SEO

SEO Market Store Best Practice “The Rakuten Merchant Package for SEO will aid in improving the visibility of your store in search.” Getting Started Making sure all assets for your merchant store are well optimised for search engine optimisation, utilising all components in the below sections.  Store Homepage Description Navigation  Category Pages (Case Study) Descriptions Images  Product Pages Description Images Video Search Engine Optimisation guidelines aim to improve the Rakuten merchants marketplace by improving overall product discovery.

Getting Started Category pages are vital for search engines to see, index, and weight the value of the content inside. Products require a more comprehensive approach to the SEO, looking at content, videos & images. Shop Pages are the homepage for your store, this is the face of your business and requires heavy attention to detail for SEO.

Shop Homepage description Images are not necessary, but can enhance appearance of the homepage. (Ensure images are optimised (No larger than 100k - JPEG format). The shop description is a useful area for a merchant to introduce themselves to a potential customer, but also utilise this text area to open up cross linking opportunities to category & product pages. Ensure there is a total of 150 – 300 words used across both text fields which is relevant to the merchant itself.

Navigation bar The navigation of your store is vital to the discovery of the products that you offer to the web. By using “Image Link Style” for your store navigation will hinder crawlability of your site. The “Text Link Style” uses words in an anchor and therefore indicates to a search engine, through the on- page anchor text what the destination content will contain. Therefore for general store crawlability & SEO, the “Text Link Style” is the optimal method. In most cases where the Navigation Bar is disabled, use cross linking to your category or product pages in the shop description text areas. This works only for internal links.

Category Pages – Case Study Content added to all sub-category pages Content added to the main category page Peak period With a lack of content on category pages, search engines, such as Google find it difficult to understand the category topic from the header alone. Below is a case-study of where category content has been implemented to improve visibility. Case Study:

Category Information The “Display Name” is also known as a Header 1, This is the title name of the category page. (Ensure this contains the category name). The URL of the category page. (ensure the URL is lowercase, hyphen separated, and contains keywords for the category itself). Images are not necessary, but can enhance appearance of the category page. (Ensure images are optimised (No larger than 100k - JPEG format). The category description is a key SEO component on the category page. (Ensure there is text is relevant to the category – 150 to 300 words of informative and helpful to a prospective customer)

Product Information The “Product Title” is a very important field for products. This uses the header 1 on the product page which is a key component to fill for SEO purposes. No longer than 60 characters if possible No CAPS No Brand keywords Make each product title unique Avoid Special Characters This tagline should only support the products header 1. Though this is optional, using it could be helpful to a user, but to stress, not for SEO. Images are necessary for products, so ensure images are optimised (No larger than 100k - JPEG format)

Product & (Video) Description Videos can be implemented as a helpful way to showcase your product to a potential customer. Using “Source”, include a Header 2 as a subheading to the description itself. The description text of the product is the most important field for search. Unique and useful to audience With potential customer in mind Each product should have at least 150 words. Legal information maybe product related or site wide, therefore ensure content is no larger than the product description.

Product Content - Case Study Comparing Product - Year on Year Unique copy included on product page

Product SKU The SKU field is used for uniquely identifying a product. Ensure this is unique and contains numbers and letters only. Ideally characters, bot NO longer than 50 characters Don’t use whole words carrying semantic meaning Don’t use special characters Upper case recommended YES – numeric only XS3307 – Combination of 1 or 2 letters and numbers NO TCC_70003_SILVER – no words, no special characters h288xMxKxB – no mix of lower and upper case, no recurrent use of lower case like ‘x’

Downloading Product Information To download the bulk product upload document, follow these three steps: Access Products In Bulk Actions: Download All Products Download Detailed – All Fields This will then prepare the download and will become active in the form of a “download” link. 1. Products section 2. Download Products 3. Full Details Download

Product Upload - Bulk Actions Once the template product CSV / Excel Document is downloaded, products can then be uploaded with the bulk functionality. In the All Products download list, there are multiple fields required, some, though are vital for SEO. The fields shown below are the areas to ensure skubase_skumanufacturernametaglinedescription_1image_url_1 Fields for SEO: Numbers/ Letters (20-25) Header 1 of product (60) Description ( ) Images (jpeg format only) base_sku name description image_url_1 baseSku title description images API Bulk Upload

Include: Use Text Link Style Navigation Optimise Header 1: Category Shop description Category description Product description Product Optimise format & size of images Task List: If you have any feedback or ideas for further SEO improvements contact ###. Images