Best Practices for Google Shopping Feed Optimization

With the advent of e-commerce in the past few days, hundreds of businesses take up their business online. Be it an age-old business or a new small business looking to operate only online, and numerous people sign up online to tap the increasing demand for online shopping. 

Therefore, it is pertinent to stand apart from the crowd and ensure that your business flourishes. This article helps you understand what Google Shopping Feed Optimization is and how it helps make your online shop boom. 

Create shopping ads and a feed for google merchant center by Danish886

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What is Google shopping feed? 

Google Shopping is an exclusive service offered by Google that allows customers to find, research, view, and compare various products. Previously known as Product Listing Ads, this service helps make your products visible to those customers who search in Google. 

When you enable and optimize Google Shopping Feed, your products are shown to the customers who search for them on Google.  The products appear either on the main search engine results or under the shopping tab of the page.

Your Google Shopping feed is a database that explains and sorts out your product catalog, making Google easily understand and grab the data.

Google gets into the advertisers’ feeds, pages, and websites to decide on the appropriate advertisements for a particular search query. Only when you have a full Google Shopping feed, your promotions become relevant and visible. 

If you are trading with footwear and a potential customer searches for ‘shoes’ in Google, your products would be displayed under the sponsored ads showing at the top of the page. But making Google display your products at the top of their search results, requires an effective Google Shopping Feed Optimization.

5 Free WooCommerce Google Product Feed Plugins for Quality Leads

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First, the mechanism of Google Shopping feed optimization is very similar to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Just as in SEO, for effective Google Shopping feed optimization, you need to feed relevant data to appear when customers search particular queries on Google.

Regular and proficient optimization is crucial to run a successful shopping campaign that brings profound results lucratively. Activities under Google Shopping feed optimization includes typically creating an impressive data feed, developing a list of negative keywords relevant for your business, managing bids, making bid adjustments with filters for time, audience, device, to name a few.

If you are handling a small business, and deal only in a limited range of products, you can create your shopping feeds manually in Google Sheets. If you are someone who deals in a wide variety of products, you may use an app or service that helps auto-generate your feeds in a Google-friendly manner. 

On the other hand, many market experts offer specialized services for optimization that allow you to save the time, effort, and hassle of optimizing your campaigns. 

Why do you have to create one for your e-commerce store? 

It is no doubt that Google Shopping Ads generates high exposure and immense growth. There are enough examples in the market that prove Google Shopping Feed has played a vital role in increasing brand awareness and standing apart from competitors for many merchants. 

If you are still on the fence about Google Shopping Feeds, check out the following reasons that explain why you need to create one for your e-commerce store now.

1. To show up in the right-product search query

You may own a small business that has just come into the market or been there for quite some time when your products arrive at the top of a search engine result page, and it gets you a competitive edge over others. 

Google Shopping Ads guarantee your products will come out among organic search results, and thus you will be able to effortlessly and effectively expand your brand in the online arena. 

A popular reason why Google shopping ads are incredibly proficient at harmonizing probable customers to your business is that your products are displayed based on the customer’s keywords. This means your products are shown to customers who are already attracted to what you put up for sale.

2. To make that prospective buyer click your shopping ad

Having a Google Shopping Feed helps to motivate your customers to purchase what you offer. Customers don’t necessarily need to be known with your company or brand to locate you through Google, as your products can come out whenever Google fits them to the customer’s search keywords. 

When people show interest and click on your product through advertisement, they have already hoarded enough helpful details about your product. They would know the specifications of your product by the picture and description. 

Hence, prospective buyers who have thoughts to click on your Shopping ads may have a convincing desire to buy.

3. To Optimize your Google shopping ads easily

Creating a well-kept Google shopping feed helps optimize Google Shopping Ads much simpler as Google Shopping Ads removes the keyword hassle entirely. Instead of relying heavily on keywords, Google determines the relevant keywords based on your product data feed. A strategically designed shopping feed thus yields better results.

With a great optimized Google Shopping feed, you are immediately transferring your product data to Google, which employs all the matching keywords to your products. Compared to other services where you require studying the keywords yourself, using Google Shopping feed to create ads helps you notice a noticeable difference in time and effort.

Why Should You Optimize the Google Shopping Feed? 

Setting up your Google Shopping Feed is very easy. Without any trouble, you can set up your Google Shopping Feed in your Google Merchant Center account. 

Data feeds encompass all the essential and relevant information about your products. Thus, the feeds you set up will serve as the spine of all your campaigns, reinforcing the entire course of action intended to drive up your sales.

Google Shopping doles out various benefits and has a better edge over the traditional and the usual text ads of Google Ads campaigns. Shopping campaigns make use of attractive pictures and essential details to endorse your products and make them visible to customers searching for them on Google.

But, these can be achieved only through an optimized Google Shopping Feed. Read on to find more about the emphasis of why optimizing your shopping feed is necessary.

  1. Increase Visibility in Google Shopping 

It is now clear that with Google Shopping ads, you can advantage from attaining more prospective consumers. A single query from a shopper may also give a variety of products from your shop. 

Google Shopping facility allows you to augment the brand awareness of all the associated products you offer and thus attain more attracted people with a better quantity of products. 

But, Google Shopping Ads can be a congested area, especially in recent days, so standing out and being a step ahead of the competitors is necessary. To bring you out, a skillfully optimized data feed is the answer. 

An optimized shopping feed puts your ads forward, making your ads targeted more often as they will be more strongly matched to the search words. 

Google Shopping Feed increases your visibility and makes the searching eyes see towards your listings, all because of the accuracy, specifications, and care put into optimizing your feed.

  1. More Clicks which leads to more sales

The primary goal of listing your ads is to improve your Click-through Rate (CTR) and make as many sales as possible, helping you get the maximum return on your investment (ROI) possible. This idea is complementary to the concept of increasing your relevance, which we would see in the next point.

A higher ROI (return on your investment) means you can enjoy better triumph and financial returns on your business for the time and efforts you put. The higher ROI thus makes you generate more sales by expending less.

With attractive images and great product titles, shoppers will already develop trust and a good feel for your product at just the first glance. The details on price, specifications, and features will all be obtained by them in a few seconds that by the time they click on your ad, you might have already persuaded them to buy.

If you don’t include the price or correct details, shoppers may click to see your product but go automatically, generating a higher bounce rate. 

  1. Improved Segmentation

Google’s Shopping Ads work by showing your products’ attributes inappropriate searches, as an alternative to using keywords. Google Shopping listings allow you to boost your leads’ quality by showcasing product information right in your ads. 

Google Shopping Feed helps in segmentation through which the value of shopping campaigns increases. Overall product management advances through better organization. 

To make sure proper segmentation is done, embrace as much data as possible for every product. It’s fundamental for segmentation purposes to incorporate the brand, Google Product Category, condition, and product type attributes.

  1. Increased Relevancy

Optimizing your Google Shopping feed is all about enhancement to work with Google’s Shopping Ads algorithm. When you’re searching for a specific product, attributes such as categories, keywords, and product identifiers (like GTINs) are all encompassed when deciding the best match for a buyer’s query. 

Hence, having a comprehensive and thorough feed is critical. The more accurate your feed’s information is, the more likely your products are displayed to a search query. If you’ve fully optimized your feed down, your product is the winner.

Best Practices for Google Shopping Feed Optimization 

It’s indispensable to have an optimized Google Shopping feed to utilize your money and boost sales thoroughly. 

After analyzing the various feed attributes, you can put into action certain best practices to develop your Google Shopping campaign outcomes. Make the best use of the following steps to perfect your feed and harvest better results. 

1. Product Titles are the first and foremost thing to optimize

One of the main attributes, product titles deserves a lot of attention as it’s where shoppers get the primary details about your product. Product titles are the key to lure people to your ads and listings.

Put critical details at the front of your product title

The most important information should be shown at the beginning as the whole title may not be seen. 

Add Category And Brand To Product Title

Each category such as apparel, footwear, electronics, books, etc. has a particular suggested attribute order for entirely optimized titles. Thus, it is recommended to put your Brand name first.  

Add Specific Product Info Like Size, Material & Condition

You can also add unique product features about gender, age group, size, size type, color, or customization options to match the search queries better and impel a performance boost.

2. Always use high-quality images

The first impression is the best, and the key to nailing this expression in the context of optimizing your Google shopping feed is through the use of high-quality images.

Google Shopping Feed Management | Feedonomics™

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Provide the highest resolution image_link 

Products with high-quality images instantly grab the shoppers behold and are more likely to appear for the search queries. Use images that are eye-candy and aesthetic, the ones that are optimized to both systems and smartphones.

Avoid placeholder images or images that include promotional messages or logos

Be mindful of using only professional images with your brand logo and not other symbols or words to hold your customers’ attention.

3. Use perfect product types

Demarcate your products into the right product types to enable Google to throw it up to the correct search query.

Clean up your product types – combine plural and singular duplicate product types as one

If you have too many product types, it is time to clean them up into crisp and fewer types to reduce duplicity and confusion.

Nest Your Product Types

Increase the chances of showing up for various search queries by nesting your products under variable product types.

Provide the most detailed product_type values that you have

Online shoppers tend to search long-tail queries, including detailed product_type values including the color, brand, size, model, style, gender, measurements, and other relevant attributes.

4. Provide your most accurate product data

The product description is the detail that appears below your product title and your product image. Provide concise, crispy, and to-the-point data. Your product data should be detailed and comprehensive, but not spam.

5. Maintain up-to-date price and availability

Often the price of a product may change due to discounts or changes in the cost of production. The availability may vary due to demands. Please keep track of it and update it continuously not to frustrate your customers.

Google merchant center shopping feed - J2Store Documentation

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6. Use google_product_category values that are a minimum of 2-3 levels deep

Your product category is a backend attribute that Google takes into deliberation when populating the Shopping search results. Select a category from Google’s Product Taxonomy that has over 6,000 categories and subcategories. 

In other words, narrow it down in a detailed manner, at least 2-3 levels deep. If you sell tops, don’t just categorize them like this:

Apparel & Accessories > Clothing

Instead, try this:

Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Women Clothing > Western> Tops & Tees

7. Use unique product ID and title value for every item in the product data

A unique product ID and a title value should be added for every item in your product data. Product title optimizations are an essential key to making your ads significant to users. 

The same ID to all the things would keep the history of the data. When a varied ID is used for each product, the customers can meet their needs quickly and easily. 

8. Provide the GTIN whenever available for your products

Every product you sell should have a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), which helps Google comprehend precisely the kind of product you are showing. 

GTIN is a unique item identifier that’s used to accumulate information in various databases. 

Every item posted for sale needs a unique, universal GTIN such that the same thing could be recognized among different databases. 

This also means that your ads and listings can emerge in more places such as YouTube and our partner sites.

9. Clean The Product Data

Get your content on product data organized. Centralize your product information and edit your product data to match Google’s specifications. Assimilate all other product information to suit Google’s content requirements. 

Misspellings

Be extremely careful while typing out product titles, product descriptions, and data as a small misspelling may not make your product visible. This is also relevant between spellings for UK and US English. 

Use of another language

Please refrain from using words or descriptions from another language as it may reduce the possibility of your product’s visibility in search results.

Wrong use of capitalization

Excessive capitalization or improper use of capitalization also has a strong influence on your rank on Google Shopping.

Conclusion 

Google shopping feed bears many advantages for businesses and online stores. Google Shopping Feed Optimization makes you advertise your product in the first line and is extremely easy and straightforward to execute. 

If you’re looking to stay ahead of your competitors and prevent wasting ad spend, it is time to tweak your marketing efforts favouring Google Shopping Feed Optimization.

Creating and optimizing a Google shopping feed is extremely easy. A feed is an organizer that contains a wide range of products you want to advertise through the Merchant Center. Once you’ve created a feed, it can be used many times against many Merchant Center features. 

There are multiple types of feeds available in the Merchant Center that you can use depending on your need as a business owner. 

Guest Post Contribution from AdNabu

AdNabu helps improve sales in Google Ads for shopify stores. If you are running google search, google shopping, or display campaigns in Google Ads, Their apps help to increase your sales.

Kellee Carroll