Google’s 6 SEO Tips For Ecommerce Websites

Google shares six SEO tips that combine structured data and Merchant Center to get the most out of your website’s presence in search results.

Alan Kent, a Developer Advocate at Google, describes each tip in detail in a new video published on the Google Search Central YouTube channel.

Throughout the video, Kent emphasizes using Google Merchant Center because it allows retailers to upload product data via structured feeds.

Merchant Center feeds are designed to be read by computers, which means data is extracted more reliably than Googlebot crawls your website.

However, that doesn’t mean you should forego using structured data on product pages and relying on Merchant Center alone. Structured product data remains essential even if you provide product data directly to Google with a Merchant Center feed.

Google may crosscheck data from the Merchant Center feed against structured data on your website.

Google’s SEO recommendations for ecommerce sites revolve around getting the most out of both tools.

1. Ensure Products Are Indexed

Googlebot can miss pages when crawling a site if they’re not linked to other pages. On e-commerce sites, for example, some product pages are only reachable from on-site search results.

You can ensure Google crawls all your product pages by utilizing tools such as an XML sitemap and Google Merchant Center.

Creating a Merchant Center product feed will help Google discover all the products on your website. The product page URLs are shared with the Googlebot crawler to use as starting point for crawls of potentially additional pages.

2. Check Accuracy Of Product Prices Search Results

If Google incorrectly extracts pricing data from your product pages, it may list your original price in search results, not the discounted price.

To accurately provide product information such as list prices, discounts, and net prices, it’s recommended to add structured data to your product pages and provide Google Merchant Center with structured feeds of your product data.

This will help Google extract the correct price from product pages.

3. Minimize Price & Availability Lag

Google crawls webpages on your site according to its own schedule. That means Googlebot may not notice changes on your site until the next crawl.

These delays can lead to search results lagging behind site changes, such as a product going out of stock.

It would be best if you aim to minimize inconsistencies in pricing and availability of data between your website and Google’s understanding of your site due to timing lags.

Google recommends utilizing Merchant Center product feeds to keep pages updated on a more consistent schedule.

4. Ensure Products Are Eligible For Rich Product Results

Eligibility for rich product results requires the use of structured product data.

To get the special rich product presentation format, Google recommends providing structured data on your product pages and a product feed in Merchant Center.

This will help ensure that Google understands how to extract product data to display rich results.

However, even with the correct structured data in place, rich results are displayed at Google’s discretion.

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4 SEO tricks to attract more customers

A savvy business owner like you knows the value of website optimization. In today’s cutthroat digital marketplace, an SEO-friendly website with solid keyword research, meta tags, good page speed and backlinks helps you stand out. If you want to know how to Improve search engine rankings for small business websites, you’ve come to the right place.

Here are simple ways to attract more people to your site.

1. Good backlinks can improve your search engine rankings

You must make high-quality content that trustworthy websites want to link to. Try to appeal to your industry or niche. You can even send emails to connect with influential people or experts in your field.

You may need to clean up your reputation if you’re having trouble making connections. Set up alerts to see what your customers are saying about you.

2. Your website optimization strategy needs target keywords

You can look at search suggestions from Google or use complex keyword tools like LSI Keyword Generator.

If you’re looking for free tools, check out Google Trends. QuestionDB is another helpful tool you can use to find better keywords. It helps you generate hundreds of content ideas. Just input a broad keyword to create many valuable keywords you can use.

To get started with QuestionDB, click the yellow button below:

3. Use descriptive URLs

Now that you have found the right target keywords to attract people in your industry or niche, use them in your URL and article. Putting relevant keywords in your URL can help search engines understand what’s on your page. This can make your website more visible in search results, attracting more targeted traffic.

4. Don’t overlook mobile devices in your website optimization plan

Your site needs to look good on smartphones. According to the Pew Research Center, about three-quarters of Americans buy things online using their smartphones. But you’ll repel potential customers if your site looks horrible on mobile devices.

That’s why you should run your site through Google’s free mobile-friendly test. You can do it in less than 30 seconds in your browser. Copy and paste your site’s URL into this tool and you’ll get a detailed report pointing out what you’re doing right — and what you can improve upon.

Click the yellow button below to run your site through this test.

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More ways to make a small business website SEO friendly

Five ways to get more Google reviews for your business

Small biz tip: How

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It’s Not Too Late to Tap into These Trends and SEO Tips for Hotels for 2023


Graphic SEO concept - Source TravelBoom Marketing
It’s Not Too Late to Tap into these Trends and SEO Tips for Hotels for 2023


TravelBoom Marketing;

If you haven’t already, there’s still time to position your hotel SEO efforts for success in 2023. With new technologies, changing customer behaviors, and rising trends, hotel SEO strategies should be constantly evolving.

Align your SEO strategy with the following trends and SEO tips for hotels for 2023:

1. To ChatGPT or not to ChatGPT

AI-content generators have become a hot topic in the SEO world. And with search engine behemoths like Google and Bing cashing in on the AI-content generator train, things feel like they’re moving at lightning speeds.

But are AI-content generators a practical tool for hotel digital marketers who want to boost their hotel website’s organic rankings?

Google has already stated that websites “using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results” is a violation of their spam policies. So, if your goal is to simply get indexed by Google, AI-generated content should be avoided.

However, there are ways you can use AI-content generators, such as ChatGPT, to potentially optimize your content workflow or even find new content topic ideas.

Aside from some serious cheesiness, AI can be super helpful for smaller, initial tasks.

Using AI-content generators for brainstorming, topic outlines, and inspiring creativity can be helpful time savers for busy hotel digital marketers. Generating title tags and meta descriptions are also solid uses of AI-content tools. Google has even stated that programmatic descriptions aren’t a guideline violation.

Of course, use AI-content generators with caution. ChatGPT is specifically programmed to predict the next word in a sentence, not to be accurate. Always double and triple check sources to ensure any AI-generated content is accurate.

Tom Demers at Search Engine Land has posted a handful of super helpful AI-oriented pieces that are worth a read. All-in-all, AI-generated content is a topic that all hotel digital marketers should keep an eye on as the year progresses.

2. Headless websites = faster websites

Since Google’s announcement that Core Web Vitals would become an organic ranking factor, we find that many hotel websites continue to fall behind from a page speed approach.

While we realize it can be tough juggling a healthy site speed while also trying to provide site visitors with a top-notch website experience through plugins, videos and images, there’s a solution that carries major benefits for site visitors and site owners.

A Headless CMS is proven to improve page speed scores for critical Core Web Vitals metrics, as well as other important page speed metrics. And while this is great for site visitors, there are also benefits that will please website owners and developers like code conflict reduction, flexible programming languages, and easier-to-manage hosting.

Get in touch with our hotel website design team for more details.

3. Answer all the questions

Like any online shopper, guests have questions. But if you can’t answer their questions, they’re likely going to

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10 Strategic SEO Insights & Tactical Advice For 2023 And Beyond

I’ve written about search engine optimization (SEO) for over 20 years.

So, I wasn’t shocked when the editors asked me to refresh an article I wrote on October 21, 2020, titled “3 Strategic SEO Insights & Tactical Advice for 2021.”

But looking back at what I’d written two-and-a-half years ago, I realized that my actionable insights now need to be thoroughly updated in this era of constant change.

The advent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT on Nov. 30, 2022, has triggered a “code red” at Google, which rushed out a new experimental conversational AI service called Bard in response to Microsoft’s AI-enhanced Bing.

UBS estimates that ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users in January, 2 months after its launch. According to the Swiss bank’s analysts, it would be the fastest-growing online application in history.

So, what strategic SEO insights and tactical advice could I share with you today that will still be relevant a year from now?

What critical data or search trends would encourage you to display a motivational poster on your wall that advises everyone to “Keep Calm and Carry On”?

By the way, that last piece of advice is not half bad.

Google was launched on Sept. 4, 1998, and didn’t pass AltaVista to become the leading search engine until the second half of 2002 – about 4 years later.

And even the Panda Update, which shocked the SEO industry and effectively ended the “content farm” business model, only impacted 12% of queries, according to the History of Google Algorithm Updates.

The Penguin Update, which downranked websites that engaged in aggressive webspam, only impacted 3.1% of English queries.

And it’s worth recalling that the first iteration of the Panda Update started on Feb. 23, 2011, but was followed by 27 more adjustments until the final update on July 17, 2015. And the Penguin Update, which began on April 24, 2012, didn’t end until Sept. 23, 2016.

It may take more than four years to know the full impact of Google’s Bard AI or the new AI-powered Bing search engine.

So, SEO professionals would be well advised to “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

That means I can confidently share 10 strategic insights, bits of critical data, pieces of tactical advice, or search trends that will impact SEO in 2023 and beyond without losing too much sleep over the fact that 30% of them may not be relevant a year from now.

(After telling you why “the fundamental things apply as time goes by,” I’ll circle back to explain why a 70% success rate is the right benchmark.)

SEO remains an essential element of any digital marketing strategy.

And even though the search industry is constantly changing, Google is still the leading search engine.

According to Similarweb, Google.com got 3.2 billion unique visitors in January 2023, making it the most visited website globally. The search giant also got 88.3 billion visits in January 2023.

similarweb results for google.comScreenshot from Similarweb, February 2023

So, don’t bet the farm on Google going away anytime soon.

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10 Technical SEO Tips to Boost Your Traffic


Technical SEO Checklist: 10 Technical SEO Tips to Instantly Boost Your TrafficTechnical SEO is one of the most fundamental aspects of SEO. You may have the most incredible piece of content for a popular topic in your niche, but if your site has unresolved technical SEO issues, you’ll struggle to rank high in search engine result pages (SERPs).

As a result, it’s really important that you spend some time optimizing the technical SEO of your website.

In this article, I’ll explain the key aspects of technical SEO and share 10 actionable tips you can implement right away to improve your site’s search presence. Plus, I’ve also included a Technical SEO Checklist, downloadable in PDF format which will help you put these SEO tips into action.

But first, let’s cover some basics about technical SEO.

(Already know the basics? Click here to jump straight to technical SEO tips.)

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing the crawling, indexing, and rendering phase of your website to achieve higher search rankings.

Neil Patel, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of CrazyEgg, has a simple definition for technical SEO: “Any SEO work that is done aside from the content. Essentially, it’s laying a strong foundation to give your content the best chance it can have to rank for relevant keywords and phrases.”

The team at Yoast summarizes this concept well:

"Technical SEO is part of on-page SEO, which focuses on improving elements on your website to get higher rankings. It’s the opposite of off-page SEO, which is about generating exposure for a website through other channels." - Yoast.com

In the most basic terms, technical SEO involves improving the technical aspects of your website to help it rank higher in search results. It is a broad field that covers a wide range of SEO topics, including:

  • XML sitemaps
  • Crawling and indexing
  • Mobile optimization
  • Site speed
  • Site structure
  • SSL certificates
  • Image SEO
  • Internal and external links
  • Canonical URLs

Recommended resource: If you’re new to SEO, I’d highly recommend checking out the chapter on Technical SEO in The Beginner’s Guide to SEO by Moz.

10 Actionable Technical SEO Tips

Now that you know the basics of technical SEO, here are 10 tips you can use to improve your site’s technical SEO and boost your search rankings.

1. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

Let’s start with the most basic technical SEO tip.

One of the major Google algorithm updates in 2015 was to give increased preference to mobile-friendly, responsive websites. In what was termed as “Mobilegeddon,” several top websites were penalized for not adopting a more mobile-friendly web template.

Fast forward to the present day, having a mobile-friendly website is more important than ever.

So how do you check the mobile-friendliness of your website? You can use any of the following free tools:

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test will determine whether your website meets Google’s criteria for a mobile-optimized website.

Google's Mobile Friendly Test

HubSpot’s Website Grader and GTMetrix provide deeper insights into what you can do to improve the mobile-friendliness of your website.

HubSpot Website Grader Mobile

BONUS: Check out this article by Startup Cafe Digital on how to make your website 100% mobile-friendly and download the mobile SEO audit checklist.

2. Create and Optimize Your XML Sitemap

Sitemaps are necessary for Google to find and index your webpages.

Luckily, it’s

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