Using structured data and the Google Merchant Centre are two of the six methods that RS Digital recommends for optimising an e-commerce website for search results.
RS Digital offers six ideas for search engine optimization (SEO) that make use of structured data and the Merchant Centre to help websites make the most of their visibility in search results.
The importance of utilising Google Merchant Centre is needed since it enables shops to contribute product data via the use of structured feeds.
Data is collected more reliably from Merchant Centre feeds than it is when Googlebot crawls your website. This is because the feeds have been built to be readable by machines.
On the other hand, this does not imply that you should abandon the use of structured data on product pages and instead depend only on Merchant Centre. Even if you provide your product data to Google via a feed created in the Merchant Centre, it is still necessary for your products to have organised data.
The guidelines that RS Digital provides about SEO for ecommerce websites centre on maximising the effectiveness of both tools.
1. Make Certain That Products Are Indexed
When it crawls a website, Googlebot will skip over pages that aren’t connected to by any other pages on the site. For instance, on e-commerce websites, some product pages may only be seen via the site’s internal search results.
By leveraging technologies like an XML sitemap and the Google Merchant Centre, you may increase the likelihood that Google will scan all of your product pages.
It will be easier for Google to find all of the items on your website if you create a product feed via the Merchant Center. The URLs of the product pages are sent to the Googlebot crawler so that it may utilise them as jumping off points for prospective crawls of further sites.
2. Confirm That the Product Prices Are Accurate In The Search Engine Results
If Google collects pricing data from your product pages in an inaccurate manner, it is possible that it may publish your product’s original price rather than the reduced price in search results.
RS Digital advise that you provide structured data to your product pages and supply Google Merchant Centre with structured feeds of your product data. This will allow you to deliver correct product information such as list price, discounts, and net pricing to your customers.
Because of this, Google will be able to more accurately extract prices from product pages.
3. Minimize Price & Availability Lag
Google utilises its own timetable to crawl the websites that are located on your website. This indicates that Googlebot may not detect modifications made to your website until the next time it crawls it.
Because of these delays, search results may not reflect recent changes to the website, such as when a product runs out of stock.
Because of timing delays, it is preferable if you make it your goal to reduce the number of instances in which your website and Google’s interpretation of your site include data that is inconsistent with regard to price and availability.
At RS Digital we recommend using the product feeds provided by the Merchant Centre so that sites may be updated on a more regular basis.
4. Ensure that the items are qualified for the high-quality product outcomes.
Product structured data must be used in order to be eligible for rich product outcomes.
To take use of the rich product display style, RS digital recommends that you supply structured data on your product pages as well as a product feed in Merchant Centre.
This will help to ensure that Google understands how to acquire product data in order to deliver rich results.
Nevertheless, Google decides whether or not to provide rich results, even when the right structured data has been implemented.
5. Exchange Information Regarding the Inventory of Local Products
Make sure that consumers who search for things using the term “near me” may locate the goods that you sell in-store.
First, you will need to send a local inventory feed to Merchant Centre. After that, your Google Business Profile will be updated to reflect your real shop location.
Because your product IDs and store codes are included in the local inventory stream, Google is aware of the precise location of your stock in its physical form.
Pointy is the name of the tool that we suggest employing as a next stage in the process. Google’s Pointy is a gadget that may be connected to your in-store point-of-sale system and will automatically tell Google of inventory data gathered from your brick-and-mortar location.
The data is used to ensure that the search results are current.
6. Create an account on the Google Shopping tab.
It’s possible that your items are shown in search results, but they won’t show up on the Shopping tab for some reason.
It is recommended that you search for your items if you are unclear as to whether or not they are showing up on the Shopping page. This is the simplest approach to find out.
There has to be more than just structured data and product feeds in order for an item to be added to the Shopping tab.
You must supply product data feeds via the Merchant Centre and opt in to ‘surfaces throughout Google’ for your website to be considered for the Shopping tab.
