When Google announced in 2020 that it would include free listings in its shopping platform, SEO experts jumped on the opportunity to tap into this high-converting traffic source.
For some stores, free Google Shopping listings can account for up to 20% of their revenue, since people who click on the Shopping tab are already in buying mode.
Right now, it’s available in around 90 countries, offering both paid and free listings.
In this guide, we’ll focus on the latest SEO factors that can help you rank organically in 2025.
By the way, we just launched a course on WooCommerce SEO that goes even deeper into strategies like these. It’s currently on sale, so feel free to check it out here!
What is Google Shopping?
Google Shopping is a platform (the “Shopping” tab) that lets eCommerce businesses showcase their products right on Google search results.
Think of Google Shopping like a comparison shopping engine – it shows users product images, prices, and links to the merchant’s website, where they can make a purchase.
The Shopping tab only appears when Google detects that the user’s intent is to make a purchase.
There’s not much detailed info on what it actually takes to rank organically, and what’s out there is often vague – just the usual advice about optimizing product pages, meta titles, images, and so on.
So what really moves the needle?
First, let’s start with an interesting fact.
The eCommerce giant, Amazon, which dominates with half of the #1 positions on Google Shopping, doesn’t use structured data on any of its product pages.
This goes against the usual advice to optimize every aspect of a page. Just because Google gives recommendations and guidelines doesn’t mean following them will automatically boost your rankings.
Even without considering Amazon, structured product data still isn’t one of the key factors that affect organic rankings in Google Shopping.
Amazon sellers often succeed so well because of these reasons – Google favors them, driving a ton of high-quality traffic their way.
Another thing typical of Amazon is the length of their product titles, which surprisingly has no correlation with rankings. Despite Amazon having some of the longest, often spammy-looking product titles, they still dominate the search results.
Product Price
This is the famous napkin sketch by Jeff Bezos, where he outlined the legendary Amazon strategy, which to this day they continue to follow:
Notice how lower prices are one of the key drivers of Amazon’s growth?
The same goes for Google Shopping. One of the biggest factors that can push you out of search results is having above-average pricing. Google wants to provide a good customer experience, which means prioritizing lower-priced options for shoppers.
This is for sure one of the reasons why Amazon dominates Google search results.
To compete with Amazon and other established brands, here’s the truth: don’t even bother if your prices are drastically higher than average. Instead, focus on optimizing products with below-average prices to stand a better chance.
Domain Authority
This is by far the most important factor that determines how high your products will rank. Sites with high domain ratings tend to show up higher in search results.
If domain authority wasn’t a big deal, we’d see spammy sites dominating search results for high-volume buyer keywords. Google uses this as a mechanism to fight spam by favoring more established sites.
Domain authority isn’t an official Google metric, but it’s a crucial indicator of how established a site is. It considers the site’s backlink structure, the link juice it gets, and where those links are coming from.
While backlinks to product pages aren’t as critical for Google Shopping as they are for regular search results, domain authority plays a much bigger role when it comes to Google Shopping rankings.
The number of referring domains isn’t as big of a factor as domain authority itself. However, if those referring domains are relevant, high-quality, and have a strong Domain Rating (DR), they do impact the overall domain authority score. So, you could say that the number of referring domains indirectly contributes to higher rankings.
In our newly launched WooCommerce SEO course, I dive deeper into how domain authority impacts your rankings and share specific strategies for building quality backlinks that actually move the needle for Google Shopping.
Reviews and Star Rating
Reviews play a crucial role in helping customers decide whether to buy a product or not.
If you don’t have reviews or a review collection system set up on your product pages, you’ll notice an issue when testing with Google’s rich results tool. Don’t overlook this because besides product price and domain authority, reviews have one of the biggest impacts on your rankings.
Positive reviews not only enhance user experience and drive conversions, but they also help with your Google Shopping ranking. Unique and detailed reviews increase the word count on your page, which can help you rank for more keywords found in those reviews.
The star rating of a product is another important ranking factor. Logically, well-rated products have better conversion rates, so for commercial keywords, Google tends to send traffic to products that are more likely to convert.
I recommend using a reputable third-party tool, like Yotpo or Judge.me, to collect reviews for your products.
Shipping and Return Experience
Have you ever bought something from a Chinese dropshipper?
Two of the most frustrating things are the incredibly long wait for the product to arrive – sometimes taking months – and the nightmare of not being able to return it.
Google is all about improving the customer experience and weeding out the spammers. That’s why fast shipping and easy returns are major ranking factors.
When you sell through Amazon FBA, these logistical details are taken care of for you. But when you sell on your own store, Google holds you accountable and rewards you with quality traffic if you get it right.
Google tracks this automatically in the Merchant Center, where you can set it up.
Stores that provide an exceptional experience with shipping and returns rank higher than those with poor experiences on Google Shopping.
Shipping experience measures both the cost and average delivery time of an order.
Return experience looks at the cost of returning an item and the return window—basically, how many days customers have to send something back.
Top Quality Store Badge
This is a badge Google gives to stores that meet the following criteria:
- Fast shipping
- Transparent return policies
- High-quality websites
- Positive user reviews
The badge mostly impacts click-through rates. Stores with it are often ranked at the top, but it’s not the only reason for their high positions. Stores that earn this badge usually have everything else in place, like strong reviews and ratings on product pages, excellent shipping and return experiences, and other factors we’ve covered in this article.
While you should aim to achieve this level of excellence, it’s not a dealbreaker if you don’t have it. It can help boost rankings from position 3 to 1, so it’s especially useful if you’re already ranking well and want to push even higher.
Keywords In Title, Description and H1
You should include exact match keywords in your H1 product title, meta title, and, most importantly, in the meta description.
Even though Google rarely displays meta descriptions in regular search results, many eCommerce stores skip writing them, especially when they have a large number of products.
But here’s the interesting part: high-ranking products on Google Shopping do have exact match keywords in their meta descriptions. So, even though Google may not show them in standard search results, it’s still worth putting in the effort to write unique, keyword-rich meta descriptions for each product.
And of course, meta titles and H1 titles are crucial for relevance. How else would Google know what the product is?
Conclusion
High-volume keywords are usually dominated by established sites. If you’re running a smaller, newly launched site, your best bet is to focus on lower-volume, long-tail keywords that aren’t as saturated by the big players.
The factors we’ve covered here can make a real difference in your Google Shopping SEO campaign, so these are the areas to focus on improving.
That said, don’t forget about the standard SEO essentials like writing unique content and having a fast-loading site. These not only help with organic search traffic but also improve the overall user experience.
And remember, Google regularly updates its algorithms, so what works today might not be as effective tomorrow. Stay adaptable!
If you’re ready to dive deeper into optimizing your Google Shopping strategy and mastering SEO for WooCommerce, check out our new course for 2025. It’s packed with everything you need to stay ahead!