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Chrome DevTools is a fantastic tool that often goes overlooked in technical audit guides, and by SEOs in general.
Many of us pay for extensive tool suites (with some tools costing thousands of dollars) with the goals of:
Acquiring more data points.
Simplifying and automating parts of our work.
Yet, no single tool replaces the analysis that can be performed by an SEO, applying logic and qualitative prior knowledge.
For the most part, DevTools is relatively straightforward and easy to use. That said, there are a small number of extremely useful and not-so-obvious use cases that lend themselves to the technical auditing process.
Below are some of the ways you can use DevTools to either identify issues or validate those being raised by third-party tools.
1. Check If You Content Is AccessibleSometimes taken for granted – unless you’re working with JavaScript, which gets more focus – it’s important to verify that your main content elements are being identified by search engines.
While Google does have processes in place to crawl and render your site’s content, it’s not always 100% and sometimes can fail for various reasons.
The DOM (Document Object Model), which can be seen in the Elements tab of DevTools, enables you to:
Review various content elements including the meta title and main page body content.
Verify if it can be picked up by Google.
A key thing to look for here is the differences between source-code and the contents of the elements tab.
When auditing websites that have heavy JavaScript usage, content – such as page headers – sometimes appears fine in the HTML source code. But if injected via JavaScript, it may just show as a JS block in the Elements tab.
While Google does have the two-step process for JavaScript crawling, it’s always best to make things as easy for Google to discover content on your site and reduce process complexity.
2. Emulate Multi-Device ExperiencesHaving a mobile-friendly website, in the vast majority of cases, is and has been an essential component of a successful website for a number of years now.
DevTools can help in determining both mobile-friendliness and in diagnosing usability and speed issues.
UsabilityIn DevTools you can shift between mobile and desktop through the Device Mode icon:
You can also shift between the two modes using keyboard shortcuts, using Cmd+Shift+M on a Mac or Ctrl+Shift+M on a Windows of Linux OS, while the DevTools interface is open.
From experience, this is an effective auditing method – rather than resizing the browser window to test responsiveness.
In Device Mode, you can change between responsive viewports or choose between different pre-set devices to test your page.
This can be useful in identifying any potential issues if you have a large number of visitors from a specific device but a lower than average conversion rate.
However, as you can see from the above screenshot the preset options list is outdated, as the Pixel 2 is now superseded by the Pixel 4. You can set custom dimensions for other devices using the Edit option.
Site SpeedAlong with mobile, site speed is also an important factor in both SEO (thanks to the speed update) and usability.
While there are a number of third-party speed testing tools, if you’re auditing a staging website behind HTTP Auth and blocked in robots.txt., DevTools can be a great solution to testing these webpages.
From the three-dot burger menu in the top right of the screen, you can access Network Conditions (found under More Tools).
In the Network Conditions panel, you can choose to:
Disable the browser cache.
Purposefully throttle the network to fast 3G, slow 3G.
Or add a custom throttle.
You can also select from a gamut of user agents ranging from Googlebot Smartphone through to various Microsoft Edge UAs, and Opera.
I recommend using Google Analytics data and testing the browsers and devices that the greater majority of your users use.
Once you’ve got your settings, you should navigate to the “Network” tab, and see both the page load, but also when the initial markup on the page has been parsed, DOMContentLoaded, both of which are visible at the bottom of the DevTools panel.
For further speed analysis, you can run Google Lighthouse from the Audits tab.
3. Render Blocking ResourcesAs mentioned previously, from the Network tab you can identify which JavaScript and CSS resources are being loaded before the DOM.
While this isn’t necessarily an issue on all websites, having resources load ahead of the DOM can potentially lead to it being blocked, which is one of the more common and resolvable site speed issues.
These can be identified by filtering for JS and CSS in the Network tab:
4. Check Resource Status CodesThe Network tab also allows you to check the HTTP status of your resources. This is invaluable in both checking if any resources return 404s or 5XX, or if your caching is working as intended.
Resources loading a 200 are fine, as are any resources that return a 304.
304 is sometimes mistaken as a redirect, but in this case, it’s a sign that the Last-Modified cache method is working as intended and that the browser already has information on the resource and it doesn’t need to download them again.
More Resources:
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All screenshots taken by author, January 2023
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How To Use Technical Seo To Optimize For Rich Results
What Are Rich Results In Google?
Rich Results are enhanced results in Google SERP, including interactive features and visual elements. They were formerly known as rich cards and rich snippets.
Some Examples Of Rich Results Include (Not Limited To)
Google For Jobs
Knowledge Panel
Reviews
Flights
Movies Nearby
Technical SEO Practices To Optimize Your Site For Rich ResultsLet’s discuss about the technical SEO best practices to optimize your website for rich results. Those are mentioned below −
Optimize Your Google SitelinksSitelinks are links in your website pages that are different from pages ranking in the search results.
According to Google’s official documentation, you can optimize them using a strategic link structure and implementing alt attributes.
Adding Site Link Search BoxIf your site comes integrated with a search engine, you can use the site links search box rich results through JSON LD.
Add the following Website Markup to each page of your site −
{ “@type”: “Website”, “potentialAction” :{ ”@type”: “SearchAction”, “query-input”: “required name=search_term_string” } } Optimizing Your Chance To Feature In Google For Job
If you are a small company, ranking in the Google for Job feature in SERP is much easier than for bigger players.
However, following these recommendations can actually help −
Keep the logo in standard (1:1, 2:3, 3:4) format in a jpg or png file.
Make sure the address mentioned on the site fits the address shown in Google Maps.
Update results in real-time through indexing API.
Feature In Google’s Star RatingIt is easy to implement the Review Snippet in Google. However, for that, you need to have some real user-generated reviews on your website. Then you need to add structured data to it.
There are several WordPress plugins, like KK Star ratings, rating widgets, star ratings, etc., to add structured data reviews to your site.
Optimize Image Thumbnails To Feature In Rich ResultsMultiple only shows four results in multi-image thumbnails. To display to site image in Google image thumbnails, your site must rank higher in Google.
Start with adding images in webpages you intend to rank in image thumbnails. Make sure the image is relevant to your intended keywords. Also, you need to use high-quality yet compressed images and add alt attributes to each image.
It’s important to have at least eight images on each page. This will increase your chance to feature in multi-image thumbnails.
To see whether your images are qualified for featuring in multi-image thumbnails, search the following in Google −
Site − Domain + Image
Replace the word “domain” with your site domain.
Including a Table In Google SERPGetting your table shows in Google rich results in more than structured data. You need to use the HTML tag. Google will show the table specifications if it finds it related to the user’s search query.
Tables That Are Likely To Get Featured Are
The ones related to the user’s search query.
The ones that have high-quality data.
The ones featured in a ranked webpage.
Best Practices For Tables
Avoid empty spaces in tables.
Avoid using tiny tables, such as tables with three rows and two columns.
Try to match the table element to the entities present in KG or Google Maps.
Tables, including calendars, passwords, and table-of-contents, don’t rank.
Represent table values in semantics.
Avoid featuring illogical and non-related contents in the tables. For example, don’t talk about computers, fruits, and celebrities at a single table.
Don’t add a table in the site’s boilerplate.
Use table headings to add labels.
Use relevant texts and captions to reinforce your table’s contents.
Google Business ProfileGoogle’s business profile is not structured data. However, if you want to feature it, you need to do this through the knowledge graph.
The knowledge graph is a structured collection of information about a person, business, entity, product, or thing. Google displays the results by collecting the information through other sites.
To get featured in the knowledge graph, you need to formulate strategies to get your way through authoritative sources. You can get your business featured in an online news portal. Get on social media and collect enough reviews. Get a famous blogger review about you.
Follow The PolicySometimes even having structured data may not help in featuring rich results. This may be due to technical issues, trust, and policy violations.
To need to ensure your markup is valid. Use the rich results testing tool to debug your code.
Alternatively, you can use a schema validator from chúng tôi to fix technical glitches in your site.
Make sure your website contents are in according with the policies set by Google. Make sure to follow the guidelines while implementing structured data on a page.
The quality of the site also matters. If your website is new and doesn’t have much domain authority, you are less likely to have feature-rich results. This is because you don’t have enough credibility to earn the trust of Google.
Trust IssueRich results might not be shown in Google, depending on the quality of a site. If Google does not trust the domain, it might not show the results. Use the search operator tool in Google to inspect your SERP.
If the rich results appear on the site search and not on the results page, google might have a trust issue with your site. To fix that, you need to push out more quality and data-driven content and get quality backlinks from credible sources. A backlink from a highly authoritative domain is a vote of confidence for your website.
How To Optimize Your Website For Technical Seo?
Your SEO efforts are unlikely to bear fruit if there are issues with the technical aspects of the process. So, you must learn about technical SEO and how to do it properly. The bright side is that after you’ve performed a technical SEO audit of your website and fixed any possible issues, you won’t have to worry about them again.
What Does “Technical SEO” Entail?Technical search engine optimization includes making the site more search engine friendly and enhancing the user experience. Technical Search Engine Optimization often entails the following tasks −
Google Sitemap Submission
Making your site more search engine friendly
Faster loading times for your website
Optimizing your site for mobile use
Identifying and correcting instances of duplicate content
The basics and best practices of technical SEO for your website are outlined in this essay.
How To Optimize Your Website For Technical SEONow that we have a shared definition of technical SEO, we can examine industry standards. The following checklist may be used to conduct a self-guided technical SEO assessment.
It’s FastWebsites of today must be quick to load. Nowadays, nobody has time to wait for a website to load. In 2023, studies found that if a mobile website doesn’t load within three seconds, 53 percent of visitors will quit. This pattern persists; data from 2023 indicates a 0.3% decline in conversion rates for every second an e-commerce website takes to load.
Consequently, a sluggish web page receives even fewer visitors since it ranks lower in search results than its speedier counterpart. Since 2023, Google has used page experience (how quickly users perceive a web page to load) as a ranking signal. Thus, having sites that load rapidly enough is more crucial than ever.
Create a Profile In The Google Search ConsoleYou should sign up for a Google Search Console account if you haven’t already. Don’t fret; there’s no cost. Your website’s overall and per-page search engine performance may be seen in Google Search Console. In addition, you may check out the blunders that Googlebot, the search engine’s crawler, finds on your site.
Hreflang TagsIn general, the hreflang property will allow you to designate the language of your website. So, if you have the material in more than one language, hreflang tags are a must. On the other hand, hreflang tags may also be used to identify regions that share a common language.
The URL FormatWhen it comes to rankings, the URL doesn’t matter much. But you should still pay attention to the structure of your URLs and remember them. Search engines and humans benefit from shorter URLs since they can more quickly grasp the intended location. If you insist on making the switch, it’s courteous to email the sites linked to you.
Markup For Structured DataWhen people talk about Schema markup in terms of SEO, they mean structured data markup. With Schema, you can provide Google and your visitor’s additional information about the product or service you’re marketing. Tables, lists, recipes, and item descriptions may all be marked up using structured data markup. Google will include this in the search results when it is relevant (e.g., when Google shows you full recipes in a search query).
Using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) On Your WebsiteSecure Sockets Layer, or SSL, is a protocol for establishing private connections over the Internet. The beautiful thing about SSL certificates is that most browsers and website builders automatically activate them. Nonetheless, you should still be aware of it to keep your SSL certificate from expiring. Without SSL, browsers warn users that your site is unsafe and may direct them to another.
Search Engines May Index ItSpiders are the automated programs used by search engines to crawl your website. While crawling your site, robots use links to find new and interesting things. A well-organized system of internal links will help them find the most crucial sections of your site quickly and easily. Yet, there are other methods for controlling robots.
Text File For RobotsThe chúng tôi file allows you to instruct crawlers where to go on your site. It’s a potent weapon that requires cautious use. As we indicated at the outset, bots may be unable to access certain areas of your site if even a single typo exists. It’s very uncommon for users to mistakenly exclude their site’s stylesheets and scripts from the chúng tôi file. The instructions for your site’s layout and functionality are included in these files. Search engines can’t tell whether your site is functional since certain files are being restricted. Overall, we suggest diving deep into chúng tôi if you’re serious about understanding how it works. Or, even better, have a programmer do it for you!
Indicator Of Meta-Robots ConclusionTo ensure that search engines can easily crawl and index your site, you need to do several tests and tweak various settings as part of your technical SEO strategy. In most circumstances, doing periodic SEO Audits will be the extent of your continued involvement with technical SEO once you’ve got it right the first time. Indeed, some of these activities (including improving your site’s load time and incorporating structured data) need technical expertise, but failing to do them will prevent your website from reaching its full potential.
Google Chrome Lighthouse 10 Contains Two New Audits
The newly released Lighthouse 10, the technology underlying PageSpeed Insights and Chrome DevTools, introduces two new site audits. These audits should be useful as part of audit because they pertain to site security and user experience factors.
Technically, one of the audits is an expansion of a previous audit, but it’s essentially a new audit.
Lighthouse contains several kinds of audits, including, Accessibility Audits, Best Practices Audits, Performance Audits, Progressive Web Apps Audits and an SEO Audit.
These two new audits are from two different audits within Lighthouse. One is a part of the Best Practices audit and the other is from the Performance audits category.
New Back/forward Cache AuditSomething that isn’t ordinarily thought of is that Back/forward cache, also known as bfcache.
bfcache is a cache that is enabled with optimization that allows webpages to instantly load when a user navigates back or forward within a website.
Websites without bfcache enabled force site visitors to download webpages a second time when they navigate backwards and forwards within a website.
But with bfcache enabled the same site visitors experience instant loading.
Google’s developer page about bfcache explains it like this:
“The back/forward cache (bfcache) stores a snapshot of the page in memory for when the page is restored from the navigation history.
This significantly speeds up return navigations to the page, however some browser APIs (e.g. unload listeners) can cause the bfcache to fail and the page will be loaded normally.”
There are best-practices to ensure that pages are eligible to be stored in the bfcache.
The first optimization is to never use the unload event.
According to Web.dev:
“The unload event is problematic for browsers because it predates bfcache and many pages on the internet operate under the (reasonable) assumption that a page will not continue to exist after the unload event has fired.
This presents a challenge because many of those pages were also built with the assumption that the unload event would fire any time a user is navigating away, which is no longer true (and hasn’t been true for a long time).”
“Warning: Developers should avoid using this event.”
Lighthouse 10 now has an audit for bfcache.
The way it works is that it navigates away from the webpage being tested and then returns to it.
Any problems with the ability to use the bfcache are called attention to by the bfcache audit.
There are three types of failures:
Issues that can be fixed.
Features that are not yet supported by Chrome prevent the browser from caching the webpage.
These are issues that are outside of the page itself that cannot be controlled or fixed.
Expansion of Paste Into Passwords Field AuditAllowing users to paste passwords into a password form field is a security improvement.
Disabling the ability to paste passwords prevents site visitors from using password managers that employ strong passwords.
Previous versions of Lighthouse that tested for this best practice related to pasting into form fields were limited to only testing the password field.
Lighthouse 10 improves this audit by expanding to test if pasting into any (non-readonly) input field works.
Google’s announcement of this new audit explains why it’s important:
“For most sites, preventing pasting is a net-negative user experience and prevents legitimate safety and accessibility workflows.”
All other input fields should allow pasting because it is useful for accessibility, user experience and improving security.
“How to enable pasting into password fieldsTo quickly find and inspect the code that’s preventing pasting:
Expand the Event Listener Breakpoints pane.
Expand the Clipboard list.
Select the paste checkbox.
Paste some text into a password field on your page.
DevTools should pause on the first line of code in the relevant paste event listener.”
Google encourages identifying the JavaScript listener script that is preventing pasting and then removing it.
Two New Lighthouse AuditsMany SEO audits don’t test for security issues, presumably because security doesn’t have anything to do with ranking, a belief that is arguably incorrect.
If the goal of an audit is to spot reasons why rankings might be compromised, then in my opinion a security check should be a part of the SEO audit.
Lighthouse 10 is active in the PageSpeed Insights tool and will appear in Chrome version 112, which is currently scheduled for a March 29, 2023 release.
Those wishing to try out the new Lighthouse 10 from the Chrome DevTools interface can do so with the developer version of Google’s browser, Chrome Canary, which contains all the latest features ahead of the regular version of Chrome.
Read about the new audits on the Lighthouse 10 announcement:
What’s new in Lighthouse 10 – New audits
Featured image by Shutterstock/Asier Romero
6 Best Vpns For Google Chrome To Use
6 Best VPNs For Google Chrome To Use [Trusted] Unique combo with Chrome would be a VPN with leak protection
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A browser needs to be fast and Google Chrome is cherished worldwide for its speed.
However, you might also need to be able to browse securely and, why not, anonymously.
So far, using a VPN is one of the safest ways to protect your online privacy while using Chrome.
Explore our top choices for Chrome-friendly VPNs in our easy-to-follow guide below.
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When you’re browsing, the first thing you think of or consider is your safety, plus that of your data and information.
Google Chrome may not be one of the most lightweight browsers for Windows and other operating systems, but it surely is the most used.
But when it comes to building privacy on this cherished browser, choosing the right VPN can make all the difference.
Google Chrome offers a lot in terms of being user-friendly, stable, versatile, and secure, and it’s a browser that can open blocked sites if managed correctly.
This, in addition to the numerous customization options it offers by using extensions, you can actually enjoy Chrome as a personal browser that fits your needs and preferences.
Among these extensions are those from VPN providers, but it is kind of hard to pick one from the many available to use today.
Besides security and online safety, you also need a VPN that can bypass censorship and unblock geo-restricted content, plus strong encryption and performance.
Here are our top choices for the best VPN for Google Chrome.
Our recommendation goes also to PIA, a trusted VPN client perfectly suited to seamlessly blend in with Chrome.
Chrome-friendly PIA owns the perfect leverage when it comes to your safety on the web. But it does not just secure your browser, it extends its protection to all your apps thanks to the TCP/IP interface level.
This world-class VPN provider relies on tunneling technology to provide multi-layered security, which basically means that it uses encrypted tunnels to create multiple layers of privacy around you.
Besides its massive gateway network that stretches worldwide (45+ countries), the service is your number 1 choice for confidentiality with a strict zero-logs policy.
Compatible with all major operating systems and browsers, PIA will do more than protect your identity and guarantee your anonymity, it will also provide unrestricted access to the internet by bypassing IP-based censorships.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
Private Internet Access
Supports WireGuard, PPTP, OpenVPN, and L2TP/IPSec protocols plus SOCKS5 Proxy.
Check price Visit website
This is the best VPN for Google Chrome when it comes to ad-free and malware-free browsing. It features over 5500 servers in 59 locations and supports a maximum of 6 devices connected at the same time.
Its server coverage is huge, plus you get ad and malware blocking to lock out any popups and threats while using the Chrome browser.
NordVPN is lightweight and user-friendly, with solid speeds and a zero-logs privacy policy, plus its price plans are very affordable.
It also comes with an automatic kill switch, and live customer support. If you’re looking for unrestricted internet access with privacy and double-data encryption, this is your VPN for the Chrome browser.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
Encryption of the future
Strict log-free policy
Threat defense
DoubleVPN
Kill Switch
DNS leak protection
Onion over VPN
Support for streaming
NordVPN
Enjoy privacy and security without the dread of prying eyes.
Check price Visit website
The ExpressVPN browser extension aids in the spoofing of your HTML5 geolocation and ensures that you use the encrypted HTTPS versions of websites whenever possible.
It also allows you to control the ExpressVPN app remotely from your Chrome browser. HTTPS Everywhere, powered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, connects you to a website’s more secure HTTPS version whenever it is available.
You can use an ExpressVPN browser extension to change your location on any device, including Roku TV, Apple TV, and Samsung TV.
In Chrome, we tested the ExpressVPN extension to change the broadcast location and it worked flawlessly.
To improve your online security, enable WebRTC Leak Blocking and use HTTPS everywhere.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
ExpressVPN
Reliable match for Chrome based on the same principles of not tracking data and offering security.
Check price Visit website
CyberGhost VPN has more than 6479 servers in 90 countries, plus it is super affordable.
You can surf the internet on Google Chrome privately and with complete security, plus it has extra features that are also easy to use, and install on your computer.
With the CyberGhost Free Anonymous Proxy, which you can use whenever you have a privacy concern, by typing in your preferred website the proxy works its magic.
But if you seek 100 percent anonymity for your daily online activities, like surfing or unblocking streaming websites like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, or BBC iPlayer, or torrenting privately, install the full CyberGhost VPN.
The proxy protects against spying by encrypting your HTTP web traffic, allows you to search the web anonymously without keeping track of your habits or preferences, and replaces your IP with an anonymous one so no one knows who you are.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
Compatible with all major platforms
Connection to up to 7 devices
Unlimited bandwidth
Anti-fingerprinting
NoSpy Servers
Browser Extensions
Its VPN protocol is patented – Catapult Hydra – and it compresses your data allowing it to move faster than other VPNs in the market. It also has anti-malware protection an ad-blocker for ad-free browsing and unlimited bandwidth.
You can also get a free version of this VPN, which supports major operating systems and devices.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
Fast download speeds
Intuitive setup and installation
Automatic server assignment
Optimal servers to browse anonymously
Malware Protection
Public Wi-Fi protection
Hotspot Shield
This VPN uses 256-bit encryption and has frequent updates on its browser add-on.
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Windscribe goes above and beyond most VPNs by providing its own R.O.B.E.R.T. (Remote Omnidirectional Badware Eliminating Robotic Tool) anti-malware and anti-phishing security.
When upgrading to the Pro version you get the ad-blocking and anti-tracking functionalities.
As soon as you log in, the Windscribe extension will connect you automatically. When the extension icon turns green and you see ON in the top-left corner, you are connected.
Your IP address will also change from your personal IP to the IP of the VPN server you have chosen.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
Servers in 63 countries and 110 cities
Split tunneling
Port forwarding
Simple user interface
Dynamic and static IPs
No identifying logs
Blocks WebRTC to prevent leaks
Windscribe
Spoofs your GPS to the location of the connected proxy thus allowing a safe browsing environment.
Check price Visit website
Is there a free VPN for Chrome?With 100+ servers in three countries (the United States, the Netherlands, and Japan) and a medium VPN speed, ProtonVPN provides a limited VPN connection with a strict no-logs policy.
If you want a browser with a free VPN, you should look into the Opera browser that comes along with extra security measures.
The free VPN is built into the Opera browser for Android and desktop, and there are no subscription, payment, login, or additional extensions required.
Your connection is not secure – websites you visit can find out your details:
Use a VPN to protect your privacy and secure your connection.
We recommend Visit Private Internet Access
We recommend Private Internet Access , a VPN with a no-log policy, open source code, ad blocking and much more; now 79% off.
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An Advanced Seo Guide To Top Rankings On Amazon
Amazon optimization is more than just listing optimization.
Listing and sales optimization on Amazon isn’t always intuitive, especially if you come from a Google SEO background.
While both Amazon and Google are primarily powered through search, what they value for organic ranking is strikingly different.
Amazon’s organic search algorithm is made up of several factors that, like Google, can take some time to understand. Amazon tells us what it values in search:
“Customers should able to find your products before they can buy them, and searching is the primary way they can do that.
Customers search by entering keywords and Amazon matches this against the information (title, description, delivery speed, and so on) that you provide for a product.
Factors such as degree of text match, price, availability, selection, and sales history help determine where your product appears in a customer’s search results.
By providing relevant and complete information for your product, you can increase your product’s visibility and sales.”
Overall, on Amazon, sales beget sales.
Amazon will prioritize listings that it feels has the best chance of converting to a purchase.
While that sounds simple, there are a broad array of factors that influence how the algorithm ranks your product.
Optimizing a listing on Amazon is more than just making it “look pretty.”
Here are some of the considerations you should have as you craft your listings for Amazon.
Targeted, buyer-oriented keywords.
Maximizing the number of highly relevant keywords you are indexed for.
Ensuring your listing is “retail-ready” by focusing on elements that ensure conversion.
Jumpstarting sales and conversions for your listing.
1. Targeted, Buyer-Oriented KeywordsWhen my team and I are reviewing listings for clients, we generally see one of a few common mistakes when it comes to the keywords they use as the foundation for their listing.
Not Being Diligent in Their Keyword ResearchMany listings stop with a list of 5-10 keywords they are targeting. This generally is based around the title for product, brand, color, flavor, size, and use types.
When we do keyword research to rewrite listings for clients, we take a much more intense look sometimes harvesting thousands of words.
We then prioritize it based on:
The product.
Keyword frequency.
Estimated monthly search volume.
Our target customer profile.
We start our keyword research by looking at the product packaging, company website, customer reviews, customer questions, and by asking this question:
If I didn’t know the name or brand of this product, how would I find it?
Then we expand our search by looking for alternative uses, looking at competitive listings, and potential alternative uses.
We then take each of those words and run them individually through a tool called Merchant Words.
Merchant Words helps us to identify additional words we missed and identify an estimated number of monthly search volume.
We use that data and the frequency of keywords appear to prioritize which words will be used in the listings.
Not Understanding the Role of KeywordsSince customers primarily find products through search on Amazon, keywords are how you target your buyers.
This means not just focusing on what words you would use to describe your product, but what words your ideal customer would use to describe your product.
For example, if you had a 6-line PBX office phone and generally, you find that that type of phone is purchased by smaller companies, where it could be the office manager or the CEO ordering the phone. In this case, you might not focus on PBX as a keyword.
However, for your 12-line office phone, that is ordered by larger companies, and generally by a chief technology officer, you would focus on PBX and other technical specifications focused keywords more than [office phone system].
2. Maximizing the Number of Highly Relevant Keywords You Are Indexed ForI recently wrote an article specifically about making sure your listing is indexed for the words that you feel are highly relevant to your listing.
Being indexed for a word means that on Amazon your product will come up in the SERP for that search term at any point in the ranking.
There are several places you can put words to become indexed for a listing on Amazon.
Additionally, sometimes customer traffic patterns can also allow you to become indexed for a listing.
However, primarily there are a few areas you want to focus on for keywords:
Title
Bullets
Back end keywords
Structured or other data
Unlike Google technical SEO, you don’t have to worry about backlinks, schema markup, or duplicate content. However, there are specific recommendations for each segment of the listing.
TitleAmazon has been making a concerted effort to clean up and standardize the ways that titles appear on Amazon.
It has specific style guidelines for titles. Keeping your titles optimized for buyer conversion can significantly improve your keyword ranking, as opposed to keyword stuffing your titles.
The title is where you put your most relevant keywords. This generally includes the brand name, product name, size, flavor, and words describing the product use.
Titles should be brief but descriptive, and avoid keyword stuffing.
Your title and images are all that is visible “above the fold” for most smartphone users.
This makes having a highly relevant title that makes it clear what the product is and that helps customers identify that your product is a relevant search result for their query.
BulletsYou want to include brief but benefit laden bullets for your products. I recommend around 100-250 characters per bullet.
This is where you can put a larger quantity of keywords. However, you again want to focus on making the bullets appeal to your target buyer.
The bullets should answer the most common questions a customer would look for if they were able to touch and feel the product. This includes size, flavor, uses, compatibility, material, and what problem does that product solve.
Backend KeywordsYou can enter up to 250 bytes in the backend keywords. You do not need to repeat any words in the title, bullets, or other structured data.
The backend keywords can be a great place to put alternate uses that you may not want to be publicized on your main page or simply words that didn’t make sense within the other areas of data.
Structured Data (Other Data)One common mistake I find when auditing a listing is all data that ends up being customer-facing (title, bullets, description) end up being completed by whoever created the listing.
Amazon provides a lot of category-specific opportunities to select genre, fabric type, age ranges, etc.
This allows you to identify that your Star Wars Apron is Cotton, Unisex, etc. even if those particular keywords don’t fit well in the bullets or title of your listing.
You want to complete as many of these fields as are relevant to your product as they can provide additional words you are indexed for organically.
It used to be the only way to access these item-specific data points was through uploading your listings via flat file. However, recently Amazon has added these additional fields in the interface under “more details”.
An important side note, because the fields available in the “more details” section of the listing is dependent on the subcategory for the product and because of many other reasons.
3. Ensuring Your Listing Is ‘Retail-Ready’ by Focusing on Elements That Ensure ConversionUp to this point, I have been talking about techniques to get your listing to show up in relevant searches. However, none of that matters if your listings are missing elements that aid in the conversion of those products.
If you are unsure if your product is not selling because it isn’t getting enough traffic or it isn’t converting the traffic that it is getting, you can look at the Detailed Sales and Traffic Report to see your:
Pageviews.
Sessions.
Order session percentage.
Buy box percentage.
Here are some of the primary areas I focus on for conversion:
Multiple High-Quality ImagesYou want to use as many images as you have available to you.
In addition to including an image your product, use infographic images that mirror:
The benefits you highlighted in the bullets.
Any product transformations (i.e., showing an expandable duffel bag both expanded and folded down).
Images showing scale and size.
Lifestyle photos of your product in use.
Fulfillment Method/Prime EligibilityUnderestimating the power of having your product be eligible for a Prime offer can be another common mistake.
I have seen increases of over 400% in sales velocity when we move products from Merchant Fulfilled to a Prime eligible offer.
There are currently three ways you can make your products Prime-eligible:
Selling your product through Amazon Vendor Central.
Utilizing Amazon’s fulfillment by Amazon through Seller Central.
Utilizing Seller-fulfilled Prime through Seller Central.
Every once and a while, we have a client that for one reason or another doesn’t feel comfortable using Amazon FBA or SFP.
You might want to look at utilizing a 3P seller in this situation or be aware that your product velocity may not have the same growth curve as products that are made available with a Prime offer.
PricingThere are two different ways you need to be watching your pricing on Amazon.
The first is pricing on the same Product Detail Page. This would be making sure you are Buy Box eligible against other sellers on the same listing.
You can see your Buy Box percentage for a product detail page on the Detail Sales and Traffic Report mentioned earlier in this article.
You also need to be watching your price against similar products.
One of the ways we start to identify if a competing product is taking market share because of a better offer is to look at that same Detailed Sales and Traffic Report.
If your pageviews and sessions are close to the same number, that tells us that when people leave your listing they are not coming back and we need to look at the price or listing quality to increase conversion.
Enhanced Brand Content & VideoIf you have a live trademark, you can participate in the Brand Registry program.
This gives you the ability to add videos and Enhanced Brand Content (A+ Content is used to describe an almost identical feature on Vendor Central).
Enhanced Brand Content can increase conversions of about 7-11%. Video can have an even more dramatic lift on appropriate products.
Adding videos to your listing is another of the many benefits to being part of the Brand Registry program. You can easily add video to your listing.
Video is also available on to Vendor Central clients as well.
ReviewsIf you have been selling on Amazon for a long time, you have been probably waiting for me to talk about reviews. Reviews used to be the way people would bolster their search rankings.
As with all things SEO, marketers exploit the loophole, and it gets closed.
Most of the review focused methods of bolstering your search ranking are not as effective as they used to be.
Amazon has reduced its value for search and has been actively banning sellers who have not come into alignment with the community standards for reviews.
However, reviews are still very important.
Jeff Cohen, CMO for SellerLabs, the company behind software Feedback Genius that helps sellers garner more reviews from their organic buyers, says,
“Reviews are the final pieces that tie the flywheel together. The let the search engine know that a search term was entered, a product detail page was viewed, a purchase was made, and the customer liked/disliked the product. Customer feedback and is a critical component to the voice of the customer and ensure that Amazon is showing products that people want to purchase when looking for a particular term.”
4. Jumpstarting Sales & Conversions for Your ListingOn Amazon, sales beget sales.
So once your listing is optimized, part of organic rank relies on you getting some initial sales to signal to Amazon that your listing will be a good fit for the keywords you are targeting.
Here are a few ways you can use to help jumpstart those initial sales:
Concentrating TrafficOne of the first things I do when taking on a new client is to look for duplicate listings and any appropriate listings to move into a parent-child variation (sometimes called a “twister”).
Making these adjustments allows us to focus the traffic on a smaller number of listings, which naturally decreases the rank of the product.
One note of caution, make sure you are only merging exact duplicates and only moving listings into parent-child relationships if they approved variation types for that category.
Amazon has been suspending vendors and sellers who have been using the parent-child relationships of products to manipulate sales rank.
Clippable Coupons & PromotionsSince Amazon has made purchasing products about as low friction as possible, there are only so many things you can do to lower the friction to encourage buyers. One of those is to offer a discount.
I recommend that you use a coupon or a promotion code instead of simply lowering your price if you are offering a significant discount, as it can cause you to end up with a Suppressed Buy Box which can hurt sales long term.
Black Hat TacticsThere is always a lot of chatter about what is working on Amazon.
However, I have an important recommendation for those looking to have a long-term relationship selling on Amazon.
That is to make sure you are staying with approved white hat tactics for optimization.
Part of Amazon’s culture is being customer-obsessed.
If you are manipulating the system or causing a negative customer experience, Amazon could suspend or ban you from the site completely.
There are black hat tactics that still work on Amazon. However, as the search on Amazon gets more sophisticated, those tactics predictably lose their efficacy.
Chris McCabe of chúng tôi a company that focuses on reinstatement for suspended sellers says this about black hat tactics.
“Sellers must be aware of the increasing signs that Amazon’s feeling the pressure to investigate the groups behinds fake reviews and sales rank manipulation. Once they devote more resources to this issue, many fewer sellers and services will be able to rely upon past bad practices. Beyond that, when Amazon eventually sues a service (as they have before) part of that process may involve the black hat’s disclosure of a client list. That means you could be named, or outed, or included in whatever actions that come next.“
OverallLike Google, Amazon SEO is not a “set it and forget it”. Amazon is constantly changing their guidelines and the search algorithm that powers the site itself.
Continue to test new copy, images, and optimization techniques to find what works best for your products.
However, the items outlined in this article will give you a good start for how to begin to capture more sales on Amazon.
More Resources:
Image Credits
All screenshots taken by author, July 2023
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