Discussing Top Tips from Google on How to Get Better Rankings in Search for Your E-Commerce Website, Why You Should Get Rid Of Internal Redirects and This Weeks Google News.
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Top E-Commerce Tips from Google!
Have an Awesome Meta Title
- Google will rewrite it if it doesn’t adequately describe the page content, using the h1 of the page or anchor text from links to the page. Don’t use dynamic information such as the price as there is a lag in updating the title tag in serps.
Use High Quality Images
-Use the best images you can, and avoid using manufacturer images as this is what you will find 90% of competitors use. Place the product in an appropriate location to show size/scale and with objects of reference to showcase the item/object.
Use Structured Data / Rich Data
Structured data will help google to understand the product better and may make your product eligible for rich result displays. So ensure you use structured data coding such as Schema.org. Include if possible - title, description, images, rating, price, offer and availability - if you can include more do so (and refer to google structured data guidelines https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structured-data/product for more guidance… )
Share Price Drop Data
I mentioned above using structured data for the ‘offer’ this is if you have a sale, and the price is different in an ‘offer’ / sale… well this gives a ‘price drop’ as google refer to it and allows you to potentially be come eligible for more space in search results. Take advantage and update your structured data if you can.
Identifiers
If your product has a GTIN or other global identifier, you can again use structured data to mark this out. This allows Google to know exactly the product you are showcasing and compare it directly with other, and make your product eligible for product carousels (potentially).
Create a business profile! (if you have a physical location)
Greeting a google my business / business profile ensures google can give you as much credibility locally as possible and make your products eligible as specific listings along side local listings.
Always Get Rid of Internal Redirects
One of the questions that SEO’s often get asked is about existing URLs on websites and should they get replaced, this is particularly the case with a move to secure websites or should you move from www to non-ww (or vice-versa).
Recently Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller weighed in on this, and said ‘yes’ its worth doing but not because you are going to get any tangible seo benefit but rather a performance benefit - which again is something we the SEO community have always said.
In essence if you have an internal link that is for the non-www but your site is www. You are forcing a redirect for no reason, a second or so of redirect time which is a performance improvement for free.
But additional to this you also start to remove the risk of creating large redirect chains (big chains can cause browsers and search engines to simply stop an index), of redirect loops (cycles which cause errors) and of broken links (if the redirect is simply not right).
If you use wordpress plugins such as blue velvet urls and better search replace are great for updating old urls - even if your entire url changes!