Google product search optimization

Product pages for eCommerce and within websites can rank in standard web search, but there is an alternative and additional way to gain search visibility for products. Ecommerce businesses should explore the Google product feed, which is a datasource of all your product meta data stripped from your website.

Not only Google, but Bing also always retail businesses to submit products to participate in blended search results. For Google, products can be submitted through it's Merchant Center. You may submit product content to Google's Merchant Center using various means, including via it's APIs. In order to submit products, a business will first need to register with Google's Merchant Center and agree to it's terms, even if it also has a Google Account.

The key to Google's product feed is to add enough information to make your products more specific and useful to user searches than tradition website listings. Ensure to add enough information for very specific searches.

Optimize the product feed for search

• Submit a complete product listing, including as many specific details as possible to build relevancy. For example, variables like Size, color, etc are important.
• Individual products can be submitted manually, whereas your entire product database can be submitted using Google's API.
• Ensure you include images in your product listing.
• Consider Google Base, which will require you to employ custom fields. This will make your products in other search contexts. These variables will increase the quality of your search listings.
• Keep your feed up-to-date, especially if you are out of specific products. Ensure that your product feed contains up-to-date information.
• Use standard categories rather than make up your own. This will make you more find-able.
• Consider the seasons - Use holidays to personalize your content and gain extra traffic and leads
• Consider Google’s Product Extension Ads and connect your Google Merchant Center account to your AdWords account to gain more control over your product visibility in search. You can use product data feed in Adwords to promote products directly in your ads. They will list as product extensions.

Remember: optimization overview

Make sure you optimize your product titles and descriptions by providing clear and relevant names. This will help to maximize search visibility. Using SEO best-practices, you should write about your products employing keywords that your customers would look for.

Basic product search optimization: Product attributes for your feed

• id [id] - The unique identifier
• title [title] - Title of the product
• description - [description] - Description of the product
• google product category - [google_product_category] - Standard category of the product
• product type - [product_type] - Your category of the item
• link - [link] - URL directly linking to your item's page on your website
• image link - [image_link] - Primary URL of an image of the item
• additional image link - [additional_image_link] - More image URLs for your product
• condition - [condition] - product condition

SOURCES: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/