Google To Provide Free Shopping Listings

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Google Shopping is responding to the coronavirus crisis by taking steps to make it easier for more merchants to sell via the platform free-of-charge. The Google Shopping tab results “will consist primarily of free product listings” starting next week, the company announced Tuesday.

This major shift, after 8 years of Google’s shopping results platform, comes after many brick and mortar retailers have had to close their doors due to the coronavirus pandemic. E-commerce has inevitably boomed, and everyone is quickly catching up to speed on how to best service store owners. This change, while COVID-19 was the motivation, was a planned initiative and will be permanent. Free shopping listings fits into the longer-term vision for the company’s role in digital commerce.

Bill Ready said in a blog post that he expects the change to take effect in the U.S. by the end of April, with the aim of expanding it worldwide by year-end. Ready clarified the win-win of the shopping listings free-of-charge: Retailers gain free exposure to millions of people who search via Google Shopping every day, while shoppers discover more products from more stories. While Google is packaging the change as a gesture to help retailers during an economic crisis, there’s no doubt Google is also seizing the strategic opportunity to expand its role in e-commerce in the midst of this worldwide uncertainty.

Millions of people are stuck at home with almost no options for shopping in brick and mortar stores. Online and e-commerce has and will continue to see a huge rise. So what does this mean for retailers and advertisers?

“For retailers, this change means free exposure to millions of people who come to Google every day for their shopping needs. For shoppers, it means more products from more stores, discoverable through the Google Shopping tab. For advertisers, this means paid campaigns can now be augmented with free listings.”

Why does this matter? This is actually where Google first began, then named Froogle. It became an entirely paid platform in 2012, and in those 8 years 2 things have drastically changed the e-commerce game: data quality and Amazon. Google’s ability to ensure that the information in a product feed matches the data on the site has advanced significantly since this time. In addition to limiting the products available on Google shopping results to retailers willing to pay, their search power was at a major disadvantage.

Another exciting development to the platform is a recent partnership with PayPal. Merchants using PayPal will be able to link those accounts to Google Merchant Center, which will allow Google to pull in seller details faster and to verify trusted merchants. Google also partners with e-commerce platforms, including Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce to make it easier for merchants to manage inventory and products.

As Ready concluded, “Solutions during this crisis will not be fast or easy, but we hope to provide a measure of relief for businesses and lay the groundwork for a healthier retail ecosystem in the future.”

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How to Develop the Most Effective Keyword Strategy

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The development of keyword strategies has changed drastically over time. Back in the day (AKA 5 to 10 years ago), a common goal among search marketers was to obtain as many keywords as possible. The number of keywords in your account was something to respect about a marketer in that time and today that has remarkably changed. Instead of focusing on the quantity of keywords, the emphasis is centered now on the quality of what keywords you want to target. The experts here at Onimod Global have a few do’s and don’ts you can implement into your keyword strategy.

Do: Identify themes.

Identifying themes for specific pages is crucial. There is only so much room to expand on any existing keywords you have before it just becomes irrelevant to your site and won’t create any relevant traffic or visibility. An example that Search Engine Land suggests is instead of attempting to search for every possible, insanely-specific description of a shirt like “pink polka dotted yellow shirt”, look for other opportunities to branch out. For example, look into different types of shirts such as “sweaters”, “tees”, “blouses”, and so on.

Don’t: Keyword Stuffing.

This is exactly as it sounds, stuffing a bunch of the keyword you’re attempting to rank for in a particular page on your site. Don’t get us wrong; it’s essential to have those keywords on the pages you want to rank for that specific keyword. The key is to find that right amount of using that keyword where you’re still delivering high-quality content. Not only is this pretty unethical, but it also can look like spam and will be treated as such by Google or other search engines.

Do: Utilize meta descriptions.

A meta description is merely a short paragraph that appears on SERP (search engine results page). These can increase your click-through rate if you optimize your keyword in this location. The meta description has virtually nothing to do with ranking in web searches; however, it is helpful with click-through rate which will increase your ranking in the long run.

Don’t: Get caught up in your professional terminology.

This is extremely easy to do, and it can hurt your page ranking on SERP. This is because you can often forget to account for ways that a consumer without your technical knowledge might seek out your product or service. When deciding on keywords you want to target, remember to think like a consumer. For any of you that focus mostly on B2C sales, this is significantly important. An opportunity to take advantage of would be to do market research in focus groups to discover what consumers are wanting or needing your services would search.

Do: Monitor the impact of new keywords.

When adding new keywords, you want to make sure they are adding value to your account. A straightforward way to track this is to label new keywords as they are attached, this way you can quickly give a performance review, whether that be good or bad. Additionally, make sure that a keyword you have added is contributing positively while not taking away from existing keywords. If this is the case, make sure the performance of the account overall is increasing in strength.

Don’t: Duplicate keywords.

Duplicating keywords is another factor in keyword strategy that is a common mistake, but easily avoidable. Broad match keywords don’t rely on which order the terms are in, so keywords that would be considered duplicates are just words rearranged in a search. For example, “charcoal suit jacket” and “suit jacket charcoal” would be viewed as a duplicate and would also compete for the same search. The main thing here is you don’t want to be competing against yourself and spend more on clicks than necessary.

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For more information regarding digital marketing expertise, trends and insights, visit the Onimod Global Website. We provide weekly news updates on the latest in the world of digital marketing. Enjoy!