SEO For eCommerce: Google Merchant Center

SEO For eCommerce: Google Merchant Center

*Not ready to give this episode a listen or watch just yet? Below is a rough transcript of today’s episode.*

There is a simple freeway to increase search engine optimization for your e-commerce shop. It’s simple to set up and integrate with the number one search engine in the world. Google it’s Google merchant center. And regardless of the platform you use for eCommerce, your retail shop, you should have an account.
So today I’m gonna chat with you about the benefits of Google merchant center. Okay. So as usual, before we get into this, let’s talk about a little bit of housekeeping stuff. I’m going to be referencing a lot of previous episodes, a couple of articles. and we’ve got some product recommendations in here as well as the rough transcript is in the show notes on the website.
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So we know search engine optimization is important, for regular sites for e-commerce sites and for e-commerce sites, it’s all about the products. So you wanna make sure you do your basic mandatory search engine optimization for your e-commerce site. Listen to episodes 22. And 58, where I talk about simple setups for, search engine optimization that applies to all websites.
And then in episode 58, I talk about the benefits and all the great search engine optimization juice that you get from Google my business. But today we’re gonna talk about bumping up, adding a little bit of power booster to that standard search engine optimization. And that’s using Google merchant center.
So what is it, what is this thing? it’s the tool that integrates with Google’s shopping platform. so what happens is you can put your products directly into Google merchant center or, sync it with Shopify, which I’ll talk about in a little bit. And then what happens is when someone is doing a search, Google uses your merchant center information, all the product, the pricing, all that other good stuff, and pulls it into the search so that people, can search for it.
which is pretty cool. Google doesn’t charge you for the Google merchant center, how they make their money is with ads, right? That is Google’s number one, profit. revenue generating systems. And I think their philosophy is because they haven’t told me this, but I think that the more free tools they offer to you to help you grow your business.
And then you do advertising the more they’re gonna get paid. So they grow because you grow and they’re giving you the tools for growth, which I think is pretty cool.
So now I’m gonna walk you through my favorite benefits of Google merchant center. I like going through this because this kind of information helps me, there’s time there’s effort, even if there’s no cost associated to it. You gotta think about this in co. is this worth setting up?
And so I’m gonna go through why I think this is very important and worth for you to set up for your e-commerce business. first of all, as I mentioned, it’s free. you don’t pay for the Google merchant center or any of your organic juice that you get from it, where they make their money is in ads.
And, Google has shopping ads gonna talk a little bit about that later. the merchant center integrates directly with Shopify. So in your Shopify system, you’re gonna connect your Google merchant center and then anything in your listings that you have set up is gonna get pushed out to the Google sphere.
So if you’re not using Shopify, definitely take a listen to episode 47 where I review Shopify and I give you all the reasons why it’s probably the best platform, for e-commerce, especially if you’re doing really cool, fun things like this and integrations, like the power in Shopify is definitely in the integr.
So Google merchant center, when setup, preferably provides organic search for your listings, organic search means free search, meaning you’re not paying anybody, anything for when your product shows up, in search and it’s not just. Google search engine, it’s also the Google shopping platform, which I’m gonna talk a little bit more about and the YouTube shopping fee, which as of this recording is in its infancy.
So if you go to YouTube and you’re watching a video and you look in the right hand corner and you actually see product listings that you can click on and buy that is the YouTube shopping feed now for your YouTube channel to qualify, there’s a bunch of criteria. definitely go do some research on it. and if you qualify, it’s absolutely well worth,setting up for it because people are buying from that.
I’ve actually bought from it. I’m watching a video, someone’s helping me they’re selling shirts or something like that. And I click over and boom, I’ve bought a shirt from this person. so it’s pretty cool. You know, about Google search, right? We talked about that. The listings come across the top. But Google shopping, That’s where. even if you do a search for Google shopping, you can actually shop, within it. And this is getting bigger and bigger every single day. 85% of all product searches within Google shopping. Start with Google shop. Or Amazon, and I think slowly but surely Google is taking over that shop because they want to, right. They’re like why promote Amazon let’s promote directly. but you’re still gonna get, Amazon at the top there. And so what this does is it increases awareness for your products. Also there’s a 1.9, 1% conversion rate on these searches, right? So you’re not blowing the doors off of anything with 1.9, let’s call it 2%.
So I don’t have to keep saying that really long number, but it’s a fair amount of sales. And again, it’s free. It’s organic. So why not take advantage of it? Would you like 2% more sales every month just by adding this, to your existing search engine optimization. And then once you set it up, it’s done, you don’t have to care and feed for it and you’re not paying for it.
yes, please. I’d like 2% more. Another cool thing is that you can actually put your promotion codes inside of the merchant center. So when your products come up and people are looking at them, the promo codes are right there as. Which is really cool because I know from experience with brands that we work with, that those promo codes really drive sales.
When they see them, there’s a certain group of people out there that actually use the Google shopping to find those promotion codes for specific products when they’re trying to buy. So they may look for your product directly, but then they’re gonna do a Google search for the promotion. And if you’re using Shopify, you can actually push those promotion codes directly from Shopify, so that they’re synced up and using the codes, that can be automatically added to checkout creates a better user experience.
So like with regular search, there’s organic and then there’s paid. And so it’s the same thing with shopping, Google shopping ads. Will allow you to promote specific products. You can either do one. You can do all of your products in one ad, or you can do multiple shopping ads and break out your different products into categories.
You may have products that are really good for one type of target audience. And then some that are good for another, you don’t have to mix them. You can do highly targeted marketing with Google ads, based off of where they go on the internet, keyword, searches, videos that they watch and then show them specific products that you think that they’re gonna be interested in.
And the Google shopping ads pull from your Google merchant center. So that’s how they’re connected.
and what I love about Google ads is they are very specific in their targeting. and not only do you have search ads, you have display ads and you have your YouTube ads. So YouTube will put your merchandise up in paid ads from the shopping ads. Even if you don’t qualify for the organic piece and then display ads, you get, your target audience.
If they’re on a blog, reading an article, They get to see your product and then click through and.
So the last one I’m gonna share with you. and don’t be surprised if you’ve listened to any of my other, episodes is data, right? I love talking about data, because it’s really important. And Google merchant center does not disappoint when it comes to data. it provides you all of the data for the organic, just like Google search console does for your website.
So you get impressions, you get clicks, they give you your click through rate and you get it down to the product. So you can see which products are being clicked on more than others. What are being clicked through And then it all gets aggregated up. If you’re running Google shopping ads, it separates that out, right?
So you get to see your organic versus your paid and how they’re doing so you can actually compare. And if you are using a Google data studio report, this data can get pulled in. Maybe you’re using just Google analytics for your reporting that can get pulled in as well. So the way that you pull Google merchant center data is through Google analytics first, and you have to use the GA four account, not the universal account.
and then that data can get pulled in and because you pull it into Google analytics, you can pull it into any, data platform that you’re creating, aggregating using any type of, data aggregation tool we use Supermetrics pulls in GA four data beautifully. now that’s all set.
I talk more about that in episode 72 on lead tracking for retail businesses. So definitely go take a listen to that. So hopefully, I’ve inspired you to go, yeah, this is great. I need this too. You figured out what’s in it for you. And so now it’s gonna be worth the time for you to go figure it out and set it up.
So let’s talk about what your next steps are gonna. if you have Shopify as your storefront, as your e-commerce site, you are gonna just simply go and add that sales channel plugin, app, whatever, Shopify calls it. I’ve got those types of names in my heads for everything. And from within Shopify, you can actually go and connect it, set it up.
I put a link in the show notes for Shopify’s directions on how to do this. So go click on that link and you can get their step by step tutorial on how to set this up. just a note as of September 1st, 20, 22, not sure when you’re listening to this, Google’s actually taking over the management of what’s called the Google sales channel, which is that integration with the merchant account.
they’re gonna be managing it. As opposed to Shopify managing it, which means I think the data syncing is gonna be much, much better, much, much faster. And who knows they might actually be,adding features. So I’m excited. I can’t wait to see, if they add features, I’ll do another episode and link this back for sure.
Into the show notes. So definitely go check the show notes.
And so if you’re not using Shopify check with your platform and see if they have an integration, just because I don’t know doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. This is a very big sales channel, so I can imagine other, platforms not integrating with it, but you never know. So you wanna definitely see if your platform has an integration.
Otherwise you can go directly to Google merchant center and upload your products directly there to get this benefit. it’s more work, doing it in two different places, but it absolutely, can be done so that you can promote. And do all those good things. So we are already at final thoughts.
This is a short and sweet episode. so let me tell you what I think about all of this, right? So being successful with an e-commerce store is about putting your products where people can find them. So having an e-commerce store just isn’t enough anymore, Might have been in the beginning, but now that you have competition, with secondary selling platforms, other merchants, and so you need to be listed in as many places as possible that you can afford, and stand.
And the nice thing is that the Google shopping. From the organic side is free, right? You’re not gonna pay anymore for someone to make a sale. You don’t have to put extra listings up if you’re using a Shopify site. So it’s definitely a win. so you definitely wanna get that one out of the way.
In episode 72, I also talk about secondary selling channels like Etsy, Amazon, and Walmart, if you’re on them or if you’re considering them. They’re great. I don’t recommend that they’re your primary selling channels, but definitely a secondary selling channels. it creates that awareness. And if you’re gonna be doing any type of paid advertising with Google, definitely use the Google shopping ads.
The reason I say, own your main site first is that Etsy, Amazon, Walmart, all of those guys, they can shut you down at a, a moment’s notice, right? You don’t have control. The client list is not yours. If your site gets shut down, you don’t have access to those people. So make sure that all your. sales and everything get pulled into a center, system like Shopify.
So that at least you have all of that and that you can try to market them directly. I don’t believe Amazon gives you the ability to get their email address so that you can market them directly. so that is it for this episode, go have fun, creating your Google merchant center account. So here at Inma, we love to give back to the business community.
I provide a free 45 minute consultation for you to talk about marketing. We can talk about eCommerce. We can talk about Shopify. We can talk about those secondary sales channels, whatever you wanna talk about. Just go to the website. inma.com. I N. yma.com and in the upper right hand corner, click on the button to schedule a marketing evaluation, pick your date and time.
And we are on the calendar. maybe you have a quick question. Maybe you have a show suggestion. I love those, fill at the contact form at the bottom of the pages, and that comes directly to me. And I will respond back to you. We have other free resources for you too. We have marketing mastermind. which is our blog and training center.
we have articles. We have how to videos. I love pairing that with these episodes because I will create videos on actually how to do something. So if you’re interested in it and I always put them in the show notes, so it definitely go check that out. Even if I didn’t mention. so I hope you found today’s episode helpful for you to help you move the needle on your eCommerce site.
If you did share it with other retailers, merchants, eCommerce platform owners, if it’s helping you, it should help them too. And our goal with the podcast, with all of these other free resources that we create is to help the business community grow and. Thanks so much for listening and have an amazing day.