There’s a variety of changes that will impact seo for ecommerce product pages in 2023.
I want to share with you what to look out for with eCommerce brands.
Why?
Becuase it’s important to brands that product pages rank, right?
However.
Rankings can, and will fluctuate over time.
Key areas that will impact seo for your ecommerce product pages
Google’s Generative AI
One of the biggest changes coming to eCommerce product pages in 2023 is Google’s Generative AI.
Expect this to change the industry in 2023!
If you’ve not heard about these changes, you’re living under a rock!
Here’s what Google says:
“When searching for a product, you’ll get a snapshot of noteworthy factors to consider and products that fit the bill. You’ll also get product descriptions that include relevant, up-to-date reviews, ratings, prices and product images. That’s because this new generative AI shopping experience is built on Google’s Shopping Graph, which has more than 35 billion product listings — making it the world’s most comprehensive dataset of constantly-changing products, sellers, brands, reviews and inventory out there. In fact, every hour, more than 1.8 billion listings are refreshed in our Shopping Graph to give people fresh, reliable results.” – You can read the full article here.
If the globe adopts this, then it changes everything.
In my opinion, this is rushed out to compete with OpenAI – more importantly, ChatGPT.. You know what this is!
Before we dig into this, have you seen the eCommerce product page SEO checklist?
SERP Changes
SERP changes are also expected to impact seo for ecommerce product pages in 2023.
Google is constantly testing different ways of displaying their results, just like they did with mobile sites a few years ago when they added more ads to the top of the page.
Expect changes in the way Google displays their organic search results!
But.
Here’s a few SERP changes to look out for when ranking eCommerce product pages with SEO.
Personalisation
Google will try to understand each user’s journey and adapt the SERP to the journey.
Why?
Becuase it delivers a solid user experience and helps a potential customers to achieve their goal, whether it’s buying a product, or signing up for a service.
Quality importance for ranking
As you guessed, quality is an important factor when it comes to ranking in the SERPs, right?
Well..
Google’s algorithm is constantly looking to feature the most valuable and trusted resources in the SERPs. The last thing Google wants is duplicate content.
Google wants to trust that a product page delivers exactly what the customer is looking for.
Google knows that the product is not enough… Usually supporting pages are needed.
Brands that better the customer journey can expect to be rewared by Google.
SERP feature changes
As Google’s algo evolves (every dam day), you can expect the SERP to change.
Google will constantly try to match a searcher’s query.
To do this, they will test SERP features from various data sources.
What happens if they test a new data source and it works?
Well, that SERP will change. This will lead to product pages dropping out of the SERP.
This is very common in the food and health niches.
Keyword or Query understanding
Google is super-clever at understanding a keyword.
Take the target keyword “coffee” for example. When you fire up a search engine, such as Google, you can expect to see in the SERP:
- Local map pack of coffee shops
- Health information on coffee
- Coffee product pages
- Brands
This shows Google’s adaption of parsing keywords and understanding the differect intents behind them.
Clever, right?
But.
This leads to Google, again, testing, testing, testing.. Which leads to some brands winning, and some not!
Devices i.e. Desktop and Mobile
Devices – Desktop and Mobile
When it comes to SEO for ecommerce product pages, the device used to access the page is an important factor.
Why?
Google will switch up the SERP depending on the device used to trigger the query.
Expect more of this in 2023:
- SERP heavy Sitelink carousels
- Showcase shopping ads
- Purchases on Google
This 100% will impact on how you rank product pages this year.
Zero Click Serps
Zero-click searches are queries that don’t result in landing on a website.
Not great right for product pages?
This is due to SERPs features in Google that provide quick answers to the customer’s question.
The purpose of this is to improve user experience, rather than just answering the question quickly.
This is very niche dependant… Google wants to make revenue from PPC. So they would want to push customers to product pages that generate them revenue.
However.
This can certainly impact eCommerce sites and click-through rates.
Latest Changes To Google SERPs… I.E.. Noisy SERPs
Google is constantly updating its SERP (search engine results pages), including featured snippets, images, videos, and more.
This means that your product pages can get pushed down the SERP, if Google features other results that better answer a user’s query.
Therefore, it is important to review your content regularly to ensure it is up to date with the latest changes.
Some examples of SERP changes are:
- Infinite scroll
- Integrated organic image thumbnails
- FAQs
- PPC ads placements
- Images
- Carousels
- Videos
- Shopping features
- Bard or Google’s Generative AI
Tips for ranking product pages with SEO in 2023
Every eCommerce brand wants to rank product pages to increase revenue.
But.
there’s a lot to think about, for example, product URL, product schema, link relevant products, and more.
So, here’s a quick product page optimisation checklist to think about for landing your target customers with your eCommerce SEO strategy:
- Work on your Your Keyword/topic Strategy
- Optimise Titles And Meta Descriptions to match customer intents
- Mark Up Product Pages With Structured Data
- Add Clear And Helpful FAQs for your customers
- Always Write Unique Product And Meta Descriptions
- Share Real Testimonials And Customer Reviews
- A/B Test Your Landing Pages To Find The Best
- Use High-Quality Video And Imagery To Be Featured in Google’s AI
- Minimise Page Load Times which should be a standard in 2023!
- Audit Your Product Pages For Technical Issues
Ecommerce websites need to do what is needed to reduce bounce rate, increase conversion rate, and to get those 5-star product reviews!
Adding Structured data to your products
Adding structured data to your product page good to help search crawlers understand the context of your product page.
Why?
Structured data adds structure and context to your content, providing search engines with the information they need to index and crawl your products.
Structured data helps search engines understand the meaning behind the words on each page. It also allows search engines to better understand relationships between different pieces of content.. I’m going to go into entities for SEO on the page. But it’s something you need to keep in mind!
Make sure to check out my video:
