Google Shopping - Froogle has Returned

Google has decided to revert back to free Google Shopping, to assist small business stay open, in the wake of CORVID-19, Coronavirus pandemic. With most retail and fun shopping at a standstill and close by the government order, digital is the way to go.
Details sourced directly from Google.

"It’s now free to sell on Google"

Bill Ready headshot
Bill Ready
President, Commerce
Published Apr 21, 2020

The retail sector has faced many threats over the years, which have only intensified during the coronavirus pandemic. With physical stores shuttered, digital commerce has become a lifeline for retailers. And as consumers increasingly shop online, they're searching not just for essentials but also things like toys, apparel, and home goods. While this presents an opportunity for struggling businesses to reconnect with consumers, many cannot afford to do so at scale.

In light of these challenges, we’re advancing our plans to make it free for merchants to sell on Google. Beginning next week, search results on the Google Shopping tab will consist primarily of free listings, helping merchants better connect with consumers, regardless of whether they advertise on Google. With hundreds of millions of shopping searches on Google each day, we know that many retailers have the items people need in stock and ready to ship but are less discoverable online.

For retailers, this change means free exposure to millions of people who come to Google every day for their shopping needs. For shoppers, it means more products from more stores, discoverable through the Google Shopping tab. For advertisers, this means paid campaigns can now be augmented with free listings. If you’re an existing user of Merchant Center and Shopping ads, you don't have to do anything to take advantage of the free listings, and for new users of Merchant Center, we'll continue working to streamline the onboarding process over the coming weeks and months.

These changes will take effect in the U.S. before the end of April, and we aim to expand this globally before the end of the year. Our help center has more details on how to participate in free product listings and Shopping ads.

We’re also kicking off a new partnership with PayPal to allow merchants to link their accounts. This will speed up our onboarding process and ensure we’re surfacing the highest quality results for our users. And we’re continuing to work closely with many of our existing partners that help merchants manage their products and inventory, including Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, to make digital commerce more accessible for businesses of all sizes.  

Solutions during this crisis will not be fast or easy, but we hope to provide a measure of relief for businesses and lay the groundwork for a healthier retail ecosystem in the future.

How to Pause your business online?

Do not turn off, Web Site! Post separate set of hours or mark as closed for COVID-19 and state intent. Most will understand.

If you're unable to fulfill orders or many of your products out of stock, you may be considering temporarily closing your online business. If the situation is temporary, meaning you expect to be able to sell products in the coming weeks or months, we recommend that you take action that preserves as much of your site's standing in Search as possible. This guide explains how you can safely pause your online business.

Limit your site's functionality (recommended)

If your situation is temporary and you plan to reopen your online business, we recommend that you keep your site online and limit the functionality. This is the recommended approach since it minimizes any negative effects on your site's presence in Search. People can still find your products, read reviews, or add wishlists so they can purchase at a later time. We recommend doing the following:

• Disable the cart functionality: Disabling the cart functionality is the simplest approach, and doesn't change anything for your site's visibility in Search.
• Display a banner or popup: A banner or popup div on all pages including the landing page quickly makes the status clear to users. Mention any known and unusual delays, shipping times, pick-up or delivery options, so that users continue with the right expectations. To prevent the content in the banner or popup from being shown in a snippet in Search results, use the data-nosnippet HTML attribute. Make sure to follow our guidelines on popups and banners.
• Update your structured data: If your site uses structured data (for example, Product, Book, Event), make sure to adjust it appropriately (reflecting the current product availability, or changing events to cancelled). If your business has a physical storefront, update Local Business structured data to reflect current opening hours.
• Check your Merchant Center feed: If you use Merchant Center, follow the best practices for the availability attribute.
• Tell Google about your updates: To ask Google to recrawl a limited number of pages (for example, the homepage), use Search Console. For a larger number of pages (for example, all of your product pages), use sitemaps.

Not recommended: Disable the whole website

Warning: Google's systems are designed to be robust and to help websites recover from temporary issues. However, removing a site completely from Google's index is a significant change that can take quite some time to recover from. There's no fixed time for a recovery from a complete removal, and there's no mechanism to speed that up. This is why we strongly recommend limiting functionality instead of removing the site from Search.

You may decide to disable the whole website. This is an extreme measure that should only be taken for a very short period of time (a few days at most), as it will otherwise have significant effects on the website in Search, even when implemented properly.

Make sure that you consider the following side effects of disabling your entire site:

• Your customers won't know what's happening with your business if they can't find your business online at all.
• Your customers can't find or read first-hand information about your business and its example, reviews, specs, repair guides, or manuals won't be findable. Third-party information may not be as correct or comprehensive as what you can provide. This often also affects future purchase decisions.
• Knowledge Panels may lose information, like contact phone numbers and your site's logo.
• Search Console verification will fail, and you will lose all access to information about your business in Search. Aggregate reports in Search Console will lose data as pages are dropped from the index.
• Ramping back up after a prolonged period of time will be significantly harder if your website needs to be reindexed first. Additionally, it's uncertain how long this would take, and whether the site would appear similarly in Search afterwards.

If you decide that you need to do this (again, not recommended), here are some options:

• If you need to urgently disable the site for 1-2 days, then return an informational error page with a 503 HTTP result code instead of all content. Make sure to follow the best practices for disabling a site.
• If you need to disable the site for a longer time, then provide an indexable homepage as a placeholder for users to find in Search by using the 200 HTTP status code.
• If you quickly need to hide your site in Search while you consider the options, you can temporarily remove a website from Search.

Best practices for disabling a site

Warning: Keep in mind that it's not possible for Google's systems to refresh titles, descriptions, metadata, or structured data included on a website if a page returns a 503 HTTP result code.

While we don't recommend disabling your site, here are some best practices if you decide to do this:

• Continue to allow crawling through the robots.txt file. Don't return a 503 HTTP result code for the robots.txt file because this blocks all crawling.
• Confirm a 503 HTTP result code locally by using curl or a similar tool. For example:

  curl -I -X GET "https://www.example.com/"
  HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
  Mime-Version: 1.0
  Content-Type: text/html
  (...)
• To minimize the server-side and client-side load of a 503 error page, follow these best practices:
  • Use the retry-after HTTP header with a best effort date or duration.
  • Use static HTML.
  • Minimize off-page resources; use inline CSS stylesheets and base-64-encoded images.
• Give your users clear guidance on future steps within the content of the error page. This could include:
  • Links to more information
  • The date when you expect the website to be online again, or when the information will be updated
  • How to contact customer service
• Don't disallow all crawling in the robots.txt file. Returning a valid robots.txt file that disallows all crawling may remove the website's content, and potentially its URLs, from Google Search.
• Don't block the website by returning 403, 404, 410 HTTP status codes, or with a noindex robots meta tag or x-robots-tag HTTP header. This will remove the website's URLs from Google Search.
• Don't use the temporary website removal tool in Search Console for closures. Doing so will make it impossible for users to find your website so that they can learn its status. Also, potential resellers or affiliates of your business's products may continue to be shown in Search.
• Don't block your robots.txt file with a 503 HTTP result code.

FAQs

What if I only close the site for a few weeks?

What if I want to exclude all non-essential products?

Can I ask Google to crawl less while my site is temporarily closed?

How do I get a page indexed or updated quickly?

What if I block a specific region from accessing my site?

Should I use the Removals Tool to remove out-of-stock products?

Resource: Google Search - How to Pause your Business - March 27, 2020

SEO Character Count for Page Titles and Descriptions

Have you heard that the character length of the page titles and page meta descriptions of your website needs to be a certain length to perform within the Search Engines “Best Practices”?  Here is a guide from Bing Webmaster SEO Analysis (Beta), with specific explanations.   What about other search engines? Bing provides Search Results for Yahoo, for now.  Google also performs page title and description compliance similarities.

Bing states that page titles should be within 5 to 100 characters to appear on the search results page and that page meta descriptions should be with in 25-160 characters for the full description to display in the search results.
RTP opinion; On Mobile the display rates are much shorter. When targeting mobile, page title 56-64 characters and meta descriptions 150 characters.

We have practiced at every level possible in order to identify the search engine standards. But with our Automotive clients, they want it all yesterday and insist on seeing as much as possible in the Page Titles and Descriptions.  What if you have too many characters?  The overages, simply do not show nor get presented in the search results.  The Search Engines may recognize the overage, depends on the uncontrollable, ever-changing Bing, Google Search Engine Algorithms.

It is much like the usage of a Vanity Phone Number used in advertising, “1-800-Any-Credit”, notice the Vanity translates to 2 extra digits, the extra digits work on the keypad do not change the 10 digit dial to number and you get the call, and it looks great in the advertising.  This Vanity phone number has a dual purpose, Looks great in Advertising for a Car Dealer, easy number to remember and Performs, Rings when dialed in.

Same with the Page Title, get your message across, stay on focus per page. There is a maximum title character count, if you target too many, or attempt too target to many keywords per page, you will dilutes your focus and will not benefit from your efforts. You can target other pages. You have more than one page on your website, right? If not add more pages.

“Greed is Good” when it comes to Search Results and Visibility. We believe that if you do not appear in the Search Results and at the top, then someone else does. What is the Goal of SEO?  Optimize your Website to get to the top (and stay) on the search results, the Visibility is your OPPORTUNITY to get the traffic to the website or mouse trap. Once the visitor is on the website it is up to the converting power of the website. Test your website for Conversions, do your Contact Forms Work? Are your Phone Numbers Correct and Get Answered?

Get a Free SEO Audit, we can help, call or contact us.

Bing reveals Title and Description settings preferred. Look at Bing Webmaster SEO Reports, Sign up, verify your website, then go to SEO Reports. You will be looking for these and other issues related to your websites development and optimization:
The title is too short or too long.The description is missing in the head section of the page.
The description is too long or too short.

Bing Webmaster (Beta) SEO Analysis

SEO Analysis Detail (Beta)

SEO Suggestion The title is too short or too long.

Duplicate text from Image
Severity: High
Error Count: 
SEO Explanation: If the title is too short, it may not provide us and users with enough information to understand the relevancy of your page.  If the title is too long, we may need to shorten it in the search results and your keywords may not appear on the search results page.  You should try to keep the length of the title somewhere between at least 5 characters and 100 characters.
Recommended Action Change the length of the title to be between 5 and 100 characters

NON-COMPLIANT PAGES
This table lists up to 50 pages that were not in compliance with the selected SEO Best Practice when we last scanned it. Click the URL to view an up-to-date, detailed summary for the page in the SEO Analyzer tool.
Description
Bing may not recognize the description at all in placement, which suggest the description only helps visibility and click through rate. Write you descriptions with conversion in mind on a per page focus.  Check you website for duplicate. What do you think?

SEO Analysis Detail (Beta)

SEO Suggestion The description is missing in the head section of the page.

Duplicate text from Image
Severity: High
Error Count: 
SEO Explanation: Search engines may use the description provided in the <description> tag in the search engine results page (SERP). A well-written description that pertains to the content of the page and that is relevant to the searcher's intent can help you increase traffic since it can help improve the click-through rate of your page in search.
Recommended Action Add a description to the <head> section of the page source: <meta name="description" content="Descriptive, keyword-rich text that talks about the page content goes here.">.
NON-COMPLIANT PAGES
This table lists up to 50 pages that were not in compliance with the selected SEO Best Practice when we last scanned it. Click the URL to view an up-to-date, detailed summary for the page in the SEO Analyzer tool.

SEO Analysis Detail (Beta)

SEO Suggestion The description is too long or too short.

Duplicate text from Image
Severity: High
Error Count: 
SEO Explanation: Search engine crawlers only show the first 150-160 characters of the description in the search results page, so if a description is too long, searchers may not see all of the text. If a description is too short, the search engines may add text found elsewhere on the page. Note that search engines may show a different description from the one you have authored if they feel it may be more relevant to a user's search.
Recommended Action Change the description in the <meta description> tag in the page source to be between 25 and 160 characters in length.
NON-COMPLIANT PAGES
This table lists up to 50 pages that were not in compliance with the selected SEO Best Practice when we last scanned it. Click the URL to view an up-to-date, detailed summary for the page in the SEO Analyzer tool.

HTTPS as a ranking signal - Google

Google focusing on Security. In the future this may be a major ranking factor.  Ranking factor tip from Google?  Great for the SSL vendors; "Cha-Ching"! It was only a matter of time before this was pushed to the public sector for websites.  Google moves all its search to HTTPS and now knows they can not protect everyone's search when they are providing the path to websites that maybe unsecure. Your online identity or search is only as Secure as your, wait for it... Weakest Link.  Good Move.  But is there more to it?  We hope there is, Right.  When are the keywords coming back in Google Analytics?  This maybe the move that gives back the secure path to Google's Search Keyword Data for websites that have Secure Socket Layers. Yeah.  Wishful!  We like correct keyword data!!!! No More "(NOT PROVIDED)"

Is your website safe to be on?

Here is the Google Webmaster Post: August 6, 2014

Webmaster level: all
Security is a top priority for Google. We invest a lot in making sure that our services use industry-leading security, like strong HTTPS encryption by default. That means that people using Search, Gmail and Google Drive, for example, automatically have a secure connection to Google.
Beyond our own stuff, we’re also working to make the Internet safer more broadly. A big part of that is making sure that websites people access from Google are secure. For instance, we have created resources to help webmasters prevent and fix security breaches on their sites.
We want to go even further. At Google I/O a few months ago, we called for “HTTPS everywhere” on the web.
We’ve also seen more and more webmasters adopting HTTPS (also known as HTTP over TLS, or Transport Layer Security), on their website, which is encouraging.
For these reasons, over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We've seen positive results, so we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it's only a very lightweight signal — affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content — while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because we’d like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.



In the coming weeks, we’ll publish detailed best practices (it's in our help center now) to make TLS adoption easier, and to avoid common mistakes. Here are some basic tips to get started:

• Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate
• Use 2048-bit key certificates
• Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
• Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
• Check out our Site move article for more guidelines on how to change your website’s address
• Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
• Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the noindex robots meta tag.

If your website is already serving on HTTPS, you can test its security level and configuration with the Qualys Lab tool. If you are concerned about TLS and your site’s performance, have a look at Is TLS fast yet?. And of course, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to post in our Webmaster Help Forums.
We hope to see more websites using HTTPS in the future. Let’s all make the web more secure!
Posted by Zineb Ait Bahajji and Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analysts

Google to announce to visitors if your website is going to function properly on their devices.

Starting today Google will now indicate to searchers when their algorithms detect pages that may not work on their devices.

A common annoyance for web users is when websites require browser technologies that are not supported by their device. When users access such pages, they may see nothing but a blank space or miss out a large portion of the page's contents.

For example, Adobe Flash is not supported on iOS devices or on Android versions 4.1 and higher, and a page whose contents are mostly Flash may be noted like this:
http://bit.ly/1sjCP3h

This may be a real issue, for webmaster that are on legacy platforms that take an Act of God to make changes. And may be heading for lower session counts.  This is a major component of proper +SEO.  And can be a devastating event especially for the Automotive Industry and the platforms the Car Dealers are forced to use.  The Manufacturer's "Preferred Providers" dictate the websites, in which, most of the Dealers are operating on and some of them are "Old Technology", or Limited Forward Taught".   A great reason to promote more effective +Automotive +Search Engine Optimization.  Get off the "Preferred Providers" basic templates, and customize your destiny.

Just my rant...

As a Promoter of Proper #AutomotiveSearchEngineOptimization for Car Dealers.
Test your Websites on multiple devices! Start with Google Webmaster Tools,
Fetch as Google, Desktop and Smart Phone.  Find your errors before your potential visitors do.

 
 
 
 

Contact Real Traffic Productions, we are here to help with your Automotive Search Engine Optimization. We will help you setup the tools you will need to control your destiny and measure your performance, that are not provider dependent.

Website Audits

An article about website Audits
Website Audits and Everything you Need to Know

What is a Site Audit?

Site audits are, in the simplest terms, when you pay someone to forensically examine your site with tools and their eyes utilizing their knowledge and expertise to tell you what is good and what is not so good about your site (or as we say – where you have challenges and opportunities).

Types of Site Audits

There are many types of audits and they cannot all be covered here, but the most common types of site audits related to SEO needs are:

• Site Health Audits: Assessing general site health or when there is a site health issue such as a downturn in traffic or positioning of unknown causation.
• Red Flag Audits: Assessing a site for potential penalty issues. This should be part of a site health audit, but can be an audit unto itself.
• Competitive Site Audits: Analyzing your site gaps, in its vertical and among your competitors to see what opportunities there are for site growth. Some will use this as a time to copy what their competitors do, but this can be a risky strategy.
• Conversion Optimization Audits: Analyze conversion issues, which can be onsite or technical.
• Negative SEO or Attacked Site Audits: Analyze downturns in site metrics when we know a site (or thought very likely) has been attacked by negative SEO methods.
• Penalty and Recovery Audits: Analyze downturns in site metrics when a site is known (or thought very likely) to have been algorithmically or manually penalized.
• Security Audits: Security audits for site vulnerability especially important in high-risk verticals and high value sites, but everyone should have one.

(Note: All of these can be part of the same audit, however these are how they are most commonly broken down when we receive client requests.)

Which audits are most needed? Site audits are all determined by a site's needs. However all site audits should start with the Site Health Audit.

You can follow the link to read the entire article.

Article by:Kristine Schachinger

The Next Google Places for Business or Google + for Business

Google is ready to roll out the newer Google Places for Business Platform, to legacy listings owners, that have been through Google's up's and down's and down's with the old platform. The duplicates are no longer just a duplicate issue, Dup's will now cause your listing to go off line. Remedy, remove duplicate listing, even though, you claimed them because they showed in results and the were from a syndicated feed. Or you claimed the duplicate in attempt to get access to reviews back, or just control the listing you have no idea where it came from. Some may not get this email from Google, most likely you are new to Google Places/+ and did not fight the battle of listing ownership, good for you. For those that do get this email, your next to upgrade, take action.

If you recently received an email from Google that begins:

“We’d like to inform you that Google Places no longer accommodates more than one authorized owner per business location. Your account contains one or more listings that have been identified as duplicates of other listings and as a result, some of the information you provide will not be shown to Google users anymore…”

Email from Google about duplicate listing in your account...

More Tips on Local Optimization and Automotive SEO at Real Traffic