According to a survey, eBay’s SEO ranking was affected because of which there was a huge loss of traffic that equally accounted for around $200 million in revenue. This means that the eBay listings were listed lower than before. As a result, eBay lost a huge amount of traffic and sales.

If you’re looking to build the next Amazon or Etsy, or at least have big corporate companies as providers instead, there are other platforms that handle this type of marketplace better.

Perhaps you could instead take a look at Opencart Multi-Vendor Marketplace which is one of the best platforms for this purpose.

The future of e-commerce is the marketplace. Nowadays the existence of marketplaces can be seen everywhere around us. To name some we have – Amazon, Flipkart, Etsy, eBay, Bestbuy, Snapdeal, Alibaba, Taobao & Rakuten.

In these marketplaces, there is a huge amount of data, images & traffic. These marketplaces make use of different popular platforms to achieve their success online.

Based on different platforms Webkul has the marketplace solutions for –

• Magento & Magento2
• OpenCart
• Joomla
• WordPress
• Shopify
• PrestaShop
• Odoo
• Cs-Cart

Why is there a need for SEO in Marketplaces?

Mainly, the need for SEO is to generate more organic traffic. Ranking highly for the search terms increases the visibility of a website and leads to a higher number of organic traffic to the actual website.

Organic traffic is the one that originates by clicking the search links populated using the relevance of searched terms rather than the advertisements. Also, note that the organic traffic is always completely free and long-lasting.

According to a study, nearly 9 out of 10 searchers will never go beyond Google’s first page of organic search results. That means that if your SEO ranking is higher then your website will get more visibility and chances of traffic and sale conversion are higher.

Rich Snippets –

Rich Snippets are the additional lines of information underneath the search results. They consist of product information, breadcrumbs, Prices or reviews, etc. You can make use of rich snippets to get good visibility in the search engines search results.

Using rich snippets you can show your reviews & ratings, products, price, rates, etc. directly in the search results that can catch the eye of a searcher.

To the searcher, these results are more reliable and trustworthy. This will lead to a higher click-through rate (CTR). In addition to that, if you’re snippets are really good, your bounce rate may potentially go down as the searchers can better judge from the search results alone.

How to add Rich Snippet/Markup Schema in your Multi-Vendor/Marketplace?

Using rich snippets you can easily show the additional information in the search results. To get more visibility in the results you need to add structured data to your website.

This data is inside the vocabulary called schema.org and can be added to your webpage in different ways using the MicroData, RDFa, or the JSON-LD(JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data).

You can check the Opencart Google Star Rate Rich Snippet by Webkul using which you can display the ratings. This Rich snippet’s info will be displayed under the link on the Google search page.

Google Structured data extension is supported by markup: schema.org, using rich snippet plugin SERP clicks will be increased which will possibly bring in more traffic and chances to sale conversion are more.

Some of the features of the Opencart Google Star Rate Rich Snippet are given Under –

• Show Product Name.
• Show Image.
• Show Breadcrumbs.
• Show Price.
• Show Product Rating.
• Price of Product.
• Stock Details availability.
• Add Brand Name, Model , Manufacturer to SEO.
• Show number of Reviews

What is a Rich Snippet Spamming

The data that is displayed on a rich snippet should be exactly the same as on the real product page. For example, if a search result snippet shows a rating of 5 stars, the name of the product, and price then these details should be exactly the same as on the product page as well.

Any deviation from the type-specific snippet guidelines and would be considered rich snippet spam. You can always follow the Structured Data Guidelines for creating high-quality structured data.

Few point to remember that can lead to rich snippet spamming & should always be avoided –

1. Never Markup the content that is never going to be visible to the searchers.
2. Never include reviews on pages where there are no reviews.
3. Never Markup misleading content which includes fake reviews or content unrelated to the main focus page.

The snippet spamming can lead to an increase in bounce rate and decrease your site ranking. So, we should always avoid snippet spamming or else be ready for the penalty from Google.