8 Ways To Get More Revenue With Your Google Shopping Data Feed This Holiday
For Q4 shopping is projected to grow 15% to generate $61 billion in online revenue. Of the places you can sell online, Google Shopping has 1 billion products available for search, and is the highest generating comparison shopping engine for traffic and revenue.
For more Google Shopping and Holiday tips, check out the Q4 Ecommerce Strategy Series!
8 Ways To Get More Revenue With Your Google Shopping Data Feed This Holiday
Q4 Ecommerce Strategy Checklist
Q4 Ecommerce Strategy: Google Holiday Tips
Q4 Lessons For 2013 [Infographic]
Q4 Sales & Shipping Tips
Q4 Fulfillment tips
Q4 Social Strategy
Your Google Shopping campaign is hinged on your product data feed, which communicates all of your product information to Google.
If you want to get more conversions on Google Shopping this holiday your data feed is the place to start.
Q4 Ecommerce Strategy: Make More With Your Google Shopping Data Feed
If you’re going to bake a profit pie with Google Shopping use the best data feed ingredients possible, and tweak your recipe as often as you can (this is the only lame joke in this post I promise).
Here are eight Google Shopping data feed areas you should audit now for more Q4 holiday revenue.
1. Google Shopping Data Feed Specifications- Google Shopping data feed specifications cover what Google want a data feed to look like and contain. If your product information doesn’t follow Google’s rules this will limit your exposure on search at the least, and block all of your products on Google at the very worst.
Here are some places you can start to make sure you’re following Google’s data feed specifications to the letter:
Many times Google doesn’t list or note all of its data feed content rules. This means understanding rules, and identifying restricted products which aren’t on Google’s restricted list, as well as troubleshooting issues with AdWords support. Here are a couple of places which identify Google’s restricted products, and things which can get you kicked off of Google:
2. Google Shopping Data Feed Rule Changes- Keep tabs on Google’s blog to make sure there aren’t any data feed specification changes. Google will usually give merchants a couple of months to update feeds before they penalize data feeds that don’t match the new rules. Visit the links below for up to date Google news:
3. Google Shopping Data Feed Errors- Visit your Google Merchant login to identify and troubleshoot items in your data feed which are disapproved or flagged. Remember if an item is blocked that product isn’t showing up on Google. Multiple violations, or single violations that Google deems important in your data feed can also get all of your products blocked on Google Shopping.
Here are some helpful resources to troubleshoot any existing Google data feed issues:
- Identify Google Shopping Data Feed Errors
- Google Shopping Data Feed Takedowns
- Is Google Kicking Merchants Off Google Shopping For No Reason?
- Why Google Will Reject, Block, or Flag Your Data Feed
4. Out Of Stock Items- Create data feed rules for items which will go out of stock during the holiday season. You should already have data feed rules in place for items which run out of stock quickly, or when things are low in stock. For Q4 items listed as in stock which are out of stock are even more important to prevent and identify as soon as possible.
5. SEO for Product Titles and Descriptions- If you’ve never audited your product titles and descriptions in your data feed for SEO terms, it’s a must-do activity to help your products rank on search. Moreover, during the holiday it is pivotal that your products’ information is as detailed and descriptive as possible. Audit product titles for holiday items based on how a user might search, and an accurate description of that products attributes.
- Optimize Google Shopping Data Feed Product Titles and Descriptions
- Google Data Feed Attributes to add
6. Holiday AdWords Labels- Use your AdWords label column in your data feed to create customized ad groups for the holiday shopping season. Look at Analytics data for items which sold during Q4 2012, create an ad group for winter items, and items which will sell following the holiday season.
Here are some useful ad group resources:
- Why Make Changes to Your Data Feed?
- Create Product Listing Ads Ad Groups
- Ad Groups you Can Create with the AdWords Label Column for Product Listing Ads
- Creat Price Buckets in your Data Feed
7. PLA Bids & Budget- You should be checking in on your PLA campaign and ad group performance at least once a week. During Q4 potentially even more frequently as more Google Shopping traffic can translate into higher CPC costs, overall clicks and competitor bidding. This means you should be changing up your ad group bids frequently based on click traffic and competitor bids. You should also keep an eye on your daily budget to make sure your products aren’t coming down due to a low daily budget.
8. Google Ads- In addition to Google Shopping, there are many Google programs which utilize your Google Shopping data feed. Consider using Dynamic remarketing ads to miximize product exposure. If you’re not listing on AdWords, those are also ads which run based on the Google Shopping data feed.
You should be continually auditing and checking in on your Google Shopping data feed all year, but its impact on conversions and revenue is huge during and prior to the Q4 online shopping holiday season.
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