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Ben Hollom – Marketing Director, M2 Bespoke
By Ben Hollom
Google is getting ready for a new update that will seek to protect users by pushing bad merchants down the search results, according to Search Engine Land, which cited Google´s head of spam Matt Cutts.
Basically, Google does not want to rank bad merchants in their search results at all. Cutts explained that Google will be looking at the quality of merchants and whether they can improve the quality of the content they offer.
While no details of the oncoming update are currently known, knowing what Google sees as a good merchant might give marketers an idea of what they should be doing in order to maintain or improve their rankings.
According to Google´s Search Quality Rating Guidelines, websites of True Merchants can be recognised if they offer a shopping cart that updates when items are added to it, a “view your shopping cart” link that stays on the same site, a return policy that has a physical address, a working calculator for shipping charges and a user forum that functions.
Other features that Google lists as important for merchants include: a link that allows users to postpone the purchase for later, or a “wish list” link; the ability to login or register; the ability to track FedEx orders; and a working gift registry. SEO marketers should note that a website does not need to have all of these features to be ranked in search results.
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