Data feed optimisation helps your customers find your products
Data feed optimisation can increase significantly the number of clicks and impressions your campaigns attract. It means making sure the information in your ads is both relevant and authentic.
When Google Shopping first came on the scene, you’d get amazing results with very little effort. Now you need to work for it and it starts with optimising the data you feed to your shopping channel – such as Google Merchant Center.
Basically, the more information you can give Google, the better it can match search queries to specific products in your range.
Many people ignore data feed optimisation but it’s one of the primary ways you can significantly improve your shopping campaigns; using your budget wisely to encourage visitors straight to the products they want to buy.
In addition to this, with the recently added google surfaces (free google shopping), optimising your datafeed can allow you to appear for more searches in this area.
Select the right data feed tool
Whichever platform you use to connect your products to a shopping channel, you need to select the right tool* to generate your data feed. Generally your choice is: API, manual export or 3rd party app.
APIs can be tricky to get right, while exporting manually (eg using a spreadsheet) is very labour-intensive, even for small product ranges. By far the best option is to use a 3rd party feed optimisation tool that has the flexibility to suit your business.
Let’s say you have a jumper called Fisher that comes in eight colours and five sizes. Being able to distinguish (eg optimise) 40 different products, each using the same product title of Fisher Jumper, is clearly a must-have. It takes patience, organisation and practice to get right.
Why is data feed optimisation important?
Two great reasons to optimise your data feed:
- Increased exposure
Whilst your bid is the ultimate factor in how many impressions and clicks you get, you need to optimise your feed to encourage Google to rate you in the first place and to ensure product ads show for relevant queries.
- Boosts performance through structured analysis
The values you use for a structured analysis of your campaigns are exactly the ones you need to optimise your feed: name, prices, description, etc.
How to optimise your data feed
First, organise your product data fields (attributes) in the back end of your website and make sure they reflect your keywords. This is the data that feeds directly into your shopping channels and describes exactly what you are selling. Optimising it gives Google every reason to index it. Showing this information in a consistent manner is critical and it all starts on your website. Don’t forget to check your spelling including regional variants (gray jeans vs grey jeans).
Google has a list of required attributes to which we add our own recommendations according to our clients’ individual needs: gender, age range, colour, material…
*It’s worth noting at this point that a feed optimisation tool will allow you to send non standard attributes while APIs aren’t always set up to do so and manually, well, it’s a pain. Supplemental feeds are also available allowing you to add specific data where gaps may appear in your feed.
Product title:
The product title is an extremely important piece of data on the feed, it acts as a primary keyword, helping to determine the first search terms for which you’ll appear. Decide what matters and in what order. Is it Women’s Pink T-Shirt, or Sports Top Women?
Product types:
Assign product types (‘levels’) to your products to help your prospects find what they want and enable you to monitor performance. For example:
Luggage > casual bags > sports holdalls
Best practice is to go deep adding a number of levels that make sense, follow your website structure. Add levels which work for you. Don’t have one level – eg bags – containing 100’s of products. Help Google help your customers.
With your product types set up, it’s easy to see how casual bags performs as a whole vs sports holdalls individually.
Be organised and create intelligent rules that help you optimise your data quickly and efficiently. If you have duplicate, or very similar, product types – eg shopping bags vs tote bags – make sure you combine them. (And don’t put the same products in multiple categories.)
Product description:
Do not leave this empty because you think the title says it all. Google uses descriptions to help match your products with search queries. Use long tail keywords, eg: Technical stay-dry running T-shirt.
How soon will data feed optimisation deliver results?
Improvements to your data feed optimisation, like creating the perfect product titles, can often have a quick and positive impact. Other adjustments will take longer to deliver results, such as understanding which product categories work best for you. Better analysis will always be an immediate win because it’ll lead you to make more informed decisions.
