by crawling the site.
However, Google is not able to pull certain data points from a product page on its own. This information needs to be supplied by the site through structured data markup, a product feed, or Google Merchant Center.
Google will only display product information in search results when it’s confident it has obtained the most accurate information, which is why it will not pull the data unless it is provided through appropriate channels.
Ecommerce site owners have to assist Google with verifying the accuracy of certain data its search crawlers can’t identify on their own.
Examples of such data includes:
- Original price vs. discounted price
- Related products vs. actual product being sold
- Price of product vs. taxes & shipping costs
Here’s how to provide this information to Google.
How to Provide Product Information With Structured Data
Structured data is one way to provide Google with all of the correct product information. This step is definitely a best practice for technical SEO according to Google.
There are various ways to use structured data, but the most common way is to embed it on a page as JSON-LD encoded content.
How to Use Google Merchant Center to Provide Producing Information
Another way to provide Google with updated and correct product information is through Google Merchant Center. This way is equally good for technical SEO as the structured data method.
There are different ways for sites in Google Merchant Center to get this information to Google:
- Structured data can be provided, which Google will discover through website crawling.
- A feed of all product data can be manually submitted.
- Developers can use an API to update products individually.
Summary Notes
In conclusion, here is what SEOs and E-commerce site owners need to know about sharing product information with Google for the best technical SEO results.
- Structured Data: Google will process the data with regular web crawling, but it may take days for updated information to appear in search results.
- Product Feeds: Gives site owners more control over when updates to product data will appear in Google Search.
- Content API: Update specific products on demand, updates can go live within minutes.
Check Out Google’s Full Video on Technical SEO for E-Commerce Sites Here: