How to promote keywords with commercial intent

Whilst evaluating any site, search engines look at behavioral characteristics, relevance to keywords, social metrics, technical components, and quality of content. However, even if they are ticking all these boxes, commercial sites may still struggle to rank well. And that's because search engines divide keywords into informational and commercial intent, and then rank them differently.

For an online store or other commercial resources to rank well, you will need to understand what exactly search engines deem as 'characteristics' of a commercial site, and therefore what a search engine will expect to see from your site.

Contact page

A contact page is a good trust indicator for a site. When purchasing a product or service, people will want to know that there is someone they can contact should they have any questions or worries.

We recommend including detailed information such as names, job roles, and even photos of your team where possible. You can also include your business's full address with a map showing the location.

Social media pages

Social media is becoming increasingly important in promoting any business. They allow businesses to simplify their interactions with customers and offer free brand recognition.

You can provide links to your social media pages in the footer of your page or in the contact us section of your site. Yet again, the presence of these social media links will build trust in your brand.

A wide variety of products

In general, search engines like stores to have a wide assortment of products, as this tends to better satisfy the users' needs. However, there is no hard and fast rule. For example, if you own an online computer hardware store you are more likely to have a wide range of products available, compared to a small boutique with handmade products. Normally, these two stores would not be competing with one another, meaning they would be ranked differently anyway.

The most significant factor is to ensure that you have good availability of the products that are sold on your site. This means not having too many out-of-stock products. To solve this, you can put products on pre-order if you know you will be restocking them. For this, it is normally best to indicate when the likely date is that the product will be back in stock and to give notifications about new arrivals with an email sign-up option.

If you have a product that you no longer stock, or will not stock again in the future, it is better to remove this from your site's product listings completely.

Product card

An online store only allows you to visualize a product, rather than touch it or hold it. Therefore, your product cards should show as much information as possible.

The first rule is that an image of the product must be included. Here you can use your own creativity to decide what type of images you want to include: 3d models, video reviews, image details by hovering the cursor, etc.

The second rule is a unique description. For some products it may not be possible to have a totally 'unique' description as many of the characteristics may be the same, but try to change a sentence or two explaining the advantages of that specific product. For example, "This model is great for study and work. Fast data processing speed ensures versatility".

The third rule is clearly showing the price and specification of the product. The user must know exactly what they're paying for and how much they are going to pay. Price availability is one of the most important commercial factors.

In addition, some big bonuses are the presence of a shopping cart and reviews or comments on the product. You can even offer the opportunity for users to compare products from the same category.

Payment and delivery

This area of commercial search engine ranking has become more and more important over the past few years. The basic requirements include the ability to pay in several ways (at the user's choice). The options for delivery should also be clearly set out, with mandatory indication of price and terms of service.

Feedback forms, "get a call-back" button

Feedback forms are very convenient for buyers and show that the business is interested in the user experience. Google ranks websites that have these forms on their pages, a little higher. It is worth noting that in almost all sites that are in the TOP 10 for competitive topics and high-frequency keywords, these forms are available.

The call-back feature is also useful for any product or service where the user may have a query and need more advice before committing to a purchase.

Title and URL

Here the requirements are quite standard. URLs should be readable by humans, preferably with transliteration and a low level of nesting.

The title must match the content on the page. Of course, it needs to be as attractive as possible to bring users in. But ensure the title is also accurate, otherwise, this increases the bounce rate. For example, if you write "The lowest prices for refrigerators", then you will need to be able to justify this title on the page.

Summary

Promoting commercial keywords requires its own specific approach. It's not enough to simply write a high-quality product description or article.

You will need to place elements on the page that helps to facilitate the user's purchase. This can be information on the product, its pricing, a shopping cart, and various other features.

It's also important to gain the trust of the user, this can be facilitated using ‘contact us’ pages and social media pages.

Look at your site through the eyes of a user to understand what you would want to see and do on the page if it were you purchasing. This will help you to fulfill many of the requirements the search engine expects to see on a commercial site.