How to Add Products to Google Shopping
What percentage of all product searches start on Google? 46%. The significance of product promotion on Google Shopping should be clear from just one piece of information, right? Who wants to lose 46% of potential clients, after all? There is no other way to take advantage of this opportunity but to promote items through the Google Shopping platform. But you must first understand how to upload items to Google Shopping before you can promote them on the site. In this post, we’ll describe Google Shopping, discuss the advantages of adding items to the marketplace, and then go into detail on how to do so. Let’s begin.
What is Google Shopping?
Craig Nevill-Manning introduced Google Shopping, originally known as Froogle or product listing advertising, in 2002. This is a special Google service designed to provide users a better shopping experience. Numerous online shops are housed on this shopping platform, which also displays a product list depending on users’ search terms. Customers may explore and compare items from various merchants with its assistance. To advertise your items on the Google advertising platform, you must first build a Google Shopping campaign. Your items will be better promoted on the Google display platform thanks to these shopping campaigns. Here is a graphic picture of the Google advertisements network, which will show your items.
Google will start marketing your items after you’ve created the shopping campaign. Here is a sample Google Shopping advertisement.
Prior to this, the Google Shopping platform only displayed goods from companies that were engaged in sponsored Google Shopping ads. However, Google just recently made it possible to list things for free. Google will only show the openly listed items in the Shopping tab, though. On the other hand, paid campaign goods will be displayed on both the search results page and the shopping tab.
Why Should You Add Products to Google Shopping?
The advantages of Google Shopping for online retailers are numerous. A couple of those are listed below.
- Free Google Shopping product listing
- increases the quality of the traffic to your website and increases ROAS.
- reduced CPC costs compared to other advertisements
- Remarketing is simpler, overall SEO performance is improved, etc.
The most popular advantages of the Google Shopping platform are those listed above. Please see our list of the top 20 advantages of Google Shopping Ads if you’re interested in learning more.
How to Add Products to Google Shopping Network?
If we want to get the benefits of Google Shopping, there’s no alternative to promoting products on Google. But, you must add your products to the Google platform to promote those. 5 steps of adding products to Google Shopping.
- Setting up a Google Merchant Center account
- Optimizing the product images and videos
- Uploading product data on GMC
- Link Google Ads with GMC
- Create a Google Shopping campaign
Now, we will walk you through the complete process of adding products to Google Shopping. Let’s start with the account creation section.
1. Setting up a Google Merchant Center Account
To add items to Google Shopping, a Google Merchant Centre account must first be created. You must log into the Google Merchant Centre in order to complete this. Easily click the blue Get started icon on the Google Merchant Centre homepage. Use the Sign in option to log in if you are already a user. We’ll go over the entire process of adding goods to Google Shopping with you right now. Let’s begin with the part on creating accounts.
You must include a few business-related details on the next page, like –
- The official company name
- Country of business Local time zone eCommerce tools, etc.
The Create account button will turn on when you’ve entered all of this data and have agreed to Google Merchant Center’s Terms of Service. When you click the button, your account will be prepared. You must confirm the ownership of your website after activation. There are two phases in this verification procedure. These include
- Claiming your website on GMC and confirming website ownership
To understand the verification procedure, watch the video below. There are other ways to validate your website on Google Merchant Centre, though.
2. Optimizing the Product Images and Videos
Online shopping is entirely dependent on a product’s outside look. Therefore, you must employ eye-catching and top-notch product images on your website. Prior to optimising them for the product feed, you must first optimise the product photos on your own website. It is advised that you correctly abide by Google’s image criteria in order to optimise the image. Here are a couple of Google’s picture requirements:
- Avoid adding logos to product images.
- Keep any borders or tags advertising out.
- Images must be brief and clear.
- Make the background translucent or completely white.
- 64 megapixels is the highest possible image resolution.
- Image file size won’t exceed 16 MB.
- Image dimensions of 800 × 800 pixels are recommended.
- Minimum image size is 100 × 100 pixels (for garment goods, 250 x 250 pixels), etc.
These are the standard rules that you ought to follow when including product photos. However, you can watch Google’s official how-to video for a fast rundown of the image standards: These specifications don’t only apply to Google. These requirements are beneficial to adhere to even if you sell your goods on other websites like eBay, Etsy, Amazon, Walmart, etc.
3. Uploading Product Data on GMC
The main step in this procedure is uploading the product data to GMC. You may submit a product feed that contains all of your items in one file, or you can add products to GMC one at a time. There are, however, 4 ways to add product feeds to GMC. These include
- using Google Sheets to upload the feed
- FTP uploading a feed
- Utilising the content API and uploading a feed file
So, before uploading the feed to GMC, let’s construct a product feed. To create product feeds for your WooCommerce store, all you need is a good product feed generator plugin. The CTX Feed is the best product feed plugin, as you may already be aware.
Uploading a feed via FTP
Adding items to Google Shopping may be made as convenient and simple as possible by uploading the product feed using a URL. You must choose the Scheduled fetch option for the feed input method and then click the proceed button below to do it. Following that, you must input the following choices:
- The product feed file’s name
- Fetching regularity
- Time to fetch and the URL of the feed file
Link Google Ads with GMC
It’s time to connect your Google Ads account with Google Merchant Centre after you’ve uploaded the items to GMC. You simply need to take two actions to do it.
Sending a connecting request to Google Ads from GMC and approving it from your Google Ads account.
You must click the gear ( ) button and choose Linked accounts to submit the connecting request from GMC to Google Ads. The advertisements account is located under the Google advertisements tab on the following page. There, select the Link option. By the way, you must carefully select the right choice if you have many ad accounts.
Simply accept the request from your Google Merchant Centre account after submitting it. Go to Google Merchant Centre > Linked accounts > Google Ads to verify the linking status. If everything was done correctly, you would see an Active tick under the Link status tab.
Create a Google Shopping Campaign
The user may market their items across the Google Shopping platform by setting up a Google Shopping campaign. Users may monitor the effectiveness of their products when executing Google Shopping ads, though. Here is how to create a Google Shopping campaign step-by-step:
- Access your Google Ads account.
- Campaigns may be selected using the left menu.
- Select “+New campaign”
- Choose “Shopping” under “Campaign type.”
- Select your advertising choices by clicking Next.
- Select Save and carry on.
- Create ad groups
- Place a bid.
- Click Save
This is how you set up a Google Shopping Campaign to advertise your goods throughout the Google platform.
Conclusion
The Google Shopping platform resembles a virtual shopping mall for the online retail sector. On this website, consumers can simply search for, verify, and compare product pricing. It is a significant improvement over the old text-heavy purchasing experience. Therefore, if you are a website owner, it is imperative that you advertise your goods on this channel. Your company will undoubtedly gain immensely from it.!
