Making your products visible in search results is no easy feat… But who can provide better tips than Google itself?
The company released a helpful video that outlines best practices for making your product visible in search results.
Let’s get ranking…
1 – Make sure your products are indexed. Google relies on crawlers to locate and index all product pages on your website.
The quickest way to help Google discover product pages is to create a Merchant Center (MC) Product Feed. That’s also the first step to optimize your store for search engines.
2 – Check product pricing data. If Google extracts this data incorrectly, the search results will likely show your original price instead of your discounted price.
Use the site:”[url of your product page]” query to check the search results. If the product information is incorrect, add structured data to the page and MC.
3 – Minimize inconsistencies in pricing and availability. Google crawls your website on its own schedule. A gap in timing could cause prices to differ between website and search.
You can reduce the lag in two ways: Request MC to process your feeds more frequently, or enable the Automatic item updates option.
4 – Ensure your pages are eligible for rich product results. Featured snippets, pricings, brand snippets, and other rich results can help you drive more traffic to your product page.
Use Google’s Rich Results Test tool to check if your product page is eligible. If not, you should provide structured data in your product pages and a product feed in the MC.
5 – Share product inventory data. If you have a physical store, make sure your products can be found if users search for “near me” queries.
Stand near your store and google for “[your product] near me.” If the page doesn’t appear, register your store locations in Business Profile and provide local inventory feed to MC.
6 – Sign up for the Shopping Tab. Maybe your products are available for search results, but aren’t appearing. To see if they’re present, go to the Shopping tab and search for them.
If you don’t see them there, provide product data feeds to MC and opt-in to Surfaces across Google to fix it.
Basically, we can wrap up these tips with two words: Merchant Center. Make sure you’ve done your due diligence in MC and you’ll have much less to worry about. Simple as!
Alex Lim
Alex Lim is a certified book reviewer and editor with over 10 years of experience in the publishing industry. He has reviewed hundreds of books for reputable magazines and websites, such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and Goodreads. Alex has a master’s degree in comparative literature from Harvard University and a PhD in literary criticism from Oxford University. He is also the author of several acclaimed books on literary theory and analysis, such as The Art of Reading and How to Write a Book Review. Alex lives in London, England with his wife and two children. You can contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Website | Twitter | Facebook
