Google Shopping Ads Keywords Research: The Ultimate Secret Tips

In the world of online shopping, Google Shopping ads have a significant impact on the success of e-commerce businesses. Statistics further show businesses that use shopping ads on Google see their online sales increase by up to 25%. 

That’s huge, right? It shows how powerful these ads can be for starting to sell your stuff online.

However, despite the undeniable benefits of Google Shopping ads, do all e-commerce owners get as many clicks as they’d expect?

Well, the clicks they get or the Click-Through Rate (CTR) achieved through these ads often fall short of expectations. 

But, why?

One of the biggest reasons behind this is the lack of proper Google shopping Ads keywords research. Again, it’s hard because of the unique way that Google Shopping operates. Unlike traditional search ads, these ads don’t rely on the same keyword targeting strategies.

Now, the question is, how you can find out all the best performing keywords for Google Shopping Ads?

This article will guide you on how to research keywords for Google Shopping Ads to get better conversions. Along with that, you’ll also get to know how you can properly optimize your ads with the right placement of the keywords.

Why do you need Google Shopping Ads keywords research?

Google Shopping is a red-hot marketplace for e-commerce store owners around the world. Every day merchants are joining this popular platform to improve their marketing efforts. 

Currently, every e-commerce marketer focuses on getting the right keywords on Google Shopping. Converting traffic into customers on eCommerce sites is easier with proper Google shopping keyword research. 

But, when you research, you will find out that bidding on keywords is not available on Google Shopping while setting up campaigns. Again, paid ads on Google are not enough to show your signature products on a specific search term.

So, finding the best performing keywords is a must for ranking on Google shopping campaigns for SEO. 

Check out this image below, and see how different types of shoes from all ages, brands, and genders are ranking for one keyword “running shoes.”

You got it, right? If can properly research the keywords for Google shopping ads, you can rank for many keywords instead of a general keyword.

How to research Google Shopping Ads keywords? 

Finding the right words for your Google Shopping ads is important for getting more people to see and buy your stuff. 

But how do you know which words to use? 

That’s where keyword research comes in! Let’s dive into some easy ways to figure out the best keywords for your ads.

1. Search for keywords from competitor’s analysis

For any type of keyword research competitor analysis is always the first approach. When it comes to Google shopping ads, it become even more effective.

Google Shopping prioritizes showing ads that are highly relevant to user searches. By searching out for what keywords your competitors rank well, you can identify similar relevant keywords for your own products. 

Targeting these keywords increases your chances of showing up in relevant searches.

But, are you missing out somewhere? 

When your ads in Google Shopping campaign don’t work, you might wonder where the lackings are.

Don’t worry. With the competitor’s analysis, you can clearly see the exact gap in Google shopping ranking factors between you and the well-positioned sites.

When you analyze what your competitors target, you’ll find valuable keywords with less competition but higher purchase intent. That’s how you can target those potential terms to fill the gaps.

Eventually, these can bring you the right customers who are already interested in what you offer.

How, you might think how you can do the proper research of your competitors?

This is where you should go through to research the top-ranking keywords of your competitors:

• First, it’s the product pages or categories of your competitor’s site. Check out the product pages and look for the most relevant keywords that directly compete with your offerings.

• Secondly, analyze the page titles, meta descriptions, and category names. These often contain keywords relevant to their Shopping Ads strategy.

• Thirdly, go through the Google Shopping product attributes that buyers search for filtering products. It can be size, color, material, price, etc. These can be potential keywords as well.

• Last but not least, look for online reviews and social media conversations mentioning your competitors’ products. Like how do customers describe the products? Or what’s their way of call to action? 

Bonus tip:

Pay attention to specific terms and long-tail keywords used by customers. Long-tail terms (more specific searches) often convert better, while short-tail terms can generate more impressions. Take the bold words intro consideration as well. 

2. Find out best performing Keywords from multiple Google Shopping Campaign 

Google shopping ads doesn’t work in the same way that regular Google search does. In Google shopping campaigns, you can’t be 100% sure that your specific keyword will rank even if your competitors rank on it. 

You’ll be shocked to know that, the average conversion rate of Google Ads on the search network is only 4.40% across all industries. 

So, if you run multiple campaigns for Google Shopping, only a few of them have the chance to run successfully, or even not a single one at all. 

Now, why waste money on such irrelevant keywords that aren’t generating sales or clicks?

Rather than identifying keywords with high conversion rates allow you to focus your budget on these best performing keywords. This means less wasted money on clicks that don’t convert and a direct focus on reaching the right people.

However, if you know exactly which keywords in your Google Shopping Ads are bringing in the most sales, you can optimize your other shopping campaigns for the same or more relevant keywords. 

That’s how finding the best performers lets you to refine your campaigns for better results and a higher quality score from Google.

Find out best performing Google shopping keywords from multiple campaigns:

•  Identify terms with strong performance with search term reports. Simply go to your Google Ads account and navigate to the “Campaigns” tab. 

Once you’ve select all the Shopping campaigns you want to go to (hold Ctrl/Cmd and click on multiple).  Click on the “Keywords” tab. And this is where the data golden keywords lies.

Now, if you’re done with this filtering of the high value keywords, then it’s time to analyze the performance more deeply.

You’ve to make a matrix of those keywords and rank them in a order.  Here, you’ll see a bunch of matrix for each keywords like impressions, clicks, CTRs and most importantly the conversion rates for Google shopping. Analyze this data and sort it by the metrics that matter most to your goals.

Bonus tip:

The “Keywords” tab is a great starting point. However, as you start to convert sales, look at assisted conversions to see how keywords interact with other touchpoints in the customer journey. It’s because, sometimes a keyword might not directly lead to a sale but contribute to the process.

3. Sculpting the Product (generic vs product-specific keywords)

Imagine you have a shop at a big market. Some people walk by just looking around, maybe not sure exactly what they want to buy yet like “running shoes”. 

Again, others come to look for something specific, like “waterproof running shoes for women of size 8.”

These are two different customers; one acts like just random traffic, while the other seems highly converting customers. 

However, how to manage these two can at a time?

Well, with Google Shopping Ads, you can attend both of them simultaneously.

Using a mix of two types of searching keywords of these customers, you can attract both the random window shoppers and the ready-to-buy customers.

Two different levels of keywords are :

• Generic Keywords, and 
• Product-Specific Keyword

Let’s discuss how the two types work for your Google shopping Ads keywords.

Generic keywords

let’s say you have hundreds or thousands of product variations of running shoes. So, what is the general category of your store or how you will invite people?

Will you shout like “best running shoes here” or “waterproof Nike running shoes for women of size 8”?

The first one, right?

Yes, this is the magic of generic keywords. Typically, generic keywords are like a wide net to capture a broad audience who might be interested in your products. 

While they may not always lead to immediate sales, they’re a great way to reach early searchers and expand the reach of your Google Shopping Ads.

On avarage, generic keywords have a high keyword search density. Now, you must be thinking about how to find these high volume keywords in Google Shopping ads. Well, there are two methods you can apply to get the best keywords in Google shopping annotations: 

• Research best-selling products
• Research products on sales 

Both these approaches work effectively, but we recommend the best sellers as the priority. 

Promotions are not usually executed within every product category. It is recommended to run a promotion within a product category; otherwise, segmentation won’t work in that category. 

Product specific keywords 

Product-specific keywords are terms or phrases directly related to a particular product or service. These keywords are essential for targeting potential customers who are actively searching or interested in purchasing your specific products.

If you have a vast inventory, finding the product-specific google shopping keyword becomes challenging. 

However, you can manage to find the keywords like following:

• Start with the product feed you’re using for Google Shopping. This feed typically contains detailed information about your products, including titles, descriptions, brands, and all the Google shopping available attributes.

• Pick out the key characteristics, features, and specifications of your products. These details will form the basis of your product-specific keywords.

So, use your top selected Google shopping keyword in the title with other important information such as color, model number, size, etc. 

For product descriptions, inject one or two keywords to make it more effective. Most useful features and benefits should be mentioned in the description. The same goes for the google product type, where you should put your researched google shopping ads keywords.

Still, there are some scenarios where they lack in showing the right results: 

• If the search term is a long tail and the searched product title does not include the searched words. 
• In the case of some keywords, reversed word order means something entirely different.

Bonus Tip:

When you research the product specific even the generic keywords, it sounds good for small businesses. 

But, what if you’ve a store with thousands of products in hundreds of catagory?

Manually researching each product or category will be a nightmare. It not only costs your time but also gives you a error- prone data. And this process becomes even more challenging when you try to make your product feed with manually inserting product details one by one?

So, what could be the solution?

The best option will be generating product feed with full automated plugins. Among certain plugins on the market, one plugin that stands out for its excellent features and easy maintenance is the CTX Feed plugin. Many Woocommerce owner rely on CTX Feed as because it generates most optimized and error-free feeds for their Google shopping ads. 

And you can do most of it with the free version of this plugin. In fact, generating google shopping feeds with CTX Feed is super simple.

And the best part?

CTX Feed can generate around 7 types feeds just for Google Shopping. And supports more than 130 advertising channels, including Facebook, Instagram, etc.

4. Google Shopping Ads Keywords Research Tools and Techniques

Researching keywords for Google Shopping ads is crucial for targeting the right audience and maximizing your ad’s effectiveness. Here are some tools and techniques you can use for google shopping ads keywords research:

Google Keyword Planner:

This is a free tool provided by Google Ads. It allows you to search for relevant keywords and see their search volumes, competition levels, and suggested bid prices. While primarily designed for text ads, it can still provide valuable insights for Google Shopping campaigns.

Google Trends:

This tool helps you understand the popularity of search terms over time. You can compare the search volume of different keywords and identify trends that may impact your advertising strategy. And, using the Google trends, you can research the keywords based on specific countries, specific region, even for specific categories.

External Keyword Research Tools:

Several paid keyword research tools can provide valuable insights like search volume and competition level. Tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs can help you uncover competitor keywords and their performance metrics. These can inform your product feed optimization strategy.

Alternative Techniques:

Within Google Ads, you can find the Search Terms report that shows what terms triggered your Shopping Ads. Analyze this data to identify relevant search queries users employed to find similar products. Consider incorporating these terms into your product feed optimization.

Best Practices for optimizing keywords in Google Shopping Ads 

Even you’ve pick the high performing keywords for your Google shopping ads, if can’t optimize them, your Google Shopping campaign will be useless. Let’s dive into some best practices to optimize keywords in Google shopping ads and some clever tricks to get super catchy ads that grab attention and boost your sales.

Understanding search intent and user behavior

Optimizing Google Shopping ads keywords require a deep understanding of search intent and user behavior.

Different users have different intentions when they search for products online. Some may be looking to make a purchase immediately, while others may be in the research phase.

Even before defining the campaign structure, you should understand the users search intent. Choose the keywords that fits the customer’s search query. 

With proper market research, you will quickly get what customers are always looking for.

Your profitable product promotion becomes easier when you know how your target customers behaves with products. So, with proper research, keyword and even negative keyword aligns the search query. 

For example, while crafting the product title, you should use the actual name of the product. Customers may search your product with their search queries. 

Customize the Product Titles to Target Keywords

This tacit is crucial to display Google shopping results according to Google shopping keywords. It’s all about gathering Google shopping keywords that you want to appear. The objective here is to place the Google shopping keywords so that they are appropriately targeted. 

It is wise to overuse the Google shopping keyword rather than underusing them on product titles. It is a common fact that product titles are not appropriately optimized in Google shopping by site owners. 

For example, PC game vendors won’t put PC games in every product title. But google needs that info to understand that the site owner is selling that specific product. 

Another example: 

Someone selling bulk A4 size paper probably won’t put the word “bulk” in all the product titles. In this case, it is crucial to append those google shopping keywords in product titles. It will ensure that the keywords are being targeted for a better conversion rate on Google shopping.

Prioritizing high-converting keywords over high-volume keywords

If you want your Google Shopping ads to really work for you, then focus on keywords that lead to actual sales rather than just chasing high search volumes. 

Surely, those high density and popular keywords will target the audience first, but they don’t always bring the customers who are ready to buy. 

It’s always better to have a smaller group of interested shoppers than a huge crowd of people who might not be all that interested in what you’re selling. 

So, pay attention to those less hyped, but highly effective, long-tail keywords that really speak to what your products are all about. 

Treat Each Categories Differently 

It’s always recommended to treat categories generally on their own. So if you have a category such as USB & FireWire Hubs where there is a chance to display products for incorrect search terms, you are suggested to create a granular structure. 

The structure should include one ad group per product ID. For the rest of your inventory, create a different structure. 

So, choose a solution that fits an individual product category. If you have a large inventory, eventually, you will have to break down the shopping campaign.

Avoid negative keywords in Google shopping to refine targeting

When it comes to negative keywords, you have to exclude keywords carefully. Let’s say you are selling ten different brands of shirts. 

If one of the brands shows up while searching the shirts but does not convert into sales, then what’s your approach?

Usually, you will bid lower or add that search term as a negative keyword. You exclude the search term from displaying for that product or brand and testing another. 

Most of the conversion comes from long-tail searches, so be more careful while excluding keywords. Filtering all the search terms that did not convert might exclude the keywords that did not convert before but may convert in the future. 

So, it’s recommended to be more careful while excluding a keyword in Google Shopping campaigns. Focus on keywords that may appear in a search term and not a particular day for its appearance. 

But, what are negative keywords in Shopping ads?

Negative keywords help filter out traffic that is unlikely to result in conversions. 

For example, if you sell high-end luxury watches, you might add “cheap” or “discount” as negative keywords to exclude users looking for inexpensive or discounted products.

Again, if you only sell new products, you could add “used” or “secondhand” as negative keywords to exclude users searching for pre-owned items.

Monitoring and adjusting keyword strategy based on performance data

Your Google shopping campaigns work great, but if you leave this as it is, then it’s just a matter of some days or hardly weeks to fall your sales to zero.

That’s where monitoring data comes in. It’s like telling you exactly what terms people searched for before buying your stuff. 

Suppose, if you sell sneakers, the data might show people searching for “women’s running shoes”. 

But, after a few days later, there’ll be a program of women marathon. So, people suddenly will search for “”women’s running shoes for marathons”. 

Then, you can use this information to tweak your product descriptions and titles to better match those search terms. 

So you’d make sure your ad copy highlights features important to boost your sales.

Here’s the best part.

You can see which searches are bringing in customers at a good price. By keeping an eye on how many sales each search term generates, you can identify your star performers and give them a little extra love in your ad descriptions. 

On the other hand, if some searches aren’t converting well, you can adjust your strategy. Maybe you need to tweak the descriptions or even block those terms from showing up in your ads altogether.

The key is to constantly learn from what works and adapt your approach. By keeping an eye on the data and making small changes, you can turn your Google Shopping Ads into a sales magnet, attracting the right customers and boosting your bottom line.

Conclusion

For getting better to the best conversion rate, researching the best Google shopping ads keywords essential. When you place the keywords correctly, half of your campaign optimization gets done. 

As an eCommerce store owner, you must place google shopping keywords with the proper ad group structure to continuously convert the users. Though keywords are not the basis of modern Google shopping, it ensures that the right products are presented based on a search term. 

FAQs:

How to add keywords to google shopping ads?

To add keywords to your Google Shopping ads, go to your Google Ads account, select your Shopping campaign, and navigate to the “Keywords” tab. Then, click the “+” button to add new keywords, enter your desired keywords, set bids, and save. 

How do you target keywords in Shopping ads?

To target keywords in your Shopping ads, use relevant terms in your product titles, descriptions, and attributes. Google matches search queries to your product data, so ensure your listings contain the keywords you want to target.

How do I find disapproved keywords in Google Ads?

To find disapproved keywords in Google Ads, go to the “Keywords” tab in your Google Ads account. Look for any keywords marked as “Disapproved.” Hover your curser over the status to see the reason for disapproval. Make necessary adjustments to agree with Google’s policies and re-submit for approval.