August 27, 2013: Earlier this year, Google announced that it had adjusted its algorithmic anti-spam system to purge “unreliable” online merchants from its results pages. As Q4 2013 looms and the Holiday Shopping Season gears up in the next few weeks, it’s critical that e-tailers send the correct signals to Google or run the risk of being labeled “fly by nights” and exiled from its SERPs.
What are these signals? Fortunately, they’re not mysterious – in fact Google disclosed them in a document called the Search Quality Ratings Guidelines that you can download, for free, from Google’s site.
Here are the signals Google likes to see when it evaluates the fitness of your merchant site:
- A functioning Shopping Cart program that successfully updates when a user selects an item, plus a “view your cart” link that remains in view as the user shops.
- A working Calculator used by online customers to compute shipping charges.
- A “Wish List” function allowing users to purchase at some future time.
- A Gift Registry allowing users to share their “Wish Lists” with others.
- A user forum in which shoppers may discuss your products, shopping policies, and other issues related to your online store.
- The ability for users to register (open accounts) with your site for secure purchasing.
- A shipment tracker allowing users to track shipments made from your store via Federal Express, UPS, or other delivery service.
The Google document notes that not every online store will be able to include all of the above items; for example some sites may use 3rd parties for fulfillment, and this should not count against them. Nor will e-tailers necessarily be punished because they link to affiliates. Just make sure that your site is not a “thin affiliate site,” which Google defines as “a site that offers little additional information and does not offer substantial value to users compared to many other sources on the Web. For example, an affiliate that has only copied content from the merchant site is considered a thin affiliate. This is a moneymaking spam technique.”You don’t have to include all of the items in the above list, but the more of them you offer, the more likely it is that Google will favorably evaluate your store.
You can download the Search Quality Ratings Guidelines here:
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/intl/en_us/insidesearch/howsearchworks/assets/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
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