Product Feed Optimization: What You Must Never Do

By Author: Jamie Viggiano
Total Articles: 7
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Getting to first place in your expertise is not an easy task. You’ll have to exert a ton of effort before you even get a glimpse of your destiny. This is especially true if you’re operating an web-based business and you plan to reach the leading search results page in comparison shopping engines of commonly used sites like Yahoo!, Google, and Bing, so what must you do?

First, take all of your product information and dump them in a spreadsheet so you can modify and improve them. This will probably yield a big spreadsheet, so you probably get it over with now and start optimizing. There are several suggestions online regarding what you should do during product feed optimization, so here’s a guide of things you must avoid:

Do not use direct-to-search engine applications

A few comparison shopping engines, like Yahoo! for instance, have direct-to-search engine tools that will routinely take product information from your web site to be integrated in their database. This will result in un-optimized information, which can bring your rankings down. It is often better to manually change and improve your product ...
... feed prior to submitting it to a search engine.

Never pack keywords

Keywords are crucial to the search engine world. When someone searches for a particular keyword, the search engine they’re using will scan the records for keyword matches. However, this doesn’t mean that you could just cram keywords into product data; That’s just unethical, you’re cheating the system, and the authorities will eventually find you, and you’ll have to face heavy consequences.

Avoid overhyping.

Putting in what you may think are enticing words like “LOWEST PRICES EVER” will only irritate comparison shopping engine users and will not attract them. When optimizing your XML product feed, it is wiser to just stay true to the details of your product—of course, you must know how to advertise your product without seeming like a hard-sell.

Always state what is true

There are companies who think that they can cheat by placing absurdly low prices on their product information just to get clients to click through. Your Bing product feed must truthfully reflect the prices that you have on your website and, to an extent, the prices that you’re planning to charge clients if they choose to purchase. You have to build a relationship with your potential customers, and this might only be possible only by stating the facts.

If your eyes are already tired and you’re still not finished streamlining your Google product feed, you can simply opt to hire a product feed optimization expert to do all of the work for you. For more info, you can check out searchengineland.com/how-to-optimize-feeds-to-maximize-your-exposure-in-shopping-engine-results-18505.