Walmart is the third-largest marketplace and it is continuously growing. In 2020, around $92 billion of goods were sold at Walmart in the US market only. It demonstrates the importance of Walmart for Third-party sellers on US Marketplaces.
Walmart has a smooth search engine running on its platform. They also follow various SEO best practices to determine the visibility of products on the top of Walmart search engines. Various experimentation and insights from many experts show that Walmart’s SEO algorithms follow conversion-based principles. The Walmart organic rank is based on the optimization of various components of the Product detail page. Walmart Listing Optimization is very important, especially for Product experience management as well as the shopper journey which is critical for sellers.
Walmart SEO is all about optimizing your product listings and offerings to perform well in Walmart’s internal search engine. By optimizing your listings, you aim to boost your products’ visibility and grab the attention of potential buyers browsing the site.
Walmart’s Search Algorithm is getting more complicated. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize your listings with the best SEO practices to maximize success. Walmart Listing Optimization is important to increase sales, get your listing to the top of the search box, and continuously drive performance. Other reasons for optimization are to enhance the customer product experience and improve how they perceive info from the product pages such as product titles, categories, images, price, shipping information, and more.
Marketplace Intelligence provides brands and retailers unified visibility into the shopper journey to optimize the digital shelf. It is an essential, powerful, and effective software to help you optimize price, product classification/categorization, title, extension, promotion, and many other aspects of the product detail page across the channels (Walmart, Amazon, Google Shopping, etc.).
How comprehensive of a product feed you can provide to Walmart dictates how comprehensive the product detail page is in the eyes of the shopper. This is one of the main aspects of Walmart SEO Strategy. The product feed also needs to be enriched across the shopper’s journey since it can impact the customer’s product experience.
Marketing Intelligence fulfills a void in the market by providing a product feed tool that helps you deliver a comprehensive and fully enriched product feed to the Walmart Marketplace as well as to other channels you are marketing. It helps you optimize your product feed to increase the brand and product findability, optimize digital shelf visibility, and enhance the product experience of your brand.
Below we provide the main components that need to be optimized for SEO in Walmart and some insights we gained from our analysis of 14.4K shoe products in Walmart from 100 ‘shoes’ related keywords from across the shopper journey.
Product titles are the core of any product detail page. It is a component that takes a significant real estate in the ad. The beginning of the shopper journey is the product title. If the title isn’t aligned with the search, you are almost guaranteed to lose out on clicks to your competitors therefore, product title optimization is paramount for Walmart SEO strategy.
Here are some of the basic rules when organizing your product title:
As seen on the graph below, our data showed that 34% of the product titles were in the 50-70 character range and 33% had over 70 characters and the remaining 33% had less than 50 characters.
Analyzing our data on the shoe products, we found that ads ranked higher have a higher percentage of keywords that match the search keywords. As shown in the graph below, the ads ranked between 1 to 10 have 34% of ads that have a high match whereas ads ranked 31-40 only have 20% of ads that have a high match with the searched keyword.
Our data showed 42% of the titles were quite descriptive as they had more than 10 words in the title (as shown on the graph below). The 5% of the products that had less than 5 words should review their titles and make them more descriptive.
Looking into our data again, we found that having shopper attributes like color, size, & material has quite an impact on the ad ranks. As shown on the graph below, a higher percentage of ads having variants (color, size, material) and demography (age, gender) are ranked higher and as we move down the Walmart SEO rankings, there is a downward trend in terms of the percentage of ads having variants and demography.
Walmart has a specific section where the sellers can show their product highlights. It is a form of small description that shows the product’s key features in either paragraph format or listed format.
Always try to include 3-10 key features of the product in the listed form. Try using the short or long-tail keywords organically or naturally rather than keyword stuffing.
The Product Highlight section (as mentioned above) only shows a few enticing qualities of the product. All the features and information regarding the product not mentioned in the highlights should be described under the product description. The product description is the best medium to use your keywords in an organized way.
Ways to optimize the product description:
If we look at all the marketplaces, their vision is to provide the most competitive and affordably priced product to the customers. Product pricing can be considered as one of the most important factors of Walmart’s SEO strategy as it is a big component of a shopper’s decision. Based on our analysis of 14.4K ‘shoe’ products, we found that the majority of the ads were for products under $50.
This does not mean having the cheapest price is the right price. Prices obviously vary based on products so, it is important to monitor competitor prices for each product and try to price your products in the lower quartile of the digital shelf.
Another factor to analyze is the shopper attributes. The table below shows that the price range shown differs drastically depending on what the shopper is looking for. If they search for the ‘best’ then products in the higher price range are presented whereas if the shopper searches for ‘sale’ or ‘cheap’ then products in the lower price range are presented.
As discussed in our previous articles on Product Experience management, acquiring various features of the marketplace can lead to more sales such as shipping labels, sales/discounts, product reviews & ratings, etc.
Having Walmart’s fast shipping badge helps optimize Walmart’s SEO. It leads to an enhanced shopping experience for the digital shopper and can help your ad stand out against competitors in the Walmart search engine.
Analyzing our data, we found what kind of impact having discounts, shipping annotations, local annotations, and special tags (Clearance, Best Seller, Only at Walmart, etc.) has on ad rankings. The graph below shows that the use of these features declines as we move lower in the ad rankings.
Product ratings and reviews are very important factors in Walmart SEO. They are vital to get listed on Walmart’s ad platform. This shows the proof of the customer’s trust and satisfaction with that product. Walmart automatically sends an invitation to each customer asking for reviews for all products they buy which is one less work for you. You need to fully focus on customer service and finding the best way to satisfy your customers via shipping annotations, pricing, promotions, and detailed description of unique highlights.
Analyzing the data on the impact of reviews on ad rank, we found that your chance of getting ranked higher (especially in the top 10) increases with a higher number of reviews and higher ratings. The graphs below show the largest percentage of ads that have more than 100 reviews and a 3+ rating is in the top 10 positions. This doesn’t mean that the ad with the highest number of reviews automatically gets a high rank. It means that you have a much better chance of getting a higher rank with more good reviews and higher ratings, all else being equal.
6. Use High-Quality Images
As you know only the main image is visible in Walmart’s search engine, but the impact of the collective images is essential to your product detail page experience which means that using high-quality images also influences Walmart SEO.
Customers would want to see the right images as well as high-quality images from various angles so that they can compare and find the details they are looking for. A few things to keep in mind when it comes to images are:
Looking into our data, we found that 56% of the products had 4 or more images and 44% had less than 4 images for their products. This means that many ads could potentially perform better by adding more quality images to their product pages.
7. Winning Buy Box
Walmart Buy Box is one of the best features of Walmart. Winning the Buy Box means getting your product listed on top of the Walmart Search Item List for that specific product. It is a coveted position that is highly sought after by every seller in Walmart as it impacts the seller’s conversion rates.
Here are reasons as to why winning the Buy Box is important:
Some of the requirements for Winning the Walmart Buy Box are:
Learn more about Various Components of the Product Detail Page
Keyword Research Analysis and Product Detail Analysis across the shopper journey is very important for Walmart SEO. However, most tools currently in the market (especially for Walmart Marketplace) only give you a basic analysis of keywords or products.
Our Online Marketing Intelligence Tools is a powerful tool for advanced keyword and product detail analysis along with competitor and cross-channel analysis. It helps you gain a competitive edge across your digital shelf and its optimization so that you can improve your customer shopping journey and product visibility.
What we provide:
As discussed above Walmart’s SEO Strategy is about getting your SEO components optimized but it is also about how to optimize your product experience to maximize the touchpoints across the shopper’s journey. To increase sales and grow market share, one must know more about Walmart SEO and ways to optimize it. Walmart Listing Optimization can help Walmart Sellers use the features of Walmart to its fullest and gain more customers which is the core of any marketplace.