If you’re running an eCommerce website, there’s one question you should ask yourself: Is your product page SEO ready to rank higher on Google search?
Fortunately, Google has provided guidelines for using product markup, and all these changes make it even more important to follow them. Worth the highlight, recently, Google introduced two new SEO best practices for product markup, and these are not just tips for a better ranking strategy; they are absolute must-do if you want to stay ahead of your competition.
Here are these updates on how they will affect your business and how Bullzeye Media Marketing can effectively assist you in getting the most out of it.
Why Product Markup Matters
But before we discuss the new best practices mentioned above, we need to recap why product markup is essential. Product markup is tagging added to your product page to help a search engine understand what your web page is all about. This markup also helps your products look more attractive to users by improving the rich snippets in search results.
Such rich snippets include price, availability, and reviews, which means that your product listing will be more appealing on the search results page to a potential buyer. Google aims to make shopping easier, faster, engaging, and informative for users.
Your goal? To be the brand that customers choose because your product listing differs from others.
Now, let us share two new Google best practices and ideas and explain how they help improve product pages.
1. Recommendations For Product Markup
To enhance the accuracy and visibility of your product information in search results, Google recommends adding Product markup directly into the initial HTML of your pages. This means including structured data about your products, such as their name, price, availability, and other important details, within the main code of your webpage when it first loads.
By doing this, you ensure that Google’s web crawlers can quickly access and understand the key information about your products as soon as they visit your page. When this information is embedded directly in the initial HTML, it helps search engines more effectively display accurate product details in search results. This can improve your product’s visibility and ranking, as Google favors content that is clear and easily accessible for users.
Essentially, this practice makes sure that the most important product details are immediately available to search engines, reducing the risk of missing or incomplete information that could affect how your products appear in search results.
Think about it: Despite lacking these unique identifiers, Google only has descriptions or titles on its website as examples. This allows for non-specific interpretations coupled with pulling low on-ranking results.
2. Generated Markup
While Google still supports JavaScript-generated markup for eCommerce websites, their latest update comes with an important caution.
Google now recommends that websites make sure their servers are equipped to manage the increased traffic from Google’s crawlers. This is because relying on dynamically generated markup could result in less frequent and less reliable crawls from Google’s shopping-specific crawlers, which can impact how product details, like availability and pricing, are updated.
For eCommerce sites that use JavaScript to display product information, this is especially crucial, as it may lead to delays in how quickly Google picks up time-sensitive details. If your site relies heavily on JavaScript for these updates, it may be time to reconsider your approach to ensure optimal crawl efficiency and accuracy.
Suppose a customer was particularly looking for a blue T-shirt in a medium size and your product variants aren’t identified and marked up properly. In that case, Google may show an incorrect page version to a user, which would not be a good user experience and could mean you lose a customer. Using structured data for each variant helps to increase the chances that your products will be placed in the exact searches on Google.
Structured data markup in Google Search
Google Search works hard to understand the content of a page. You can provide explicit clues about the meaning of a page to Google by including structured data on the page. Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content; for example, on a recipe page, what are the ingredients, the cooking time and temperature, the calories, and so on.
Why These Changes Matter to Your Business
Adapting these new best practices is not just about Google; it is about beating the other competitors out in the field. Optimizing your product pages in compliance with these new rules will improve your search result rankings, customer experience, and sales.
While some of these changes may be slight and mainly invisible to an end user, these minor technical tweaks can apply vast pressure to how customers see and discover your products. This is perhaps true in any field, particularly in eCommerce, as getting any edge, no matter how slim, could spell the difference between success and failure.
The way your products are marked up must be modified from time to time to adapt to changes, and as a business such as yours, Bullzeye Media Marketing is here to advise and assist. In fact, it’s not just our goal to ensure that your product pages are 100% compliant with Google’s guidelines; it’s also our pursuit to ensure that your product pages are fully optimized to enhance search and the users’ experience with it.
At Bullzeye Media Marketing, we go the extra step of making sure your product listing is perfect so that every version and feature of your product is listed in the search engines, thus helping you get each sale.
How Bullzeye Media Marketing Can Help You Adapt to These Changes
If you’re unsure how to implement these new best practices on your website, don’t worry—that’s where we come in. At Bullzeye Media Marketing, we specialize in helping businesses optimize their online presence, including their eCommerce platforms. We’ll work with you to:
- Implement GTINs, MPNs, and brand information into your product pages
- Add structured data for all product variants to improve search visibility
- Conduct audits of your current product markup to ensure you’re compliant with Google’s guidelines
- Offer ongoing SEO services to improve your overall ranking and boost sales
When you partner with us, you’re not just getting a service provider; you’re getting a team of experts committed to growing your business. Our customized approach ensures that your eCommerce platform is perfectly positioned to meet and exceed industry best practices, giving you a competitive edge.
Ask Out of the Box: FAQs
GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers) are unique identifiers for products that help search engines distinguish between similar items. Including GTINs in your product markup ensures that your listings are accurately matched to user searches, improving visibility and relevance in search results.
By using structured data for each variant of your product, you make it easier for search engines like Google to display the most relevant product version (e.g., specific color or size) in search results. This improves search visibility and the customer experience, leading to increased conversions.
Yes, these best practices apply universally across eCommerce platforms. Whether you’re using Shopify, WooCommerce, or a custom-built platform, including product identifiers and properly marking up product variants will benefit your search performance.
Conclusion
Google’s new best practices for product markup aren’t just recommendations—they’re essential for staying competitive in the online marketplace. Structured data for variants can improve your product visibility, enhance the user experience, and ultimately drive more sales.
At Bullzeye Media Marketing, we understand the complexities of these updates and can help your business implement them effectively. With our expert guidance, your product pages will be fully optimized to perform at their best in search results. Ready to take your eCommerce game to the next level? Contact us today, and let’s make your product pages stand out.
