Google’s Product Review Update and What It Means for Your Ecommerce Website

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Google has introduced yet another update to its search engine, focusing on product reviews. The update began its launch in July 2022 and was completed in August 2022.

Google Product Review Update

According to Trustpilot’s study, 9 out of 10 users preferred reading product reviews before shopping online. Other research done by BrightLocal showed that 80% of users trust online product reviews as much as they trust personal product recommendations. 

The goal of Google’s product review update is to encourage users to publish the most helpful reviews first, regardless of whether they are generally favourable or not. As a result, Google’s search results will feature in-depth, educational product reviews at the top and “thin content that merely summarises a bunch of products” at the bottom.

If you work in the eCommerce industry, you need to pay attention to this change because it will help you improve your results.

A strong eCommerce Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy is essential for the success of any online business as more consumers conduct product research and purchases online.

High-quality product reviews are now more important than ever, in addition to professional website optimisation. Like web copy and blog posts, Google will also prioritise examining the quality of product reviews.

Google Product Review UpdateGoogle thinks that top-notch reviews can help consumers decide whether they want to buy the products being featured. The ranking update will essentially reward eCommerce sites with reviews above and beyond by search ranking.

eBay was affected by this update. eBay’s ‘strategy’ was based on ‘doorway pages’ and thin content – exactly the type of search spam that Google has been attempting to eliminate from the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The main eBay subdomain has dropped entirely out of Moz’ list of the top ten domains with the most real estate. Despite relatively low competition for these highly-targeted keywords, 80% of their non-branded keywords are no longer on the first page. eBay’s ‘strategy’ of distributing millions of doorway and internal site search pages is spam. Google is forcing eBay to use product ads to stay in front of searchers looking for specific types of products. Google shopping ads provide the most helpful customer experience for commercial queries.

What is eCommerce, and How Does SEO Impact Businesses

eCommerce refers to commercial transactions made over electronic networks such as the internet. The internet is now the most popular way for people to get information about products and services. Search engines are the most popular sources of information. However, the information on search engines is not just limited to web pages but also includes websites, videos, images and other digital media. SEO is a process designed to improve the visibility of a website in SERPs.

SEO is one of the most important factors in the success of a business. It can help increase website traffic, leads and conversion rates for businesses, and help with branding and social media marketing campaigns. Also, it helps to improve rankings on search engine results and increase brand visibility.

Shopee.sg is an excellent example of an eCommerce site with good SEO performance since it is by far the most popular site in Singapore with 2.3 million in organic search traffic per month, as reported by Semrush.

Shopee SG

Another good example of an eCommerce site with good SEO performance would be lazada.sg. According to Semrush Domain Analytics, it receives 1.4 million organic search visitors per month.

Lazada SG

Both examples above feature some of the leading eCommerce sites in Singapore, and definitely display good performance when it comes to traffic and web visibility.

eCommerce SEO Checklist and Tips About Product Reviews

With the help of a checklist and some tips, you can make sure that you are doing everything right when it comes to eCommerce SEO. There are many types of product reviews that you should be aware of to get the most out of your eCommerce SEO strategy. The best strategy is to use schema-based review writing (reader’s background knowledge), which will ensure that the content is readable by search engines and humans alike.

Encourage product reviews on your site with these 5 easy tips:

  1. Upload images of the product.
  2. Give customers several links to choose from.
  3. Put your feet in the shoes of your customers when writing.
  4. Describe how the product is superior to its rivals.
  5. Include more information other than just the manufacturer name.

eCommerce SEO Audit Checklist: 

  1. Ensure crawling and indexing on your website.
  2. Fix pages with broken links.
  3. Check your excluded pages.
  4. Implement Schema Markup on your site.
  5. Get keywords which are sales-driven.
  6. Prioritise Keyword Intent.
  7. Avoid competing against yourself.
  8. Steer away from duplicate content.
  9. Boost any weak content that you may have.
  10. Do mobile-first indexing.

How Digital Agencies Can Help You Deal and Recover from Google Updates

Google updates are a regular occurrence in the digital marketing world. They make changes to the algorithm to improve the user experience and provide more relevant results. These updates can be stressful for marketers, but there are ways to deal with and recover from them.

Digital agencies provide their clients with strategies for dealing with these changes. It is important to understand that Google updates are not always bad news for your business, as they may improve your website rankings or increase your organic traffic.

However, it is also important to be prepared for these changes so that you can react accordingly when they happen.

At Mediatropy, we provide a wide range of expertise that is related to eCommerce SEO audit and anything to do with digital marketing, creative services, data analytics, and tech. Through sound strategy and technical expertise, we can help you scale your business to the next level. Talk to our experts today!

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