In recent years, Google Shopping has become an important tool for eCommerce businesses. Like Amazon, Google Shopping offers millions of products, and the higher your company or product ranks, the better the chance that you’ll see a positive impact on visibility and sales. Here, we’ll look at the steps you can take toward Google Shopping optimization, including product feed enhancement and the use of paid strategies.
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What Is Google Shopping, and How Does Ranking Work?
Google Shopping is a platform that enables shoppers to find, compare, and buy products from a variety of retailers. When a customer enters a search query related to a product, Google Shopping displays a list of suitable options with photos, prices, and descriptions. This means that ranking highly in Google Shopping provides an opportunity to showcase your merchandise, boost visibility, and drive traffic to your site.
If you want to know how to rank in Google Shopping results, it’s crucial to understand that Google uses several factors to determine where products rank, including data quality, product feed quality, bidding strategy (the amount you’re willing to pay for clicks on your links), and product relevance.
Optimizing Your Product Feed for Google Shopping
Your Google Shopping product feed—information that you provide to help potential customers learn about your merchandise—is a vital part of ranking highly in Google Shopping.
You’ll want to consider several best practices for optimizing your product feed, including:
- Accurate titles: Clear, descriptive, and concise titles can help boost your Google Shopping rankings.
- Descriptions: The more detail you add to your descriptions, the more likely you are to raise your Google Shopping rankings. Relevant keywords can improve these rankings as well.
- Pricing and availability: Updating your product feed’s prices and availability data could result in better Google Shopping rankings.
Bidding Strategies to Improve Google Shopping Rankings
As we mentioned, it’s helpful to use effective bidding strategies to improve your Google Shopping rank.
Some key Google Shopping ad strategies include:
- Manual CPC bidding: When you choose manual bidding, you set the maximum amount that you’re willing to spend per click on each product or ad group. This allows you to have full control over your bids and lets you adjust bidding based on performance data. If you choose this method, it’s important to monitor your performance regularly and make adjustments as needed.
- Smart Shopping: This type of bidding uses machine learning to optimize your product’s performance on Google Shopping, expanding your reach across Google’s advertising network. This allows you to take a hands-off approach while leveraging machine-learning technology’s ever-increasing abilities.
- Maximize conversions: In this type of pay-per-click bidding, you authorize Google to automatically set bids to maximize the number of conversions within your pre-set budget. This enables you to focus on achieving the highest number of sales.
See our case studies to learn how we’ve helped companies significantly increase revenue by using pay-per-click advertising wisely.
Product Reviews and Ratings: Leveraging Social Proof
Customers largely depend on fellow shoppers’ reviews when ordering products online, especially when they're presented with several different choices. Encouraging happy customers to leave reviews—as well as responding to reviews, both positive and negative—can help potential buyers feel a sense of trust in your company.
First, you’ll need to enable Google Customer Reviews by signing up for the program through your Google Merchant Center account. Then, you’ll be able to directly include reviews in your product feed.
When you ask current customers to leave reviews, ask them to be as descriptive as possible. Photos in reviews can also help. Thanking shoppers for positive reviews can go a long way toward getting repeat customers to come back and post more reviews as they continue to patronize your company.
Using Keywords in Your Product Data: Google Shopping SEO Tips
It’s important to include keywords in product titles and descriptions to increase your Google Shopping ranking. To conduct research specific to Google Shopping, you can start by logging into your Google Ads account and clicking on Keyword Planner. As you enter relevant product terms, you’ll get keyword ideas. Focus on long-tail keywords (phrases with three or more words) to maximize conversion rates. You may also want to search for your own products and take note of competing products that outrank you. Note their keywords and find ways to integrate them into your titles or descriptions.
Monitoring and Adjusting for Ongoing Success
Google’s algorithms are ever-changing, and it’s important to keep an eye on your Google Shopping ranking so that you can make adjustments as needed.
To monitor your Google Shopping performance, follow these steps:
- Link your Google Merchant Center to your Google Ads account. Next, set up conversion tracking to learn about the actions customers take after clicking on your ads.
- In your Google Ads account, check performance metrics (you’ll see a button to view performance metrics within each Google Shopping campaign) like click-through rates and conversion rates.
- Analyze your impression share data. Your impression share measures how many views your ads receive compared to how many they could have received. Adjusting bids and refining your target market can help increase how often your ad is shown.
At Groove, We’re Here to Take Your eCommerce Business to the Next Level
Boosting your Google Shopping ranking can take some work, and you need to pay close attention to your product’s performance to maximize visibility and sales. At Groove Commerce, we’re here to help. Our experts know how to rank in Google Shopping results without using risky or inefficient techniques. Reach out to us today to learn more about our product feed management services and schedule a consultation. We also offer free website performance and accessibility audits.
