Google shares 6 SEO tips that combine structured data with Merchant Center to maximize your website’s presence in search results.
Alan Kent, a developer advocate at Google, walks you through each tip in a new video published on Google Search Central’s YouTube channel.
Throughout the video, Kent highlights the use of Google Merchant Center to enable retailers to upload product data via structured feeds.
Merchant Center feeds are designed to be machine-readable, so they’re more reliable than Googlebot crawling your website.
However, that doesn’t mean you should stop using structured data on your product pages and rely solely on Merchant Center. Even if you use a Merchant Center feed to provide your product data directly to Google, structured product data is still important.
Google may match data in your Merchant Center feed with your website’s structured data.
Our SEO recommendations for ecommerce sites revolve around getting the most out of both tools.
1. Make sure your products are indexed
Googlebot may miss pages when crawling your site if they are not linked to by other pages. For example, an e-commerce site might have product pages that are only accessible from search results within the site.
Tools such as XML sitemaps and Google Merchant Center can help ensure that Google can crawl all of your product pages.
Creating a Merchant Center product feed allows Google to discover all the products on your website. The product page URL is shared with the Googlebot crawler and may be used as a starting point for crawling additional pages.
2. Check the accuracy of the product price search results
If Google incorrectly extracts pricing data from your product page, you may see the original price in search results instead of the discounted price.
To accurately provide product information such as full price, discounts, and net price, we recommend adding structured data to your product pages and providing Google Merchant Center with a structured feed of your product data.
This helps Google extract the correct price from your product page.
3. Minimize price and availability delays
Google crawls your site’s web pages according to its own schedule. This means Googlebot may not notice changes to your site until the next crawl.
These delays can cause search results to lag behind site changes, such as product out of stock.
It is best aimed at minimizing discrepancies in price and availability data between your website and Google’s understanding of the site due to timing lags.
We recommend using your Merchant Center product feed to update your pages on a more consistent schedule.
4. Make sure your product qualifies for rich product results
To take advantage of product rich results, you must use product structured data.
To get a special rich product presentation format, we recommend providing structured data on your product pages and a product feed in Merchant Center.
This helps Google understand how to extract your product data and display rich results.
However, even with the appropriate structured data in place, the display of rich results is at Google’s discretion.
5. Share local product inventory data
Make sure that users entering queries using the phrase “nearby” can find the products in your store.
First, add your physical store locations to your Google Business Profile, then provide your local inventory feed to Merchant Center.
A local inventory feed contains product IDs and store codes so Google knows where your inventory is physically located.
As an additional step, Google recommends using a tool called Pointy. Pointy is a Google device that connects to his in-store POS system and automatically communicates physical store inventory data to Google.
This data is used to keep search results up to date.
6. Sign up for the Google Shopping Tab
Your product may appear in search results,[ショッピング]It does not appear in tabs.
the product[ショッピング]If you’re not sure if it’s on the tab, the easiest way to find out is to search for the item.
[ショッピング]Structured data and product feeds are not enough to be included in a tab.
[ショッピング]To appear on the tab, provide a product data feed through Merchant Center and[Google に掲載]Opt in to
For more information on the above tips, see Google’s full video below.
Featured image: Screenshot from YouTube.com/GoogleSearchSC, August 2022.
