But how do you get traffic to your website?
If you're selling rare or collectable items, e.g. @theelench glassware, and you make sure that you've included the keywords in the item listing and the channel titles, and ensured that Google has indexed the page and the website's sitemap, then you should get organic traffic. Buyers will search for that elusive green candlestick by a named maker that they need to complete their set. The more traffic you get, the more Google likes your website, and shoves it up the listings. There are other things that Google likes - blogs, vids, and links from other sites. Links are good, they're like citations on an academic paper. Other sites know about you and recommend you, that's good in Google's eyes.
However, if you're selling a run of the mill item, you really need a Google Ad Words campaign if you want to make an impact that doesn't just rely on click volume. You have to pay for this, and the cost depends on the popularity of the item in searches and how much other websites are prepared to pay to get on page one. I've recently created a new campaign, and was sternly told that I wasn't budgeting as much as other websites and needed to spend more if I was to be in with the in crowd.
However, you do get lots of data that enables you to refine your positive and negative keywords. It does take a while to teach the algorithm what's a good search result and what's not, so you have to stick at it. It is hard work to develop a campaign and there's no guarantee of success. You're also given a rating for your ad strength and ways to improve it. Rather depressing when you log in and see 'Poor'. Your rating can change from day to day, depending on competition from other ads - so you have to keep on top of it. It's not like eBay PL - you really have to work on it.
You can also sign your website up for the Google Merchant Centre, irrespective of whether you use Ad Words - although I suspect that you get a more prominent position if you link to an Ad Word campaign. This costs nothing unless you decide to go for their equivalent of PL - which I don't. Make sure your website has an auto feed to the Merchant Centre with defined parameters for what to send, or you'll spend hours fixing why Google's showing you a sea of red (red's not good) for your pages. Also, showing a higher price on your website than the price on the shopping app will get you banned - that's why you need an auto feed.
Google does give lots of info about what you can do to improve your conversion rate, mainly spend more money (no surprise there), but other things as well that don't cost money. There are also lots of Google tutorials about bidding, segmentation etc. that you can watch and learn from. It's a complex app, and you need to know the ins and outs, otherwise you're just throwing money away.
If you go this route, keep an eye on the costs and don't let Google have free run of your wallet. Google can reduce you to penury in no time at all if you don't keep an eye on it. It sneakily says ' You would get more conversions if you did X', so you do 'X' and then find that they've gobbled down a big chunk of money - and you've no conversions.
Also, Google is fussy. It likes to know all about you and, if you don't give the right answers, you're banned. I was dark for over a month and had to re-submit my paperwork seven times before it re-instated me. Each submission took around an hour to complete. The Internet is stacked with posts from companies that have been banned. Google's like eBay, it doesn't tell you what you did wrong, but it does tell you to try again. In my previous life, I had high level security clearance, and the data I had to submit to get that was less than Google demanded. It was whoop-whoop-whoop when I finally got the green tick.
It's a pity eBay isn't so stringent with its vetting of buyers. There would be a lot less INRs and SNADS.
