Ecommerce has taken a decided turn in relation to search engines and SEO. If you sell stuff online, no good can come from ignoring it. Rather, it is better to figure out how to adapt your current ecommerce SEO to take advantage of what Google has just done.
If you have been holding on to a glimmer of hope that Google doesn’t really want to take over the internet, I’m about to dash your hopes once again. In one of its boldest plays yet, the search engine giant has introduced something known as ‘shopping knowledge panels’. Their primary purpose: to let consumers shop without ever leaving Google.
Google is committed to making sure they are the only source of information you need to find answers to your questions, get the latest headlines, make your travel plans, and so forth. And now they want to be your primary shopping center. If they have their way, they will become the gatekeeper of all things ecommerce.
Shopping Knowledge Panels in a Nutshell
So, what are these shopping knowledge panels, exactly? It is easier for you to see it for yourself than having me attempt to explain it to you. So go to Google and search for something. I tested it out with the simplest of phrases: ‘men’s loose fit shorts’.
When the search results came up, I skipped past the sponsored listings and local results. Just underneath was a grid of fifty panels that resembled mini product pages. Each panel included a brand of men’s loose-fitting shorts along with:
- A photograph
- The sale price
- The seller’s name
- Product rating (where applicable)
The two most important components from my perspective are the sale price and the seller’s name. From an SEO standpoint, the seller’s name is huge. Why? Because my search returned products being sold by big names like Amazon and Target. This tells me that Google is scanning and indexing product pages from ecommerce giants.
Those product pages are competing with the pages being published by smaller ecommerce operators running independent websites. This is both good and bad. It is good in the sense that somebody running an online store via Shopify can compete on a level playing field with Amazon. It’s bad in the sense that Amazon will bury that company if ecommerce SEO isn’t being leveraged properly.
It’s Time to Bring in the Big Guns
I take a pragmatic approach to business. I understand there is a lot of things my company should be doing that my team and I really are not capable of doing well. So rather than attempting to pull those things off to the best of our ability, I bring in the pros. I bring in the big guns who are experts in those areas I could only hope to dabble in.
I don’t run an ecommerce operation. But if I did, I would take Google’s latest play as a sign that I need to invest in professional ecommerce SEO. I would look for a company like Salt Lake City’s Webtek Digital Marketing, a company with a proven track record in the ecommerce arena.
Google has made the decision to keep shoppers on its website until they are finally ready to buy. It’s a done deal. So rather than fighting it, online retailers should optimize their ecommerce SEO for Google – even if they sell exclusively on a site like Amazon.
They should still optimize for Amazon’s search engine as well, but they cannot afford to focus exclusively on Amazon and forget Google. Google’s shopping knowledge panels have dropped, and they have changed ecommerce SEO yet again.
