Using product data for SEO optimization

In a world where an estimated 1 billion websites and 60 billion pages are online, where approximately 94% of Dutch people use Google as a search engine and where more than 50% of people only click on the first five search results in Google, it is more important than ever to be found online. Curious how product data can effectively contribute to this? Then read on quickly.

Let's start at the beginning. What is product data?

As the word data suggests, this concerns product-specific data, such as: brand, dimensions, color, weight, size, etc. Data that is an indispensable part of the product and for the end user, the customer. This product data supports the customer in his or her search for the perfect product and can be very easily collected in a PIM system.

As an example, we take an online store that sells women's clothing. It is extremely important for this webshop that the product data is in good order. If the customer is looking for a blue jacket size M, she wants to end up with a selection of blue jackets in size M. Due to a lack of correct product data (or lack of correct design and structure), a red jacket size M or a blue jacket appears size XL, then the search query is not relevant for this customer and there is a good chance that she will leave the webshop somewhere in the process. To understand this process, we first explain what SEO means.

Reading tip: If you are interested in the relationship between product information and online findability, we have a nice blog for you!

SEO in a nutshell

“What's the best place to hide a dead body?” No one ever goes to the second page of Google... How often do you click through to the search results on page 2, 3 or 4? Probably the answer to this question is almost never. It is all the more important to ensure that your website or webshop scores as well as possible in the search engine. There are several ways to achieve this. In this blog I mainly focus on product data and its importance for organic findability. I will not consider the other (at least as important) parts of an SEO strategy, such as technical optimization, in this blog.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, search engine optimization in Dutch. Search engine optimization includes all the activities you do to ultimately ensure that your website ranks as high as possible in the organic search results (also called free results) of the search engines. In the Netherlands we talk about Google in about 94% of the cases, but there are also search engines such as Bing and DuckDuckGo.

There are then about 200 factors that determine how you are ranked, but there are only a few people within Google who know all these factors. Unfortunately, this will never be known to the rest of the world. What we do know is that all these factors can be divided into three main categories:

• Technology
• Content
• Authority

Where technology and content are mainly aimed at the visitor of your website. If your visitor is satisfied and finds what he or she is looking for, then the authority should (in theory) naturally increase over time. To continuously improve in SEO, you will have to work on this continuously. The most important thing is that you create unique, relevant content for your target group.

What is the search behavior of consumers today?

Last year, Dutch consumers spent 23.7 billion (!) euros on products and services online, an estimated growth of 10% compared to the previous year. This is evident from figures from the Thuiswinkel Market Monitor, which conducted research into online consumer spending in the Netherlands. Throughout 2018, 96% of Dutch consumers aged 15 years and older made one or more online purchases of products and services. That is 2% more than the year before. The 23.7 billion involved 242 million online purchases. According to Engel, Blackwell and Miniard (1990), consumer behavior consists of six phases: need recognition, information seeking, evaluating alternatives, choice of sales channel, purchase and result (use, evaluation and disposal).

Especially in the second phase, the internet, and especially the search engine Google, has an enormous influence. As a company you want to appear here when your information and products are relevant to the searcher. In addition, the purchasing phase is another very important phase in the cycle. It is necessary to ensure that the barrier to purchase is as low as possible. The purchasing process can determine the consumer experience. It is therefore very important that the website is user-friendly. This can also be partly achieved with product data. How nice is it for the searcher to be able to refine the search in such a way that only relevant results appear on the screen? This is also part of improving your product data and the way it is structured.

It is clear that optimizing product data is of indispensable importance if you want to be visible to the end user. Do you experience a challenge when optimizing product data? Or do you have another question in the field of Product Information Management?