Winter is coming, and with it, the world’s busiest season; shopping season. Ensuring your website is able to capitalize on heightened consumer activity during this time is crucial to growing your brand and increasing your bottom line.
SEO Clarity conducted a study on almost 150,000 apparel-related keywords over a six-week period to learn more about how Google’s algorithm displays apparel-related search results, what SEO strategies are the most effective and to research Google’s efforts to compete with businesses with their own intellectual properties.
Here are the main findings from the study that you NEED to be aware of:
Nearly 100% of All Searches Trigger SERP Features
There were over 200,000 SERP features that were displayed throughout the study. SERP features are special search results that uniquely display content in SERPs that ordinary organic listings do not.
SERP features aim to find useful and/or relevant content a page contains and prominently display it in Google searches.
The two most common SERP features displayed for apparel-related keywords are:
Product Features
Recorded instances: 120,772
The product SERP feature provides an image, pricing information and any reviews that users may have left on the page where the product is being displayed.
This is a lot more effective at grabbing attention and helping users determine what they are looking for than just a blue link with some small text underneath.
People Also Ask
Recorded instances: 57,925
Chances are you have likely seen this type of result many times before for all kinds of searches. People Also Ask is a rich result feature that collects highly-searched question-based queries that are related to the keyword being searched.
A rectangular box will be displayed with 3-5 relevant questions. When the user clicks on one of the questions, it will drop down with a snippet of content taken from the host website. As the user clicks on questions in the People Also Ask box, more questions will appear at the bottom of the box.
How to Enable SERP Features On Your Website
To enable your website to be displayed in Google search as a rich result, you will need to add structured data to each page.
Structured data is a type of code that Google uses to better understand the content and the relationship between different types of content on the same page.
You should only add structured data to a page that is ranking in or around the top 10 positions in organic search. This is because most SERP features will only be activated when a given webpage is ranking on page 1 of Google. You can learn more about using structured data here.
85% of all Apparel-Related Searches Displayed Rich Result Product Listings in the Top 10 Organic Spots
The vast majority of all apparel-based keyword searches displayed rich result product listings.
Along with that, about half of all the searches that displayed popular product SERP features in the top 10 positions placed them in the top 3 organic positions.
75% of Mobile Searches Triggered Four or More Product Search Features
About three-quarters of all apparel-related searches displayed four or more product feature listings.
Interestingly about 75% of desktop searches only displayed one product feature listing.
Google Increasingly Competing for Commerical-based Searches
In 2000 Google launched Adwords, an online advertising platform that revolutionized how people find information online.
Over time Google has expanded their use of paid ads, announcing in 2016 that they would be increasing the number of paid listings in Google search from 3 to 4, and these ads would no longer be beside organic search results but above them, pushing down organic listings.
Google Ads is a huge money-maker for the organization, and they have continued to add more search features at the expense of organic results.
Today, you will find at least four paid ads in Google search at the top and the bottom of the Search engine result pages (SERPs). These were the first SERP features Google developed, and they found the results to be a success.
Over the years, Google has increasingly developed new SERP features to help provide more relevant and useful information to users and keep users on google.com longer, helping their bottom line grow.
This trend has only continued, with Google launching over 30 unique SERP features to date, with more on the way. Space for organic listing is only going to be further constricted by Google’s efforts.
Why does this matter?
If you are an e-commerce store or an online retailer, your competition is growing; not only from natural competitors but Google itself as more SERP features push down organic results, limit the total number of organic listings available to be displayed, and compete for user attention.
The study into apparel-based keywords found that most of these keyword searches produced SERP features of some kind, with most displaying multiple SERP features, further limiting space on page 1.
It is not limited to apparel-focused keywords; nearly all searches with commercial intent are displaying more SERP features and paid advertisements than ever before, further limiting the space businesses have to get their organic listings on page 1 and above the fold.
Most competitive keywords will have less than ten organic listings on page 1.
What Does it Mean For SEO?
This means SEO got a lot more competitive, and getting to the bottom of Page 1 is harder and less beneficial than ever before.
In order to get ahead of the competition and drive more traffic to your website, you need to consider what SERP features are being displayed for searches that are important to your business and optimize your target pages for them.
If you have pages ranking on or near the top 10 organic results for a keyword, then you should consider adding structured data to your target pages can make them eligible for special SERP features.
With more SERP features being displayed, making your target pages eligible to be featured is vital for increasing brand awareness and organic traffic and getting an edge on the competition.
How to Optimize Your Online Retail Website For the Most Important Time of the Year
The time between Halloween and New Year’s day is the most important for retailers and e-commerce businesses across North America. Many try to take advantage of Black Friday deals, only to splurge on Christmas gifts the following month.
Christmas isn’t the only holiday being celebrated either. In addition to Black Friday and Christmas, Hanukkah, Bodhi, and Pancha Ganapati are celebrated yearly by millions. With all these celebrations and festivities, consumer activity is at its highest during the last two months of the year.
Taking advantage of these consumer trends will be vital for improving your bottom line. Failure to do so will put your business at risk of losing market share to your staunchest competitors.
There are over 250 million apparel-related searches every month, and just getting on page 1 of Google for some of these searches can yield significant dividends. But how can you do that?
You need to make sure your website is fully functional and navigable. It needs to be for consumers to find your products and pay for them, and you should have a reliable logistic chain in place to have any surge in demand.
When it comes to SEO, there are hundreds of factors you need to consider to ensure that your website is ranking at the top of Google.
Trying to optimize your website for every SEO ranking factor is a resource-intensive process, one that most online retailers are not going to be able to manage effectively without expert help.
At TechWyse Internet Marketing, we are Canada’s oldest and largest digital marketing agency, we have been helping websites grow for over 20 years, and we can use this experience to help you achieve your online marketing goals.
If you want to find out what your website needs to rank high on Google and convert visitors into customers, call us at(416) 410-7090 or fill out a form on this website for a FREE SEO CONSULTATION.
Our team of digital marketing specialists will work with you to understand your goals, develop strategies to meet those goals and keep your website optimized for SEO. With our help, you can make the most of the holiday season to grow your business and outflank your competition.
on
Very helpful blog and is very well explained, in the third paragraph you mentioned
And also you made it amazing and easy to read by highlighting and adding subtitles.
It was an awesome blog that helped me gain much knowledge.
on
Excellent case study. With high competition keywords it will still be difficult to come out on 1st page on Google. Thanks for sharing.