Patrick Niersbach is the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Syndigo, a product content management and distribution platform.
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As a marketer, making sure your products rank on Google and multiple retailer sites isn’t always easy, but it’s important for your business’s growth.
This is especially true because of the pandemic, which McKinsey says spurred 10 years worth of e-commerce penetration growth in just three months. My company, an e-commerce content management and syndication company, tracked activity across nearly 3 billion e-commerce page views in 2020 and found that during the first months of the pandemic, indexed retail traffic was 10%–20% higher than historical averages and on par with most holiday seasons. And while this traffic activity leveled off some as we settled in over spring and summer, shoppers maintained a high level of product searches while spending more on “buy online, pick up in-store” (BOPIS) methods.
If you can get your online products to rank highly, you can take advantage of this spike in online shopping.
There are two major questions when it comes to ranking: Where do you get your products to rank? And how do you get your products to rank?
Where Do You Get Your Products To Rank?
Your strategy will be determined by which sites you want to rank on, and as a supplier of consumer goods, there’s no shortage of routes you can take.
There are two ways a potential buyer can find products on Google. The first is through an organic Google search, which requires the retailer to use smart SEO strategies and ensure their website is well-optimized for search. That’s why the first several search results for a product will usually be well-known stores like Walmart, Etsy, Amazon and so on.
The second way customers can search is the Google Shopping listings, which are ranked based on relevance or advertiser payment. A combination of high keyword bids and exact matches to product information can help you rank. You can use Google’s Merchant Center to take advantage of this.
Online Retailers
A lot of shoppers will search for products directly on a retailer’s site, such as Walmart.com or Amazon.com. The visibility your product receives on each retailer’s site is generally dependent on how well you optimize your product’s content.
This brings us to our second question.
How Do You Get Your Products To Rank?
Core Content
Product pages usually consist of two parts: core content and enhanced content. Core content is the basic information that gets your product seen by Google and/or the retailer you’re listing with. Generally, it includes the product name, detail-dense and keyword-rich descriptions and a few product images. This is the data that a shopper sees on the top of a web page or mobile app, and it’s essential that this data is correct.
Core content is the content that’s stored on the retailer’s site and what becomes part of their database of products. Most retailers require you to deliver this content in their format or else your item may not get listed. Something as simple as forgetting a photo could prevent shoppers from seeing your item.
And as you update your product information, it’s important to keep it current across all your channels. Incorrect information can lead to unsatisfied customers, high return rates, lower rankings and possible removal of your product listing. But with effective core content, you’re much more likely to be ranked highly in any search for your type of product.
It’s also important to make sure your product attributes are aligned with the terms and details your customers are actually searching for. For example, if you sell TVs, you’ll need to do more than just list them as TVs. You need to include everything that people search for in relation to these items: size, resolution, panel type, etc. And each retailer may require you to have a different taxonomy (or naming convention), which means that keeping these listings accurate and updated can be a taxing process (no pun intended).
By organizing your product categorization from your shopper’s point of view, using familiar keywords and making sure that your information is clear, transparent and easy to understand, you’ll be a lot more likely to make those product sales.
Enhanced Content
Enhanced content is the additional creative that helps a shopper engage with a product through interactive images, galleries, side-by-side comparisons, short videos and specific feature information that helps move the product into the cart. Whereas core content is there to inform, enhanced content is what sells. This is where you have your chance to build brand identity, speak to your buyer’s needs and provide more reason to purchase from you as opposed to a competitor.
And while enhanced content isn’t generally indexed by retailer sites, some retailers may require enhanced content in addition to core content on your product pages. That’s because it is good at attracting and engaging their customers. In addition, it’s possible that Google will see enhanced content, which means you could also potentially improve your ranking in a general Google search. And when a retailer sees your product selling, they will likely rank it higher on their lists.
Conclusion
Optimizing your content and keeping it up to date is key to ensuring that your products rank well. Making sure your data is complete and accurate, building out your taxonomy to make it easy to find your products and keeping your information engaging will help you make sure that any partners you sell with keep you and your company’s offerings high on their list.
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