Where Ecommerce Implements Technical SEO/Schema
Marketers at ecommerce companies are preparing much earlier this year for the holidays, but some are challenged to keep up with the ever-changing search engine results page (SERP).
BrightEdge shared recommendations for search engine optimization (SEO) marketers focused on ecommerce based on what the company sees around the combination of that ever-changing SERP and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content flooding the web.
“I have been talking a lot with leading top 10 ecommerce organizations, they are all preparing much earlier this year for holiday campaigns,” said Jim Yu, BrightEdge CEO.
Campaigns such as Back to School are already underway. Retailers are also looking at what they can do during the holiday season. They are looking at competitor gaps and content gaps to capitalize on opportunities early. This includes ensuring they put the right content on their sites and pages.
Ecommerce marketers are focused on:
- Advanced planning for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas
- Working with creative early on product imagery and video
- Rethinking relevant titles and descriptions
- Building up 3rd party review content and social media integration/reviews
- Revisit CRO strategies and basket abandonment strategies
Yu suggests focusing on the core basics to prepare, especially when it comes to ecommerce conversions and transactions.
“The focus on SEO and Schema is something marketers are doing to stay ahead of continual changes made by Google,” Yu says.
Schema is a part of technical SEO that requires adding more content and technical data onto the page, which helps the search engine identify information, Yu adds.
BrightEdge analyzed about 6,000 keywords related to ecommerce during the past three years. Through its platform SearchIQ, it is tracking what are the things that impact ranking. Across all categories it supports, BrightEdge found an increase in 4-times in the presence of Schema tags in the top-ranking positions, compared with the same timeframe last year.
There are different types of Schema tags. Yu cites some of the more important types for those who have improved rankings in search engines, including Image Object, Organization, and Author.
The fundamentals that ecommerce marketers need to consider are:
- Website Structure and Performance: User Experience, Navigation, Page Speed and CWV
- Technical SEO: Page and layout optimization, content optimization, Schema
- Content: New content, images, product, reviews, video, and alt format types, informational and transactional content
An increase in content online means the creation of more unstructured data, making it critical to use business intelligence and insights. Using these insights to understand conversational intent as the key trigger to AI-generated results will be critical, Yu said.
In ecommerce, building different types of informational and transactional based content will be a crucial differentiator. Building an ecommerce strategy requires:
- Historical data can help understand and review which content and campaigns worked to inform Q4 strategies.
- Real-time insights identify and inform what is happening now and prioritize what to react to
- Automated recommendations help identify what categories and products are hot/ trending and focus on
- Data-led insights also allow for the personalization of content, which is critical to meet shoppers’ wants and needs.
Automation can ensure that content is dynamic and will maximize efficiency and returns, says Yu. Marketers often use automation to save time and effort on repetitive and time-consuming tasks, but embracing AI in other ways is essential.
This might include using AI to update content dynamically to ensure that products, descriptions, and essential content are always up to date and relevant. It might also mean automating tasks such as website error fixes, internal linking, and A/B testing, or automating the ability to balance technical SEO with content and creative and improve site, search, and user experiences.
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