“Popular Products” is a SERP feature (Search Engine Results Page) launched by Google in January of 2020. It’s applicable for E-Commerce websites selling different products. When online shoppers type in their search terms, Google presents them with a list of most relevant items that show up with images, pricing, ratings and reviews, making it very visible to the shoppers and luring them to click on these images. If the shoppers click on these images, then a side panel opens taking the shopper directly to the product page of the retailer where the product purchase can be completed.
With the Popular Products SERP feature, Google is directly competing against online marketplaces like Amazon, Ebay etc. As per Google itself, this feature will become a game changer for smaller online retailers in the whole eCommerce landscape. The Popular Products feature is different from Google Shopping Ads. This is free and provides fast and valuable options for the shoppers.
Here’s what Popular Products section look like on desktop results:
Benefits of Popular Products
- Smaller E-Commerce stores now have a chance to compete with other stores that have a large budget.
- This section takes up a considerable amount of space on the front page, with images, pricing etc being displayed. Hence if your product can feature in this section, then you get great visibility.
- Apart from organic webpage listings, this SERP feature allows you to have another opportunity to have presence in the SERP results.
- It is free and hence no additional budget allocation is required.
So how can you have your products rank in Google’s Popular Products Section?
As you may have understood from the above, soon enough e-commerce stores will find it imperative to want to rank their products in the Popular Products SERP feature as this feature is likely to sweep away a lot of organic clicks.
Below is how you can rank higher in the Google Popular Products section:
- Use Google Merchant Center
You need to submit your product feed through Google Merchant Center. This is the primary platform to submit your product information if you want your products to be considered for the Popular Products section.
- Use keyword-rich product titles
An optimized product title not only increases your click-through rate but also enhances your chance of getting featured in the Popular Products section. Optimized product titles have high search intent, concise, and relevant keywords built into them to allow both shoppers and search engines to quickly understand the product being sold.
- Use accurate product descriptions
Product descriptions are as important as product titles because this is how customers understand the product better. Hence the product descriptions need to be accurate, informative as well as persuasive. Google bots also use these descriptions to understand your products. Undoubtedly, it has much to do with SEO applications.
- Use structured data mark up
Schema mark ups/structured data mark ups are Search Engine’s way of taking away all relevant information about a product/page/image. With Popular Products feature schema mark ups have become indispensable to increase an item’s visibility and show the item in a richer way. You can do merchant listing structured data where schema mark ups are done on pages that customers directly purchase from, or you can also do product snippets’ structured data where schema mark ups are done on pages that do not directly sell but have information about the product.
- Use High quality product images
Shoot high quality, professional product images from multiple angles. Take advantage of these images by doing proper Image SEO. Pay attention to image sizes. For certain marketplaces, including Google Shopping, you should use a 1:1 ratio. Meanwhile, 16:9 is optimized for others.
- Consider competitive pricing
Using a price tag that is competitive can help with featuring in Popular Products. This does not mean that low-balled pricing is critical as we do have many other criteria for selection and ranking. However, one must still compare pricing with similar products in the market.
- Optimize your virtual store for search engines
Google algorithms will evaluate both your products as well as your website for the final selection. Hence, detailed On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO/Backlinks, Technical SEO, Image SEO etc of the website/online ecommerce store is indispensable.
- Customer reviews and ratings
Social proofing is relevant for both search algorithms as well as converting traffic into sale.
- Monitor performance
You can use Google Search Console to track the traffic to your products in the Popular Products section.
Contact us if you want to stay ahead of the game and want YOUR products to appear in “Popular Products”
