Contents
Prioritise titles and product descriptions
Structure your titles and descriptions
Make use of the character limits
Competitor research
Fill out industry relevant attributes
Use clear images
Check your warnings and disapprovals
Pushed for time? Prioritise titles and product descriptions
The most important attributes for products in any industry are always your product title and product description. So if you don't have the time to optimise all the attributes, focus on your titles and descriptions.
Structure your titles and descriptions
Google recommends adding the most relevant and distinctive information about your products to these two attributes. They're the attributes users see on the carousel which help guide the user to click the ad that best suits their search.
When you optimise these attributes there's two significant audiences you're communicating with:
- Google
Google determines the relevancy of your product to the user's search term. The more (relevant) information you can give about your product to Google via the title and description, the greater your relevance score.
With a low relevance score, your product is unlikely to serve for relevant searches, or high enough in the search results to get meaningful visibility.
- Shoppers
Once Google recognises your product as relevant to a user's search, it's more likely to serve your products in the top spots of the carousel.
The next challenge is providing the right information so the user will understand your product and click through to your site.
For both Google and shoppers, it's important to avoid keyword stuffing, and instead structure titles and descriptions so they're easy to read and include the most important information first.
Are you making use of the huge character limits?
Both the product title attribute and the product description attribute have huge character limits (150 and 5,000 characters respectively). So why not take advantage of that? As long as you have the important stuff at the beginning (size, colour, gender, model, etc), you could then repurpose longer pieces of copy from your product detail page to be particularly clear about your product.
Let's take a look at this ad for an armchair from Daals.
This product title contains lots of information about the product, with key details listed first. Let's look at the full product description.
While this information isn't visible from the carousel, it features keywords a user might use like 'mid-century style', 'solid wood', and 'natural rattan', increasing the product listing's relevance score for those searches, and at the same time providing a description in natural language for your human shoppers.
How are your competitors claiming the top spots?
If you keep finding your competitors beating your position on the carousel, it's time for some competitor research.
To carry out your research, go to shopping.google.com, search a keyword they continually beat you in and scroll to find their ad in the free listings. Here, you can see what attributes they've filled in and how. Make sure you populate the same attributes for your competing product/s and include your target search terms in a natural way.
Fill out all the attributes relevant to your industry
There's dozens of attributes, and while titles and product descriptions are the most important across the board, the most important attributes vary between industries. For instance, attributes like age and gender are critical if you sell clothes and accessories, but they become redundant if you sell car parts.
Use clear images that don't contain other products
'Clear images' sounds simple, but removing the background from your product could make all the difference. Make sure the image is clear to see to avoid bouncing traffic.
When you're advertising on Google Shopping, try ensure your main photo is of the product alone to help both Google and shoppers understand the listing clearly.
Check your warnings and disapprovals
If you still find your products aren't serving where they should, you should always check your warnings and disapprovals.
- If your product listing receives a warning it will still serve but with poor visibility
- If your product is disapproved, it will not serve
Remember that too many warnings can lead to disapprovals and account suspensions. We recommend resolving your warnings as quickly as possible rather than leaving them.
