Searchmetrics e-commerce ranking factors study says easy e-commerce sites rank higher in Google

Searchmetrics has published a retail-specific Google ranking factors document that looks at the top-ranking e-commerce sites and tries to analyze what factors make them rank higher in Google than others. This is similar to their general rankings factor study, but this one focuses on the retail sector.

Here are the main takeaways from the study, but it is worth downloading the full study over here.

• Only 3 percent of the top 10 e-commerce pages have Google AdSense or Adlinks on the pages.
• The e-commerce websites among the top 20 search results have less than a third as many social signals as the overall average.
• The file size of e-commerce pages in the top 10 is more than 30 percent larger than the average file size across all sectors.
• The number of interactive elements on high-ranking e-commerce websites is almost 40 percent higher than in [Searchmetrics’] benchmark analysis.
• Across the top 10 Google positions, e-commerce pages have, on average, 70 percent more bullets per list than the overall benchmark.
• In e-commerce, URLs on the first page of the Google search results have 70 percent more internal links than the overall benchmark.
• Across the top 20 of Google’s search results, well over half of e-commerce pages have an online store above the fold. This is more than double the overall average.
• E-commerce pages in the top 10 almost all (99.9 percent) have the TLD .com.
• Video plays a less significant role in e-commerce than for websites in general. Only 35 percent of e-commerce pages in the top 10 have embedded videos.
• The word count for e-commerce URLs in the top 10 is around 25 percent higher than the overall average.

The table below summarizes the percentage differences between the top 10 averages for e-commerce pages and the benchmark average values from the general ranking factors.

The following infographic shows the rank correlations for all ranking factors covered in this white paper and compares these with the correlations from the general ranking factor analysis.

Daniel Furch, head of content at Searchmetrics, said, “Most marketers appreciate that you need to create relevant, high quality content to perform well in search, but our latest study highlights that online retail and ecommerce marketers must also pay close attention to a variety of retail-specific factors. … This includes considerations such as ensuring content is structured with bullet points so that product details can be more easily scanned by visitors; making the online checkout section easily visible without scrolling; and — in most cases — avoiding ads on the page.”

You can download the full white paper over here.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.