If you sell products online, having a strong presence on Google Shopping is non-negotiable. As part of Google’s suite of e-commerce tools, this online marketplace and ad platform help showcase your brand to potential customers and allows them to seamlessly progress from browsing to buying.

In this article, we’ll walk through several tips and four best practices to optimise your Google Shopping feed and business revenue through this essential Google Merchant Center channel.

Create Strategic Product Titles and Descriptions

Buyers use Google Shopping to explore product options from multiple brands. In most cases, they’re more concerned about finding a product that fits their needs rather than buying from a certain seller. As a retailer, it’s important to keep this in mind when creating your product titles and descriptions.

Product titles should summarise the item in under 150 characters and include key attributes like brand, product type, and any defining features. For example, if you sell dresses, the title of one of your products might be Free People Women’s Purple Wrap Dress Size Medium.

Descriptions are longer (up to 5,000 characters) and allow you to explain your product in additional detail. In this section, you can include information about how your product looks, feels, and performs. Here’s an example based on our dress retailer scenario: This purple wrap dress is soft, stretchy, and made from all-natural cotton. Perfect for work or an evening out, this dress is true to size and hits just above the knee.

Do Your Research

Not sure which keywords to incorporate into your titles and descriptions? There are several tools that you can use to understand what people are searching for and optimise based on your findings. Google Trends, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, and the search terms report in Adwords are excellent places to start.

Use High-Quality Images

From a buyer’s perspective, Google Shopping is all about the visuals. According to Google, using high-quality images can drive more engagement and clicks, so it’s critical that the photos on your website are clean, crisp, and high-resolution. Ideally, they should have a white background and be 800×800 pixels in size. And don’t forget to include photos from various angles to help shoppers feel more confident about what they’re buying.

Unlike titles and descriptions, which are entered manually, Google automatically pulls product images from your retail site and displays them on your Google Shopping feed. If you need to update any photos for your Google Shopping account, you should do so through your website’s content management system (CMS).

Optimise your Feed by filling out Optional Fields

In Google Shopping, some fields (like title and description) are required, but others are optional. While it may be tempting to save time by filling out the minimum number of fields required, it’s highly recommended that you fill out the optional ones as well.

For example, adding optional attributes like size, material, and product type will help improve data quality, boost conversions, and offer a better online shopping experience for your customers.

By following these best practices, you’ll be well-positioned to generate more sales through Google Shopping. If you need guidance on starting or managing your Google Shopping feed, reach out to the online marketing experts at RealClicks.