Ecommerce SEO

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• Ecommerce faceted navigation

  Ecommerce faceted navigation is the filter system on PLPs — color, size, brand, price, material — that lets users narrow product lists. Each filter combination is a URL. Without rules, the combinatorics generate millions of near-duplicate pages and a textbook crawl trap.

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• Google Merchant Center

  Google Merchant Center is the platform where retailers upload product feeds to power Shopping ads, free Shopping listings, the Shopping tab, and product-related surfaces in Search. Distinct from on-page Product schema — Merchant Center reads a separate structured feed.

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• Out-of-stock SEO

  Out-of-stock SEO is how a site handles product URLs when stock runs out: temporarily unavailable, seasonally gone, or permanently discontinued. The right response depends on which of those three states applies. The wrong response — 404 everything, or redirect every dead PDP to the home — destroys ranking equity built up over years.

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• Product detail page (PDP)

  A product detail page (PDP) is the URL that represents one purchasable item. It carries the title, gallery, price, variant selector, buy button, schema, and review block. PDPs are where commercial intent converts and where most ecommerce ranking work concentrates.

• Product feed (GTIN/MPN)

  A product feed is the structured catalog file — XML, CSV, TSV, Google Sheet, or Content API payload — that an ecommerce site uploads to Google Merchant Center. It contains one row per SKU with attributes Google needs to render Shopping listings: title, image, price, availability, GTIN, brand.

• Product list page (PLP)

  A product list page (PLP) is the category or collection page that lists multiple products with filters and sort. It targets head-to-mid keywords ("running shoes", "women's leather jackets") and funnels link equity to the PDPs it contains.

• Product schema

  Product schema is the schema.org/Product structured-data type that describes a single sellable item — name, image, price, availability, ratings. Required for Google's product rich results in classic search and the Shopping tab. Implemented as JSON-LD inside the product detail page.

• Product variant SEO

  Product variant SEO is the decision of how to handle color, size, and SKU variations of one product: a single canonical PDP with selectors and schema hasVariant, or separate URLs per variant. The default pattern shifted in October 2023 when Google released hasVariant support.