Google Shopping Actions and Why You Should Care

SEO and the 800 Pound Gorillas

This article is about why your local SEO is critical to staying in business. …and no, I’m not being dramatic.

SEO is simply a way to tell the search engines about who you are and what you do so they can sort you in terms of relevance. The better your content and more “relevant” you are to whatever is being searched, the higher you rank.

Organic search is now more critical than ever as Google and Amazon are in what amounts to a turf war over shopping from search.

Google just launched a new program called “shopping Actions” that builds on the ability to buy stuff right from search results. This is kind of like the shopping squares you get in search results, but on steroids.

Amazon is giving Google a run for its money right now in simplifying how consumers can buy things online. Google is ramping up integrations from the Google Assistant and “helping” you make it easier to buy things.

Even if you don’t sell “products” that you ship (like most of my clients), there is a chance that you can be pushed off ranking from “suggestions” that the search engines are trying to help people with.

We were in the office playing around with one of our Google devices and asked about attorney services. We had created a “product” in the category we were trying to rank in and lo and behold, it came up first in a shopping result!  Now, this took a month of testing and about 100 steps, so it is not as easy as just creating products and gaming Google. However, this may help understand how ranking works even though most service industries won’t ever show product results.

Good SEO means that you help the search engines rank you for things you justifiably should be ranked for while keeping your eye on things that could upset your apple cart.

Good SEO is a lifetime commitment and an investment in your business. Shopping actions from Google illustrates that Google is still a business and is trying to help those who spend money with them get positive ROI. This means that they will focus on helping consumers find what they want, solve their problems and find where they need to go to do it.

Good SEO can help with all of those elements. It is about creating content and leveraging solving customer pain. This helps you in two ways; the first is it helps you rank high in results, and second, and most importantly, it helps show your prospective clients or customers you know what you are talking about and can actively solve their problems and are an expert in their area.

We’ve done testing that mirrors common sense in this area. Websites with content rich copy and videos and an active social media presence are much more likely to get action taken on them than a “brochure” website, with copy and some information and a contact form.

Stick with your path of good SEO and you can safely stay ahead of the battle of the giants as they change and upend ways of doing things.

If you would like a free strategy session on how you can improve your ranking, click here and we can talk.