A Local SEO Goldmine for Retailers

A lot of information to tell your SEO technique is hiding in plain sight; you simply have to know the place to look. For multi-location retailers, Google Merchant Center could be a treasure trove of information to assist achieve that aggressive edge.

Last November, simply in time for the vacations, Google started exhibiting free native product listings on the backside of Google My Business pages.

They are the free model of Google’s Local Inventory Ads and appear like this:

This program is open to any brick-and-mortar enterprise with a Google Merchant Center account in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.Okay., and the U.S. Check Google’s Local Inventory Ads Overview for extra updates.

All you must do is decide in to the “surfaces across Google” program in GMC. You can enroll for it here.

While the reporting accessible to taking part companies is minimal, there may be sufficient knowledge for native companies to begin utilizing this program as a secret weapon to enhance their digital efficiency.

I name it secret as a result of I’m just about sure that none of your rivals are utilizing this knowledge (till they see this text, after all).

Here’s the right way to faucet into this wealth of native SEO knowledge.

Check Your Free Local Listings Dashboard

Within Google Merchant Center go to Performance > Free Local Listings. There you may see Clicks, Impressions, and Click-Through Rate over totally different time durations.

You may also see comparable information for the non-Local “Free Listings” which generally seem within the Google Shopping tab, however these gained’t present any “Local” information.

Click on the “Free native listings: Traffic” hyperlink and also you’ll see this knowledge damaged down by Product, Brand, and Category.

For instance:

The Product report will usually have probably the most knowledge, however every of those can provide you hints which are useful to optimization.

As far as I do know, free Local Product Listings solely seem connected to Google My Business Knowledge Panels within the SERPs, or within the Local Finder/Google Maps as seen right here:

This implies that these listings principally present up for model queries (in reality, nearly all of GMB Knowledge Panels seem principally for model queries).

As such, the Google Merchant Center knowledge gives distinctive insights into what individuals accustomed to your model are wanting for.

While they don’t break the information down by location (when are we going to get that, Google?), you should utilize your individual analytics to determine that out.

A Quick Word of Warning…

Google says:

“If you utilize a 3rd celebration to measure native stock advertisements or free native product listings, the knowledge derived from customers participating along with your advertisements or listings on Google can’t be utilized by you nor by some other celebration for creating focusing on segments, remarketing functions, or performing any browser or system fingerprinting.”

It doesn’t sound like utilizing the information Google offers you to populate pages with out particularly focusing on these customers is an issue. However, as with all search optimization techniques you’ll need to ensure you’re in compliance earlier than attempting out a few of these concepts.

Now That You Have The Data, Figure Out What It Means

In the instance above, this “by model” dashboard exhibits that over the time interval Samsung-branded merchandise acquired ~91K clicks from the GMB Product Widget.

In your analytics, you may create a report for non-paid entries to the Samsung PDPs that got here from Google.

Then, filter that report by the consumer’s location.

It’s not good, however it can provide you a common concept for which cities there was probably the most demand for Samsung. You can do the identical with the “by product” information.

The “by class” knowledge is just not as useful, as you may’t break it down by product and/or model. However, it can provide you a common sense of which broad classes carry out greatest through which geographies.

This could be useful after we put this knowledge into motion.

(Full disclosure: I’m nonetheless attempting to persuade our TechOps crew it’ll be price it to scrape the GMB widgets and tie it to the GMC knowledge and analytics, to create a usually up to date view of efficiency).

Now that you recognize which GMB Products persons are clicking on from totally different places, you may take that additional and take a look at conversion charges by model, product, and placement to get a way of the highest performers.

The extra merchandise you carry, the much less knowledge you’ll have for every product, as Google appears to rotate them usually.

Google is giving us some helpful information with that rotation, by the best way.

There should be some methodology (dare I say an algorithm?) that Google makes use of to find out which merchandise to point out on every GMB Page and when.

Given the quantity of information Google has entry to, it seemingly understands your prospects higher than you do — at the very least from a standpoint of what makes them click on.

Monitoring these patterns might be among the greatest info you could find to tell the right way to merchandise merchandise and types by yourself website.

Tips for Retailers to Make the Most of Google Merchant Center Info

Add prime clicked/changing merchandise & manufacturers to your location pages, and differ this by every location. If that’s an excessive amount of work, then begin with the identical prime performers on all location pages.

We not often see native e-tailers do something actually distinctive for website guests in particular places. Use this information to assist energy suggestions all through the location for these geo-targeted customers.

Use this knowledge to gas a GMB Posts campaign to advertise fashionable merchandise. Since GMB Posts usually seem on the backside of the Google My Business Knowledge Panels, they might carry out simply in addition to the Product widgets, and you’ve got extra management over the messaging.

Extra credit score: This isn’t particular to GMB Products however since we’re speaking native search optimization, observe subsequent click on and search conduct from customers who enter by way of location pages.

Improve conversion by including a promotion to the highest of every location web page for what they’re looking for/clicking on most. (Hat tip to Noah Learner for sharing this tip.)

More Resources:

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Image credit: All screenshots by writer, April 2021