PRODUCTS
SEO & SEM Guide
Everything you need to know
Index
Why is product SEO important?
- Product SEO helps ensure your product can be found easily by customers on Rakuten and on other affiliated sites
- The quality of your product data can determine whether the products is near the top of a search or much further down
- It is also very important for ensuring your product is in the correct location and with similar products of its type.
- In this guide we will also talk about SEM as our Google Feeds also relies on this data
Images
- Must be precise (not containing anything other than the products that are for sale)
- Must not contain a watermark/logo/any text/borders (anything that is not specific to the product being sold)
- Pro Tip - Try and provide at least two images, that way if the default one is not approved, there is another
- Images can be in GIF, JPG, JPEG, PBG, BMP or TIF format
- Images should be 800x800 Pixels (or slightly larger) and 250x250 pixels minimum for apparel products.
(Click Down for Example)
Image Example
This image has a watermark and a URL which makes it unsuitable
Title
- Titles have a character/letter limit of 255 as standard, please note though that in order to optimise your products for Google Feeds, you will need to keep the most pertinent information in the first 30 characters
- We recommend between 50-60 characters for titles
- Don't repeat words in a novel way. (New NEW NEW!! will be disallowed)
- Try to avoid the overuse of punctutation. ('!!!/???' could lead to exclusion from Google Feeds)
(Click Down for Example)
Title - Example
Description
- for Descriptions, we recommend that you try and keep it somewhere between 500 and 1000 characters
- only include information relevant to the item you are selling and try to describe the most relevant attributes, such as size, material, age range, specials features or technical specs
- Try to avoid including the following information:
- Links to your shop or other sites
- Billing, payment or sales information
- References to internal categorisation systems, e.g.
"Toys & games > Toys > Baby Dolls"
- Comparisons to other products
(Click Down for Example)
Description - Example
Unique Identifiers
- At least 2/3 values must be included for your products to be fully Search Engine Optimised
- GTIN - Global Trade Item Number (EAN Europe). This type of GTIN is found on products in Europe and Japan, it's the 13 digit number below the barcode. As a rule we recommend you always include this with your product
- MPN - Manufacturer Part Number. This is the number which uniquely identifies the products to its manufacturer
- Brand - The brand identifies the manufacturer of the product. If the Brand is on this list, the Brand must be added to get on Google Shopping Feeds specifically
(Click Down for Example)
Brand:
Manufacturer:
GTIN:
Unique Identifiers - Example
Best Practice
- Remember to keep your title and description concise. It should have all relevant data but it shouldn't waffle
- Although there is a soft limit on images we recommend that you ensure all your images are larger than 500x500; but please ensure they are under the 2MB file size limit
- Try and include all product indentifiers (Brand, GTIN & Manufacturer) where possible
Contact Us
If you can't find the information you are looking for, you can contact your merchant services advisor or our merchant helpdesk at merchant.helpdesk@rakuten.co.uk
Alternatively, you can call the helpdesk team on:
+44 (0)20 3510 8188 (Monday to Friday, 9:00am - 17:30pm)
SEO Guide
By Rakuten UK
