The SEO world has been shaken up quite a bit when it comes to Ecommerce searches....with the Helpful Content Updates, Google's Helpful Content System, and then incorporating that into their Core Ranking Systems. This was released in parallel as Google started surfacing these "Popular Products" tables (and AI of course)....and this creates an environment that ecommerce stores need to understand what has happened, why it's happening, and what to look for and do in order to survive and thrive with ecommerce SEO both now and into the future.
We've consolidated a number of articles and helpful Q&A's that we've written which cover many things that we've found are critical for you to know about. We will continue adding to this list and reorder them as necessary, in order to educate you and try to focus your efforts and money on ecommerce SEO initiatives that provide the most value for your store. Here we go:)
- Google Interview (Video) - The Present and Future of SEO is People First Helpful Content (SUPER important to understand and completely consistent with the helpful content white paper we wrote earlier in the year)
This video is an interview between an SEO influencer and Google's Danny Sullivan. What's critically important about this is that if you listen to what Danny is saying...it's not even about Google....it's about what is best for the searcher. By Google servicing the searcher best....that is how Google (or any other search engine like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing, etc) will need to think and optimize towards in order to get or maintain their position as a place people go to in order to get helpful, reliable information. See video here. If you understand this, you'll understand that creating "content for SEO" is simply creating content for your customers....and then applying SEO to that content. This is the present and future of SEO....and is critical for any business if they want to be relevant with organic traffic (regardless of what search engine) both now and into the future. - Merchant Listings Errors Causing Big Issues (Answerbase and our trusted ecommerce agencies can help if you schedule a call)
As Google has started having "Popular Products" tables taking over ecommerce searches, we've talked to customers who have gotten crushed in this transition and many times there are relatively simple technical SEO. We encourage you to read our article about these Issues in your Google Search Console Merchant Listings Reports and if you'd like you can schedule a call with us and we'll either be able to help you immediately on our end (no charge) or if you need further help we have trusted partners we can connect you with who know what they're doing. - Are all of your products reflecting in the "Merchant Listings" reports in Google Search Console?
After you make sure the more obvious things are done to ensure you're not showing any errors in the "Merchant Listings" report in Google search console....then it's a matter of ensuring that you can ensure that as many of your products as you can are actually recognized within that report. - How Important is Domain Authority with Popular Products Rankings?
As we've made the transition from a "Q&A tool with SEO benefits" to an "SEO Tool"....and we can lift short tail product searches through focused helpful content on product and category pages....we've had a lot of "interesting" conversations with SEO "experts" and agencies and we've seen some the things they've communicated aren't so relevant as they're communicating (and selling). At least what we've seen with Google's recent changes. Domain Authority is one of these things, so we've written about Domain Authority and Popular Product Table Rankings for you to read and be aware of so you can most effectively allocate your resources towards things that are actually useful/profitable for you. - How does "Helpful Content" impact "Popular Products" and short tail ecommerce product search rankings?
The end goal of creating content for SEO is not just to get clicks and impressions, it is to drive more traffic to your product pages and lift the positions of your products within organic searches for those products. We've seen a very clear relationship between the sharing of "people first helpful content" and how that impacts the short tail searches that ecommerce merchants are interested in. We encourage you to read an article on how helpful ecommerce content has performed thorugh Google's core updates and how it lifts the short tail product searches. - How can you see reports on how you're ranking for Popular Products on Google?
Many of the reporting and auditing tools are simply not giving you the information you're needing to (1) report back effectively on how you're performing and (2) know what to do next, cutting out all the nonsense, and focusing on things that actually drive results. We've seen some pretty bad examples of reporting tools communicating "wins" that are really horrible losses as the traditional SEO results are buried under tens of "Popular Products" tables (yet the reporting tool is showing as position of 1-3)....so you can read more about this in this article and we can help make sure you know what grand you're standing on. - Google's "Information Gain" Patent and Why It's Critical for SEO Moving Forward: We wouldn't' be surprised if "information gain" is driving a lot of the disruption in rankings in 2024 (and beyond), and Google keeps signaling why this is so. In 2022 Google was issued a patent for an "information gain score"...and basically what happens is if a person clicks into the #1 result....then the #2 result should be adding value (showing "information gain") on the topic that the first result did not have. The third result should be showing "information gain" that the first two results did not have. Think about the searcher's experience...if you do a search and then every click for any result within that result....you're guaranteed to learn something new that is actually demonstrating original experience and expertise from an authority that you can trust. That woudl be awesome, and that is what Google is after. We suspect this is why a lot of the copycat content has gotten crushed and will continue to. The common content marketing practices are no longer going to work as they used to.....these broken processes (that the "information gain score" solves for)were typically seeded from keyword research, followed by competitor research or identifying "People Also Asked" questions or some other kind of content that is already out there, which is followed by a content brief created by somebody who knows nothing about the topic, and then written by a person who knows little/nothing about the topic....and then if you're lucky, it's proofread by somebody who might know what they're talking about but really just editing it to make sure it is publishable (not creating huge value). What you get out of that process is a bunch of content that is 90%-99% "nothing of new value"....and Google doesn't want to send users to that. We encourage you to read more about How to find topics and facilitate information gain for ecommerce, How Information Gain Applies to Ecommerce and also Google's warning and thoughts about creating copycat content primarily sourcing content ideas through Trends, PAA, Competitor content, etc. The future of SEO is (1) an original request for information by one of your actual customers that is unique to them and their unique needs/experiences and (2) having that distributed and fulfilled by somebody within your company that is able to share their unique experience/expertise to make sure that it is an awesome experience to the customer (and therefore future searchers with that same need). Answerbase empowers merchants to do this...and if you're creating content outside of these considerations (whether through Answerbase or another solution or process)....your content and site are likely going to suffer (if it hasn't already).
In general, we've seen product Q&A content (powered by Answerbase) completely go through the roof as Google has continued to steer towards quality "people first helpful content"....see a report on a broad range of our customers here (taken Nov 20, 2024):
We'd love to help you as much as we can and/or connect you with a trusted agency partner, so please
Schedule a free Ecommerce SEO Consultation or
Schedule an Answerbase Demo...and we'll make sure you're taken care of.
