We can't tell you how many times we have received this question or similar questions like "My most important keyword is x, why aren't we owning those searches".
To quote Google themselves, here are the top things you need to do:
- Increase your campaign budget
- Increase your bid
- Decrease regional target
- Re-adjust your budget
But we think that you can start at another end first, and THEN increase your budgets and bids.
By the other end, we mean that you have to start to look inwards. Your feed is the epicenter of your Google Shopping campaign, and Google prioritizes high-quality feeds and actually produces quality scores based on the quality of your feed. The higher the quality score you have - the more prioritized you become. And a higher priority means a greater chance of winning auctions at a cheaper price, i.e. no need to increase bids first.
You can start by asking yourself these questions:
- What CTR (click-through rate) am I expecting to get on these products? Are they ‘’click - friendly’’ do they tell a story? Am I showing the correct information? How are my pictures?
- Ad relevance - How relevant or closely does your ad match with the search term and buyer intent?
- Landing page expectations - Will the visitor find what they are looking for when landing on your product page? Is it easy to shop? Is it fast-loading? Is it clear?
- Are my titles optimised? Do they contain the search word you want to own? is it a minimum of 70 characters? Does it mention color, brand or gender?
- Are my pictures according to recommendations? The recommendation is: just a picture of the product with a white background.
- How are my Category and product type levels? We recommend having at least 3 levels in the category and product_type attributes.
For example, the products below have a very different quality score on Google Shopping and the middle products have a very small or next to 0 chance of getting impressions on searches related to ''shoes''
To break them down:
Product nr 1: This is what you want. A good title contains lots of relevant information that tells the customer a lot about the product. And thanks to the fact that the title contains relevant keywords, the product has higher priority from Google on related search terms.
The product also has a good picture, with a white background.
Product nr 2: This product has the bare minimum in its title: The technical name of the product and nothing else. This is bad. This means that the product won't be able to match on related search terms with the title and has to depend on landing page text, category information and other feed information.
Product nr 3: This title structure is very common, it has some information but not everything. However, having a messy background on the product lowers the quality score a lot and this product will get a lower priority from Google.
To summarise:
Have a good title that explains the product and contains your keywords. The recommendation is at least 70 characters.
Don't use a background on your product image.
Be relevant with your ad and have a landing page that leads potential customers to what they are expecting from looking at your ad
Check your category and product_type levels
Once you have fixed and updated that, then try increasing your bids and budgets.
Book a Bidbrain demo to learn how Bidbrain can help you own your search category on Google Shopping.