Can an SEO company help with Google Shopping?
Yes, with the product data and product pages that Shopping depends on. Google shows products across its surfaces from the information you give it, through a product feed in Merchant Center, structured data on your product pages, or both. Free product listings and paid Shopping ads draw on that same information. Improving it, keeping it consistent with your site, and fixing what Merchant Center flags is work that sits close to e-commerce SEO. Setting bids and budgets for paid Shopping campaigns is paid-media work, which some SEO companies offer and others do not.
What free listings need
Google’s Merchant Center help on free listings for products explains that new Merchant Center accounts are opted in to free listings by default, and that existing accounts with product data may already be showing products for free. It also sets expectations: the free listings status “controls permission to show products for free across Google, but doesn’t guarantee that your products will be shown to customers”, because Google matches the data you provide to what people are searching for.
The same page lists the product attributes that free listings require, such as an ID, title, link, image link, and price for every product, and it requires shipping settings or shipping costs in product data for a list of countries that includes the United States. It recommends adding your return policy, since that information can be shown next to your products. A company working on Shopping should be able to tell you which of these are missing or flagged in your account’s “Needs attention” tab.
Where SEO skills help
The data is where SEO skills apply first. That means titles and descriptions that say clearly what each product is, using the words shoppers use; complete attributes such as brand, condition, and product identifiers; correct prices and availability; and images that meet the requirements. These draw on keyword research and product copywriting, the same skills used for product pages.
Product pages matter as well: pages with accurate structured data let Google read the same facts from your site that the feed provides, and the Merchant Center page points to Search Console for checking errors in that markup. When the feed says one price, the page another, and the markup a third, problems follow, so a company should keep the three in step and check them after every price or stock change.
Where paid campaigns are separate
Paid Shopping ads add bidding, budgets, campaign structure, and measurement of cost per click and return on ad spend. Some SEO companies have a paid-media team and can run both; others handle only the data and page side. The contract should say which, and reporting should keep the two apart: feed health, markup validity, and free listing performance on one side, paid spend and return on the other.
Agreeing access and feed changes before work starts
Agree who has which level of access to Merchant Center and who can change the feed, how feed changes are tested before they go live, and how often the company reviews the account’s flagged issues. If paid campaign management is not included, name who runs it, so that changes to product data are not made without the person managing the ads knowing.