Structured data for your SEO campaigns may be the culprit behind your lack of traffic to your Zen Cart site. Structured data markup is code used to identify and label structured data on a webpage so Google can process and display the data in search results. Structured data is displayed in the form of rich snippets, rich data that appears in the search engine results page (SERP) for the users' convenience and ease of searching your site.
The importance of structured data for SEO is explained by these four related factors:
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Data/information that makes more sense. Relevancy of content resulting from a user's search query is one of the elements that search engines constantly work on and improve. Structured data is one step towards increased relevancy due to the appearance of rich snippets on your SERPs.
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Increased visibility in the search engines. Though it has not been "officially" proven that structured data influences the rankings of search engine results, it's evident that rich snippets are holding more space in the SERPs. When it comes to structured data and how it appears in the form of rich snippets, users can easily discern the difference in terms of content, one reason why rich snippets increase your site's visibility in the search engines.
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Increased click-through rate (CTR). Though users have an abundance of information at their fingertips in search results pages, they are more likely to click on rich snippets over other results, as rich snippets are the most relevant content related to their search. These higher click-through rates bring more targeted traffic to your website.
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Increased return on investment (ROI). The three previous steps all lead to a final result — increased ROI. Users that are able to retrieve relevant content by finding rich snippets are more likely to click on your web pages, spend more time on your website and proceed to an online purchase.
Traditional Zen Cart web pages have plenty of content, but they do not communicate to Google the prices, images, descriptions, names, etc. on each page. As a result, Google has to work longer to analyze each piece of information on these web pages. Resolving this problem involves changing product templates and adding tags, normally requiring about four to five hours of programming. Even with this time-consuming solution, there is no single template for every page on each website. This frustration reduces search engine results, traffic and conversions.
Ease your frustration with basic Zen Cart SEO by installing the Numinix Structured Data (NSD) plugin. Zen Cart will communicate to Google more efficiently and give the search engine exactly what it wants — relevant data for its users. By installing this plugin, you can see a return on investment in a matter of weeks and increase the relevancy of your website in the search engines.
