How to win at Google Shopping, by optimising your shopping feeds

Not having a well optimised feed to complement your Google Shopping is like eating soup with a fork - you can do it, but you're only making life harder for yourself.

Setting up a highly optimised product feed is often overlooked by advertisers, which means those that do focus on improving one of the most valuable assets in shopping will gain a significant advantage. If you are one of those advertisers who don’t take care of their feed's health, you'll be paying more due to poor feed quality and you can also run the risk of not showing in top slots.

That being said, here are my top tips to give yourself the edge with your Google Shopping optimisation.

1. Add top converting search queries into your product titles

Did you know that 100% of search terms that your shopping ads trigger for are a result of words and phrases found directly in the product feed? By using the search term reports to see which queries have converted and adding them to your titles, you can ensure you are increasing your relevance to the search queries with the highest converting potential. However, be warned of keyword stuffing which can limit your ad quality. The key is to create a compelling ad title that uses as many high-volume search queries as possible. A good tip is to place the most important information at the front of your ad titles and limit the risk of your ad title being truncated.

2. Pick your custom labels wisely

A custom label helps you further segment your shopping activity by prioritising products that need extra attention. You only get five, so think carefully about how you use them. If your account structure is built on custom labels, you won't be able to change some of these without a total account restructure in the future.

Here are some of the labels I have found most useful: Margin Data, Product Categorisation, Best Sellers, Stock Level, High impression Volume & Low Traffic and Unserved Products.

3. Product Identifiers

Common unique product identifiers include GTINs, MPNs, and brand names. Having product identifiers helps Google match your products to their catalogue, which increases the chances of your products showing up in relevant search results. Not only are your products more visible, but Google has also stated that Merchants who've added correct GTINs to their product data have seen conversion rates increase by up to 20% and traffic increase up to 40%.

4. Duplicate your feed across DSAs

Ensure product level visibility across both search and shopping by duplicating your product feed into the business data of your Google Ads account. You can then set up Dynamic Search campaigns targeting custom labels in the same structure as your shopping. By doing this, your products will be eligible to show across both campaign types at the same time, increasing your SERP real estate and increasing the likelihood of a click. Further to this, DSA campaigns use your product landing pages to trigger for relevant search queries, which can then be put back into your shopping titles.

5. Make use of all attributes

The shopping tab drives less traffic, but conversion rates are stronger. Products are still shown by using relevant titles & descriptions, however, the shopping tab provides further filtering opportunities to help consumers find the right product such as size, colour or material. If you don’t provide Google with this information, your product won’t show when a consumer applies these advanced filters.

If you are looking on more tricks on how to set up your feed for success, get in contact with us 26 and we will be happy to help!