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How Google Ranks Ecommerce Sites Will Make You Cringe

by | Jul 28, 2021 | Newsletter, newsletters

According to DigitalCommerce360, two big factors Google is currently focused on in determining search rankings for ecommerce sites are useful language and content on product detail pages and page speed. Google seems to be increasingly rewarding sites that incorporate rich product pages with more information than simple traditional features. 

This is what I have been suggesting all along: Long, detailed product descriptions may or may not get read by your viewers (which is why bullet points make a huge difference), but if you want to get indexed by search engines, you need to provide as much detail about a product as possible. This of course seems to contradict Google’s other primary search criteria of how fast a page loads. You need both.

User Experience

Google’s Core Web Vitals update, which rolled out in May 2021, considers page performance and speed, and user experience (visual stability and interactivity of a site) to determine search results rankings. When it comes to Core Web Vitals, the mobile website matters more than the desktop website.

“It won’t matter if you’re a B2B retailer still getting the majority of your traffic from desktop users,” says Stephan Spencer, founder of search engine optimization agency Netconcepts. “Google will care most about your mobile site performance and speed, interactivity and visual stability.”

For the last couple years, Google has been using mobile-first indexing, which means it has mainly used the mobile version of a website for indexing (the process of adding web pages to Google search result options) and ranking. However, earlier this year, Google made mobile even more of a priority by introducing “mobile-only” indexing. This means that if retailers show some content on desktop that they do not show on mobile, it is effectively invisible to Google for indexing purposes. Essentially, Google will only consider mobile sites while indexing. Click To Tweet

Google likes rich product detail pages.

Retailers should try to find out how customers are using products and incorporate those insights into more practical, compelling and useful content. For example,

create a video explaining how to use a your product or multiple images showing step by step instructions.

“Don’t be afraid to take a little more of an editorial approach to your product content,” Spencer says. “You could even incorporate viral elements into the product detail page. For example, an infographic, quiz or meme can really spice up the page.” 

Headlines

Headlines (Product Titles) of course make the most impact with a reader. I saw a tip recently about creating headlines that I find incredibly useful. Go to a “News” site like People Magazine, Cosmopoliatn, or PageSix. Take a look at the headlines they use – almost always steamy and provocative, this is what is known as “click bait.” Your goal should be to re-word them for your particular product or service (such as what I did for this article). For example, “The Real Reason Google Abruptly Changed Its Algorithm.”

My suggestion, just like great email subject lines that I receive, whenever you come across a great click bait headline, store it in a file so you can easily retrieve it for later use when you are looking to write new copy. Of course, you want to make sure this doesn’t backfire on you – once you get people to click on your product or article, you must deliver. As I indicated above, great copy is more important than ever to Google, so keep your audience engaged to reduce your bounce rate.

Chat

Retailers without chat are missing a great opportunity according to Forrester. Only one out of ten major retailers is using chat for sales. Yet, chat is a great way to improve user experience. Make chat a cornerstone of your customer engagement strategy to not only improve your rankings, but to help customers make a sales decision and improve your bottom line. Here is a previous guest post about chatbots in ecommerce.

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