5 Common Retail SEO Oversights to Correct for the Holiday Season

We love digging into new client accounts at JDM – and I particularly enjoy the chance to jump in and make a difference for new retail-focused clients when a holiday season is approaching.

My experience doing just that over the years has surfaced a handful of common oversights that can make a difference when we implement them. In no particular order…

Integrate UGC into product pages.

I don’t just mean that you should use customer reviews and ratings; that’s pretty much table stakes at this point. But go the extra mile and use Q&A sections to display and address common customer queries that come in from Customer Service, social media accounts, etc. This can happen at the brand level, at the category level, and especially on product pages when the queries are product-specific.

Speed up the experience for returning visitors.

It’s pretty common that I encounter brands that aren’t leveraging browser caching, which means they’re missing a chance to reduce load times for visitors who have already been to the site. Returning visitors are generally deeper into the purchase journey than first-time visitors, so it’s even more important to tune up your UX for them.

Remember: mobile UX goes beyond page layout.

Many brands have mobile sites that could still benefit from adaptation to mobile user behavior. The simplest step is to add a click-to-call button, but a little research into common customer journey paths can help you build simplified navigation to get users to their preferred destinations as well.

Stay short with your product URLs.

Product URLs benefit from short, descriptive URLs with primary keywords included. I recommend removing any special characters and unnecessary parameters – in fact, my preference is that product pages keep the URL product name only. This little coffee company in Maine could have included collections/darkroast in the URL here, but they kept it short and sweet:

Use the e-commerce functionality in Google Analytics.

Many SEOs (and marketers in general) are still leaving a lot of insights on the table with their GA4 setup – particularly since GA has a few features particularly designed for e-commerce – namely, a whole section dedicated to setting up and tracking e-commerce events. 

Determine which events (product pages, CTA clicks, etc.) to track, and remember to create filters to remove internal and bot traffic. You’ll end up building yourself some nifty website retargeting pools that your paid team will appreciate – and you’ll get some good insights into user journeys in the process.

Set up Google Merchant Center:

Once you’ve set up your Google Merchant Center account to manage your product listings and ads and verified your website URL, it’s time to optimize your product feed.

First, double-check to see that you’ve checked the “visibility check box” once you’ve verified that product data feeds are complete and accurate. Each product in the feed should include product titles, descriptions, images, pricing, and availability.

Second, check to make sure all products are aligned with Demand Gen product ads format requirements; products out of alignment either won’t show up or will have limited visibility.

From there, you need to establish a maintenance schedule that includes regular checks of the “what needs attention” tab in GMC. You also need a loop to reflect changes in inventory and pricing in your feeds so you don’t trigger disapproval.

This is scratching the surface of the optimization opportunities we tend to find in new e-commerce accounts, but I’m guessing at least one of them applies to you. If you’re curious about what else you might be leaving on the table, we offer free audits, so drop us a line to request one!