Paid search has become crucial for any ecommerce business. Our experience says that Google Shopping ads and Product Listing Ads are more economical and successful than the traditional text ads form of PPC. Since both of them are different, same optimization techniques cannot be used.
Read our article How to Get Started on Google Shopping
1. Data Attributes of Products
Google Shopping feed have an important and elaborate product data attributes list like availability, price, description, brand, color etc. that needs to be filled out by you. Missing filling in these attributes can cost you in sales lost to competitors, who are giving more information to the consumers by filling all details. This is because, with the help of these attributes, Google displays your products to customers searching for them. E.g., You do not fill in attributes like gender and color of the product. So, when a customer searches for women’s red pants, your product will not show up in results. Even if it does, the customer may not click on it because of the lack of information like gender or color. Google has categorized attributes into few groups like product category, basic product data, product identifiers, price and availability, configurations, detailed product description, shipping, tax etc.
2. Standard Attribute Terms
You need to completely fill all the attributes correctly in the respective formats supported. E.g. 5 age group terms are supported: new-born, infant, toddler, kids and adult. Google will not understand incorrect age group specified by you in your product. Refer the full list of specific product attributes by Google for more information.
3. Negative Keywords
Shopping campaigns do not use keywords like text ads but do use negative keywords in case you wish to prevent your ads to show up for irrelevant search queries. One can use negative keywords in AdWords account at the campaign or ad level, it could be an exact phrase or broad match.
4. Title of The Product
Use title efficiently as keywords list cannot be used. Try to include appropriate keywords in the title without keyword stuffing. Search for keywords like you do for traditional text ads and include the popular terms used in a search first in the title to catch the reader’s eye. Instead of using your landing page terms, use words people use for searching. E.g. use “dark wash jeans” in the title instead of “indigo jeans” mentioned as a color option on your product page.
5. High Quality Images
Make use of high quality and high-resolution product images in Google Shopping feed. Images should be more than 250 by 250 pixels and less than 64 megapixels. No text, watermarks or logos should be imposed on images, display them on a solid white background.
6. Merchant Promotions
Use merchant promotions to display special offers and discount to customers. This promotion will appear as a link “Special Offer” in Google Shopping feed under the product details section. When customers click on this link, a box will appear with offer information, maybe a discount promo code. For using promotions, one should have an AdWords account, active products Merchant Center account and a Google approved interest form. Enter promotions manually one at a time or through promotions feed spreadsheet if there are many.