Aleksandra Tadrzak
Your title helps to identify the product you’re selling. So it is one of the most prominent parts of your ad. An accurate title gives you a greater chance of the right shoppers clicking on your product.
Through product titles, Google determines if your listing is relevant to a specific search query. The title attribute is not only critical to Google’s matching algorithm, but it is also one of the most noticeable parts of your ad.
Modifying product titles so that they closely match the terms customers search will help your products appear in the most suitable queries.
Take a look for Google Shopping product titles optimization tips, and don’t miss out on a potential sales opportunity ever again.
Steps to Analyzing and Improving Your Product Titles
Think Like Your Shoppers
Why Product Titles Are so Important
The Impact of Product Titles on Your Shopping Campaigns
Google’s Requirements for Product Titles
The Role of Keywords in Product Titles
Product Titles Best Practices Per Vertical
What Does An Optimized Product Title Look Like?
Structure vs. Important Information
Advertising Product Variations Efficiently
How to Include All The Important Attributes in Titles
Optimize Google Shopping Product Title [8 Tried & Tested Techniques]
Conclusion
Think Like Your Shoppers
Google values the title second, only behind the image. It is one of the 4 attributes that consumers see on Google’s result page. And even if the picture tells a lot, the title must be compelling.
Titles should highlight the most relevant product attributes so that shoppers can easily skim through and determine if the product is worth clicking on.
If you are an online retailer you are obliged to know your consumers’ behavior. Recognizing the most significant factors that pushing customers towards making a purchase is crucial in this process.
No one-size-fits-all. Especially when it comes to optimizing product titles. Each industry and each customer are different. Analyse your audience, as they are the key to understanding the intent of your searchers.
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Why Product Titles are Important
The Impact of Product Titles on Your Shopping Campaigns
Product titles are one of the feed attributes that when enhanced have an immediate impact on the performance of your ads. There have been dozens of cases studies done around this topic, but still many e-retailers dismiss the importance of this attribute.
Let's take a look at a couple of cases:
A couple of years back Search Engine Land presented a case study that showed just how important it is to optimize your titles. There were 3 groups of products - one control group with original titles, and 2 groups with enriched titles that included category information, additional attributes and finally search terms.
The result?
The more keyword-rich product titles saw a CTR uplift of 18 percent; while the the CTR increase on the exact query match to the term that was added to the title was 88 percent!
source: searchengineland.com
Another excellent case would be that of Zoobgear, who managed to optimize Google Shopping product titles to the point where they saw a 250% increase in clicks.
A big part of their strategy was conducting a keyword research. That research helped them to understand exactly how their potential customers search for sports equipment, and what information was the most relevant.
Title optimization is a crucial part of improving your Google Shopping campaigns. By increasing impressions you grow your advertising revenue, and thus improve your ROAS. Giving suitable details in your titles makes them work well for high-purchase intent searches. It will ensure a better match between the search query, and the ad that is shown. This then results in higher conversion rates.
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Google’s Requirements for Product Titles
Google has strict requirements for product titles. Let's take a look at some of the most important ones:
Remember about length limits:
Pay attention to your title lengths. Ensure they don't exceed the maximum character length of 150 characters. In some cases, only 70 characters may be displayed, such as on a mobile device. If you do exceed that length, your title might get truncated.
Google will show as much of your product title as they can, but it will often be shortened. So make sure you put the most compelling information at the beginning of the titles.
Avoid Capitalization
Capitalized text is common in spam and untrustworthy ads. Use capitalization only when it’s needed. Including for abbreviations, phone numbers or countries.
Don’t include promotional text
Don’t add information such as price, sale price, sale dates, shipping, delivery date, other time-related information, or your company’s name. That information is reserved for other attributes.
Avoid words from foreign languages
Unless they’re well understood by everyone, including words from foreign languages might cause confusion for shoppers and negatively impact your ads performance.
Distinguish between variants
Be specific and add the distinguishing details of each variant. Does your product come in different color or sizes? Include these attributes in the title (and remember to use your variant images!)
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The Role of Keywords in The Product Titles
Google uses the attributes of your titles as a proxy for keywords, so optimizing them and other feed data is crucial to improving the campaign’s performance. Shopping algorithms share common points with SEO, therefore putting the most important words in the product title is crucial for the optimization process.
If you know your industry well and you have analyzed customers’ path, you know how they go about searching for your products.
Will they search by brand name? Then use your brand first. But if your brand is largely unknown or you are selling unbranded items, use descriptive words first.
Will they search by category or maybe by product’s UPI (as in the case of electronic devices)? Your knowledge will help you understand the intent of your customer and find applicable keywords to boost the title.
- Reports and statistics are worth trusting when it comes to finding the right keywords for your titles. Don’t forget to explore your search query report, starting with queries that are converting well and those that aren’t.
- Use keywords with a positive impact on your product feed health. Properly optimized titles can boost your campaign impressions and clicks quickly.
- Consider the order of keywords. The sequence matters as Google puts weight on keywords placed at the beginning of the title. While choosing keywords and their order don’t forget about testing. Check out multiple title formulas and keywords. That is the best way to tailor your tactics according to performance.
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Product Titles Best Practices per Vertical
Recommended Title Structure per Vertical
Relevant key attributes and their sequence in the title differ across products type and industries. Like for example model numbers are an important attribute for electronics but not an attribute to highlight when it comes to clothing.
Fortunately, based on Google’s Shopping Best Practices we have prepared a sneak peek of how to structure your product title depending on vertical.
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What Does An Optimized Product Title Look Like?
Structure vs. Important Information
The structure of the title is just as important as the information included in it. They are two complimenting components.
To figure out which attributes should be added, you need to understand how Google’s algorithm chooses products to be displayed to the searcher.
Generally, Google considers the words at the beginning of the product title as the most significant when selecting ads relevant to the search query. So the order also matters.
Here are some recommended title structures that can be used as templates:
- Brand + Product Type + Color + Material
- Brand + Size (length, width, height) + Product Type + Color
- Material + Product Type + Color + Brand
- Style + Color + Product Type + Brand
- Product Type + Size + Color + Feature + Brand
Advertising Product Variations Efficiently
If you're selling a product with multiple variants, each color, size, material, and pattern must be submitted as a unique item with the unique title.
This is when you have to decide if you want to advertise a “parent” product on its own, or also advertise its variants. Pay attention to this detail as it’s easy to overlook.
Related: Advertising variants vs parent products only - which is best?
How to Include All The Important Attributes in Titles
When you have completed a comprehensive analysis of your reports, vertical and product types, you can then combine the most relevant attributes in your title. In DataFeedWatch this can be done easily, with the assistance of rule-based mapping.
To include every relevant attribute in your title, you can simply combine them, like below:
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How to Optimize Google Shopping Product Title
1. Follow Google's Requirements for Product Titles
Google has very strict rules for the use of capitals and exclamations marks. If you add too many capitals and exclamation marks to your title, Google won’t approve your products.
To avoid disapproval, follow Google Shopping's regulations to the word. Check the most important title requirements here.
2. Use Your Search Query Performance Data to Inform Your Changes
Use the Google Ads search terms report to see what the highest performing queries are, and what ended up landing your conversions.
Search console (organic results) and Google Trends may be additional sources for insights.
3. Add Keywords to Your Product Titles
Google digests your feed and chooses what queries, or keywords your shopping ads are the most relevant for. Optimize the titles of your products by putting the most important keywords at the forefront of your titles.
4. Place Important Information First
Google will show as much of your product title as they can, but it will often be shortened. Make sure you put the most compelling information at the beginning of your product titles.
5. Include Modifiers Like Color, Size, Material, and Specifics
Remember that shoppers often use these words to refine their searches. It is worth being as specific, and detailed as possible. This approach will increase your chances of being shown for relevant searches, and therefore increase your conversion rate.
6. Follow the Best Practices for Your Vertical
Depending on what you’re selling you need to adjust your attribute tactics. Try and think about how your customer would search and then decide what kind of features are relevant enough to be added. Check the recommended title structure per vertical here.
7. Add Category and Brand to Product Title
Brand loyalty is one of the most important parts of why people make a purchase. Many shoppers are looking for specific brand products or categories. If your brand is already quite well known amongst your audience, make sure to include it in your ads.
8. Make Ongoing Tests and Improvements
A well-optimized product title can double or even triple your click-through rate, and improve your conversion. But there is no one specific way to create product titles. Remember that different types of consumers search in different ways, and they are all on a different stage of the purchasing path. Try to modify your titles according to statistics and performance.
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Conclusion
Without an optimized product title, you may waste precious ad budget and miss countless opportunities to convert shoppers. Going the extra mile, and fully optimizing your product titles is definitely worth the effort. If you have thousands of products in your feed it might seem like a impossible task. However, you can optimize bit by bit, and slowly watch as your advertisements become more effective.
Start with your 10 bestselling products, or 10% of the best-selling products. It is likely you will see the positive impact of your changes within a few weeks.
By taking the time to optimize your Google Shopping product titles, you will ensure you are always one step ahead of the competition.
Read more about How to Improve Your Google Shopping Ads:
- A to Z Guide to Google Smart Shopping Campaigns
- 7 Tips for Google Shopping Feed Optimization [EXPERT Level]
- 10 Easy Tricks That Will Make Your Google Shopping Campaigns Better
- Leveraging Unpaid Shopping Ads - Step by Step Guide
