When it comes to eCommerce, it’s no secret that product descriptions are super important, especially with Google ads. Unlike the majority of other advertising platforms, such as Facebook ads, TikTok ads, etc., you don’t directly have the ability to create ad copies.

In fact, if you’re somebody that has been using these other advertising platforms for your eCommerce brand, you know that your ad copy is basically made up of the video or image ad that you decide to use along with the little description above the video or image ad which appears on people’s timeline 

But exactly how does that relate to Google Ads and the success your eCommerce brand achieves with it?

Why Product Descriptions Are Important For Google Ads

Going back to the topic of other advertising platforms, your ad copies define your overall success with them.

Show the right ad copy to the right audience and you don’t have to try much to get those sales rolling in. On the other hand, show the right audience the wrong ad copy and you can easily find yourself at the bottom of a deep ditch.

As you find yourself transitioning to Google Ads for your eCommerce brand, you soon realize that your “ad copy” is actually the product page itself.

The title. Image. Price. Description. And the way you present your brand to your ideal audience.

Your entire foundation is based on the product page you have and a large part of this foundation is the description itself. It makes sense to pay a bit more attention to it.

But many eCommerce store owners who are running Google ads get this wrong.

Instead of ensuring the product image is the highest quality possible or the price is the most competitive possible or the description contains search engine optimization as much as possible, they throw something together hoping it works. From my experience running my own eCommerce brands and handling client accounts under our agency, Yoru Marketing, this rarely works.

Before we understand how to ensure our product descriptions for Google shopping ads and Google search ads are ideal, it’s important to know what the algorithm itself rewards.

What Makes The Google Ads Algorithm Work?

As I mentioned earlier, your product page is basically your ad copy when it comes to Google ads. And Google’s algorithm does a very thorough job of ensuring it has understood every aspect of it.

For every single page on your website, the algorithm crawls letter by letter, word by word, from left to right and top to bottom. As it does this, it scans the page to understand what words you’re using, what your brand is about, etc. and tries to connect this information within their database.

This is simply done to ensure your products are getting shown to the right audience that have the intent you want. For most eCommerce brands, this is the intent to purchase.

When your product page, especially your description, has all the necessary elements in place, the algorithm notices it and it rewards you accordingly. And this reward could come in multiple forms.

From a higher quality score to lower CPCs to higher CTRs, your ads become open to all.

As eCommerce store owners, it’s our responsibility to ensure we’re representing our brand in the best possible way and keeping things as relevant as possible. 

Focusing on the product descriptions specifically, there are certain things Google Ads actually looks out for when determining whether to reward you or to punish you.

What Are The Main Things That Impact The Quality Of Descriptions With Google Ads?

Over here at Yoru Marketing, we like to think of product descriptions as pillars of a solid, unfaltering foundation. These pillars are divided into four separate sections:

1. Relevancy
2. SEO
3. Size
4. Quality

Lets discuss each pillar one at a time.

Relevancy

The epitome of the perfect description. The pillar that provides the strongest foundation of all. If your eCommerce product descriptions don’t have anything else, make sure they abide by this one pillar.

Google ads loves relevancy. The algorithm rewards content that’s fully relevant to what the user is searching.

And that’s simply because Google is a business and it wants its users (our customers) to stay for as long as possible on their platform and to engage as much as possible. It makes sense that Google’s algorithm will push whatever shopping or search ad helps it achieve this goal.

Many eCommerce store owners either overcomplicate relevancy or completely disregard it in the hopes of ranking for as many search terms as possible. This could be for either shopping ads or search ads.

The quality of your eCom brand’s product descriptions is directly influenced by how relevant you are. By how closely related the words appearing within your actual description are to the product you’re trying to sell.

For example, if you’re selling dog necklaces, you would want to rank for keywords related to dog necklaces. But if you accidentally insert the word “cat necklace” within your description, the Google ads algorithm will crawl over it and get a bit confused.

You can probably already see by now why this is not an ideal situation. If you begin ranking for cat necklaces when you’re trying to sell dog necklaces, you might get tons of impressions from keywords related to it.

In fact, you might even end up getting clicks here and there for the terms however, this would be destructive to your Google ads account and to your eCommerce business as a whole.

Not only will this audience not be interested in your dog necklace as they were looking for cat necklaces to begin with, but those that end up on your website will end up increasing the overall bounce rate.

A low CTR combined with a high bounce rate with a mix of little to no sales for those keywords / products is a direct indication to Google ads that your listing sucks. And the Google ads platform does not want to show any type of shopping or search ads that provide its users a negative experience.

To keep things simply, you want to be as relevant as possible within the product descriptions. If you’re selling dog necklaces, make sure to mention keywords related to this item multiple times. Our general rule of thumb for our own eCommerce brands as well as client stores is to not mention any specific word more than three times in a description.

This could lead to a blackhat strategy called keyword stuffing, something we want to stay 10 feet away from.

And this brings me to the second pillar that impacts the overall quality of your product description and your Google ads campaigns as a whole: SEO.

SEO

SEO and relevancy go hand in hand simply because one key factor of proper search engine optimization for your eCommerce brand is keyword research.

Many eCommerce store owners believe that SEO is just for organic traffic. They believe that achieving success with Google Ads is a matter of just having the right campaigns and strategies.

And to a certain extent, this is absolutely true.

But my experience of doing well over 7 figures tells me a slightly different story. Proper SEO is the reason why the Google ads algorithm rewards you in the first place.

The reason why your ads are shown for the keywords you actually want them shown for. And that’s exactly why SEO is the second pillar that impacts the quality of your descriptions.

When you use proper SEO techniques, you make it easy for Google ads to find you the right buyers. And Google rewards you by providing eyeballs on your ads that are more likely to click and convert.

This directly means lower CPCs, CPAs, and bounce rates with a higher search impression share, click share, and impression share. To put it in simple terms, you end up getting way more bang for your buck just by utilizing this pillar.

But proper keyword research comes from the use of the right metrics and numbers.

Some of the major things we look at when doing keyword research for our clients or our own eCommerce brands include average monthly search volume, competition for the keyword, overall price points of competitors, and number of competitors.

Ideally, we only use keywords in descriptions that have a minimum of 500 average monthly searches. Anything lower and it just doesn’t make sense to give up valuable space for that given word.

Think about it. What will your conversion rate be for a given keyword if it only has, say, 100 average monthly searches?

I personally don’t use keywords which have more than six to seven competitors for the same or similar product as it usually ends up leading to price wars. As for product pricing, I like to make sure my price is very average and competitive with the others.

Once you figure these things out, it’s a matter of creating a list of keywords which you think are ideal for the product description. And this brings us to the third pillar that directly impacts the quality of product descriptions: size.

Size

A good product description comes in multiple shapes and sizes. And while some products can have descriptions that are hundreds of words long, others can barely have a few.

Simply put, there’s only so much you can write for any given product. So what do you do exactly?

Based on my experience dealing with eCommerce brands running Google Ads, I’ve come to realize that there is a word count range that can be ideal for your products. Write anything more than the max limit and you end up with diminishing returns.

That word count is roughly 300 – 900 words. According to Google ads, the most important content of the product description should be included within the first 500 words. Anything after that pretty much gets hidden when it comes to Google shopping ads listings.

I personally believe writing a little above 500 words is the best way to go and tests done with this show likewise. For instance, my own eCommerce brand often had product descriptions that ranged from 600 words to 1,000 words.

Not only did this take a long period of time to create, but it also used up valuable resources and time that could have been spent growing the brand. I decided to test a lower word count on one of our eCom client’s accounts and the results were astonishing.

Not only did this eCommerce brand selling similar products to me outperform my own eCommerce brand, but it actually grew at a faster rate. This can be attributed to different factors as well such as bids, budgets, campaign types, etc. however, the main difference was with descriptions.

And I’ve seen this result over and over again since this test was done. The ideal description is around 500 words, right in the middle of that range. But size can only take you so far.

The next and final pillar your product descriptions must abide by is quality.

Quality

You can easily create a description that has 500 words or more but this is pretty much meaningless if this description only consists of a bunch of random words jumbled together.

The fourth pillar is the most important of all because it combines all the three others into one whole. This is where the good product descriptions are separated from the great.

I always recommend to our eCommerce PPC clients that they create descriptions for their products with a little more intention. With a little more conviction.

This means using a lot more creativity and copywriting rather than throwing out facts and numbers. After all, a customer buys how the product makes them feel, not what the product actually is.

And Google’s algorithm recognizes this within the description through a user’s bounce rate and average session time. The lower the bounce rate and the higher the average session time, the better the quality of your description in most cases.

You can directly monitor these metrics within your Google analytics account by choosing the appropriate columns as well.

Now that we know how the Google ads algorithm actually works and the main pillars that impact the product description, lets begin understanding how to write a solid description.

How To Craft The Perfect Product Description

Writing a solid winning product description for Google ads is more of a mixture of science and art combined. I say this simply because while it’s true that the same format which I’m about to show you can be used over and over again, there is a bit of personalization that needs to happen per description.

Otherwise, the product descriptions would be extremely bland and repetitive. So exactly how do you do it?

One of the most famous examples I often recommend eCommerce store owners to check out is this description. It’s a live example of the exact format I use and recommend.

However, there are some things that this product page could have had better. Lets start creating a 7-figure product description!

At the very top of every description, I like to repeat the main title of the product in H2 heading. This helps me reiterate the item’s name while regrouping the main SEO keywords at the very top. Remember, we’re writing for the people AND the algorithm.

Similar to what the example product page has, you want to illustrate the product in some way after the title. Ideally, having a video or gif is the best way to go here. Those that prefer to watch videos over reading can actually find this very helpful and those that don’t can continue reading.

After your video or gif, you want to begin talking about the product. This is where you literally need to let out your inner poet and focus on copywriting.

Your words need to introduce enough emotions to make someone want to take action. Of course, you want to ensure you’re practicing proper SEO techniques to go with this as well.

Note** Everytime I say “paragraph”, I’m talking about one to three sentences grouped together, no more.

Here is where you introduce the product as you like and write two different paragraphs. These paragraphs ideally want to first introduce the product and then describe exactly what the item does. By the end of this second paragraph, your potential customer should have a clear idea of what you’re selling.

After this second paragraph, you want to introduce some kind of image. This could be a high quality photo of the item in a different angle or somebody using the item in some way. Remember, the main goal of this image is to continue having someone read more of the description.

This image is followed by two more paragraphs which continue to describe the product in great detail. After this second paragraph here, you want to add one final image. This is done to keep the ratio between words and images equal.

Now comes the easy part. To wrap up the description, simply make the next section below the image the “What’s Included” section. Copying and pasting what you’ll be providing with each package is more than sufficient here.

You can also mention specifications related to the item after this or simply end it with shipping information. Ideally, I recommend doing both here.

But this should bring you to the end of a successful product description that not only captivates the audience into potentially buying, but also helps push your ads more to the front while paying the same or even less.

Pretty neat stuff, huh?

But wait, we’re not done yet. You need to figure out exactly how to read the data and understand what’s working and what doesn’t.

How Do You Know If Your Description Is Working?

It’s actually very simple. You want to be studying the “Site Content” section under “Behaviors” in Google Analytics and understanding whether bounce rates and avg. time on pages is increasing or decreasing.

This would be the best way to understand how your audience is interacting with the content. And just know; they either like it or they don’t.

There’s no middle ground when it comes to descriptions. Do your absolute best to ensure you’re targeting the right people with the right words and the rest will naturally happen on its own.

I know it’s a lot but take it one step at a time. Practice helps make the entire process better and your eCommerce brand will be thanking you with profitable and scalable results from Google ads in no time!

You can checkout the video version of this post here:

Key Things To Keep In Mind

Hurray! By now, you know why product descriptions for your eCommerce brand are so important – especially when it comes to Google ads. You’ve gotten a general idea of how the Google ads algorithm works and what pillars support a strong description.

You should also know how to actually go out and create an amazing product description.

But there are a few things you should definitely keep in mind.

First things first, remember that the template provided above is just that, a template. You should never be afraid to add your own spice to the mix and stir things up. After all, that’s how new strategies are found.

Be open to trying out new description layouts and really play around with the wording. We recommend our eCommerce brands under our agency, Yoru Marketing, to split test new description types weekly or monthly.

In addition, always remember that the overall success your eCommerce brand gets with Google ads depends not just on product descriptions, but a combination of various different things.

Make sure every part of the funnel comes together before indulging in heavy ad spend.

Make Life Easy

Listen, I get it. There’s a lot of contributing factors to the overall success with Google ads. What I explained in this post is just a small fragment of everything you need to get right.

And there’s only so much you can do on your own. So if you’re at the phase where you’re doing $30,000 or more per month and want to scale your eCommerce brand further, book a free strategy call with my team and see how we can work together to scale your eCom brand to new levels.

You get the call for free and I actually go in and analyze your current situation to provide a strategy report – ALL for free. No obligations – you keep it even if we don’t work out. Lets work together.