The impressions in Google Shopping is the first step towards gaining clicks and sales. So lets jump straight into the different ways on how to increase your Impressions.
1) Increase CPC
I know that this is something that nobody likes to do. But we have to be honest with ourselves and understand that increased CPC will increase the impressions. However I would like to warn you that increasing the impressions purely on CPC and not doing all the rest below will result in a lower CTR. Potentially increasing your cost per conversion.
Why does the CTR decrease if I increase the CPC?
Increased CPC will provide you with more impressions, this also means that you will have a higher percentage of diversity and search terms that might be completely irrelevant. I recommend that you first do all the below tips and then change the CPC.
This will reduce the overall costs associated to bad clicks.
2) Data Quality
The first step to perform, before you do anything else to improve impressions, is to have well written titles and descriptions.
Why do we need to improve data quality?
Data quality defines the majority of your ranking, a poorly written product detail will result in bad ranking and thus not have an increased impression. It’s as simple as writing about bananas while the product you are selling are apples. Now that you understand that product details are directly associated to ranking, lets delve a little deeper.
The Title
Recommend length : around 70 characters
When writing titles always adhere to Google’s Policy and be on topic for your product. The title has the highest ranking factor. So having a title correctly describing what you are selling will result in better results.
A good way to go about this is by including the following elements. Brand, Product, Category, Size, Color etc…
The Description
Recommend length : 500 – 1000 characters
Again as the title, be on topic talk about the product, benefits, size, color etc… Avoid talking about your service and other products. As this will hold no value to a search query. If I’m talking about accessories than Google will think your product is associated to the accessory.
You would think this is great right?
This will result in people searching for an accessory and seeing the main product as a listing. The shopper would not want to click on your product as it shows something they are not looking for.
Lets look at this in a bit more of a technical detail. Think of the description as a pure character by character ranking percentage. If you have 500 characters on topic versus 300 on topic and 200 off topic. The ranking bonus will go more towards 500 on topic. While the off topic version would have a 25% negative effect.
I don’t want to change my website data! How can I improve my data?
Allot of plugins and tools extract product details directly from the site / database and sends it to Google Merchant. Preventing the merchant from editing the details independently. In most cases due to the policies and requirements of Google you would like to change these details without effecting your website.
There are a lot of tools / SaaS (Software as a Service) that allow these changes. Mostly they are called Google Merchant Management Tools.
Alongside the text, there are also other data quality updates you can do.
Improve your diagnostic warnings and errors. Always fix all issues listed in Google Merchant’s Diagnostics Tab. This will increase the quality value of your data feed.
The Images
- Ensuring you have images that are at least 800 by 800 pixels or larger and square.
- The product takes up maximum amount of space, meaning you don’t have too much white space.
- Do not upscale images
3) MicroData
Once you have optimized your data feed details, than it is important to have additional microdata on your product landing page. Adding microdata will result in an improved quality allowing Google to correctly correlate your data.
Such elements are :
- Price
- Availability
- Condition
I have written many articles on how to add microdata to your website.
4) Negative Keywords
If you have already added negative keywords, than I suggest reviewing these to ensure if they still need to be kept. For example shopper behavior might change requiring some search terms to be included. If you are unsure about how to find out if your negative keyword is still relevant than the following tips might work.
- Use Google Trends to analyze popularity
- Use Adwords Keyword Planner to search for impressions
- Check if the search terms in Google Shopping show relevant products, if they do than remove the negative keyword.
When removing existing negative keywords, always keep a close eye on results as this can affect impressions, CTR and sales in a negative or positive effect. Each niche business and account is unique and not all changes are as successful.
Experimentation is required.