Can I duplicate product schema markup on my home page because Google is preferring to rank my home page for product terms?

Question

I have a website with product pages that have Schema markup. Unfortunately, my home page ranks better for my main product's search term, but Google's search snippets don't show the product image, unlike my competitors' sites.

Is it OK to duplicate my main product's schema on the homepage since I link to it from there? If so, do I use the same SKU with an image that is on my homepage or would that create a duplicate somehow? Don't want to get any penalty of course.

Answer 1

The guide of Google Follow the structured data guidelines tells us:

Important: Google does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results, even if your page is marked up correctly according to the Structured Data Testing Tool. Here are some common reasons why:

...The structured data is not representative of the main content of the page, or is potentially misleading.

and further:

Relevance

Your structured data should be a true representation of the page content.

Thus your structured data should represent the main content of a web page to which they refer. If your home page has main content such as the presentation of your business, then the structured data must be of the top level type (main type). one that represents your business, for example, the type LocalBusiness or some more specific of the type LocalBusiness.

If your business has a subject such as a product, then you can use the following properties for the embedded product:

• hasOfferCatalog with the embedded type OfferCatalog
• makesOffer with the embedded type Offer

You can also use the property mainEntityOfPage and in its value specify the URL for the web page representing your product.