Healthcare and medical websites are considered among the top beneficiaries of SEO as their success mostly depends on how easily people find them online. Be it a healthcare organization with a product-based site or a hospital or private practice, SEO campaigns have become the panacea for their inbound marketing requirements. Digital marketing in healthcare is indispensable today. According to the latest reports, 90 percent of the total search market has been devoured by Google and its other search properties (including paid ads and other SERP features). As consumers continue to use Google on mobile and desktop for new product discovery and making new shopping decisions, leveraging a sophisticated Google shopping strategy is important for digital retailers in 2019.
Since their launch in 2010, Google shopping Ads has steadily become a powerful tool for any E-commerce business selling products online. When compared to traditional PPC Google text Ads, these ads have consistently evolved and proven to be more effective. In fact, the 2019 Google shopping benchmarks report found that Google shopping ads grew 29 percent YoY versus only 13 percent of paid search. This demand is driven by an increase in ad spend by retail marketers and Ecommerce businesses. As of 2018, Google shopping ads now drive 76.4% of all retail search ad spend, and this search spend generates 85.3% of all clicks.
What Makes Google Shopping Different?
Google Shopping is the closest thing to window shopping on the internet. It is a Pay-Per-Click advertising opportunity that is profitable for sellers as it is for the shoppers themselves. This shopping platform consists of product listing ads that appear at the top center or top right of a Google search results page when someone searches for a product.Through this medium, buyers can easily compare product details as they search and sellers also can promote their products and benefits. Potential buyers can view the make, model and price of a specific product before they even click through. If they do not like the product or think it is too expensive, they can quickly move on to the next “shop window.” The result is – qualified traffic that is more likely to convert.
For instance, when a prospective buyer searches in Google for “fitness tracker watch,” this is what a buyer sees –
This prime area on the first page is mainly reserved for Google Shopping. The ad contains specific information including the product image, product title, merchant name and price while on the shopping tab users can view the product details, filter results, and compare prices.Google Shopping ads are very effective in showcasing products and attracting high-quality prospects by appearing on the general search results, the images tab, and the shopping tab.
How Do You Run Google Shopping Ads?
In order to run Google Shopping Ads, you need to have two accounts (working together) – Google AdWords and Google Merchant Center. Google Merchant Center includes your data feed – which is a collection of information about your product inventory including title, description, price, image, description and several other data points formatted in a specific way that Google likes. Google uses your data feed to develop product ads and uses the same to identify when to showcase these ads. Google Merchant Center also helps you create rules related to shipping, sales tax and selecting your target country. Google AdWords, on the other hand, is where the actual shopping campaigns become live. This involves creating daily budgets, bids, ad groups and product groups.
However, Google shopping management and optimization have many similarities to good SEO. When compared to traditional text ads, it is not possible to explicitly specify what type of keywords you want your product listing ads to show for. Instead, Google crawls your data feed and find out what queries or keywords your product listing ads are relevant for. Therefore, it is essential to furnish Google with good data that it can strategically put together.
Here are some ways that help improve the overall success of your Google Shopping Campaigns –
- Optimize your product data – Optimizing your product feed helps improve your rankings in both organic and paid search results.
- Product title – An important attribute that will impact your ranking, the product title should include the relevant keyword(s), be descriptive, and reflect the language that consumers use in their searches. The key is about being as descriptive as possible while also keeping it simple and direct at the same time.
- Product description – Description of the product should be information-rich and include relevant SEO keywords with the correct product attributes. Place the key terms within the first 150 characters for capturing the full attention of prospective buyers.
- Link – This is the landing page – product page URL – to which the ad will redirect users. Make sure it contains accurate information.
- Product image – Use top quality product images and remove overlays such as logos or watermarks, which could cause Google to reject your ad.
In addition, include as much product data as possible, such as price, category, availability, unique identifier, condition, and gender/age/color/size.
Google Shopping Campaign is an effective advertising platform which you cannot ignore. These campaigns help reach out to targeted group of customers with high purchase intent. Google is constantly adding new innovative features to help advertisers yield better results. Professional medical SEO providers stay updated regarding such new features and they can help online medical stores to successfully meet their digital marketing goals.