Do you have your own company or just launched your new website/webshop and you want a lot of attention and resulting traffic? The dream of every company owner is to be found by potential customers as quickly and easy as possible when searching for a specific category. Online marketing is very important and the whole science behind it should be known in order to reach the desired business goals.
The science of online marketing
But what does that mean? A very important portal for online marketing, if not the most important, is Google. Everyone uses the search engine, especially for searching for relevant content. Thus, companies need to be aware of the fact how important it is to be seen within Google. The thing is, as soon as you search something in Google, Google shows you all its results relevant to your search terms. Most of the time when you scroll down you see almost endless pages. However, the truth is that almost nobody visits the third page. So just imagine how high your change is to be visited if you do not put effort in being shown at the very first pages.
How to get to the top of search results; SEO
But how does this work? How can you be displayed between the best websites? There are two ways. The organic way, which is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and the paid way, which is Search Engine Advertisement (SEA). Organic means that your website “earns” to be shown on the first page due to the value and quality of your website. The value is determined by Google itself. You can achieve this value by pushing your webshop. This is possible by having multiple external links which can be published from other websites or blogs. These links link to your own website and by doing this you prove relevance of your own website. This process is called link building. It is an important factor of organic traffic and often its importance is a bit underrated by organizations.
How to get to the top of search results; SEA
Besides putting effort in creating links and finding potential partners, you can also choose the second way. Advertisements are what you pay for. This is mostly helpful for a specific period of time, but it does cost money and as soon as the ad is not displayed anymore, your webshop might be again on the last result pages. Therefore, a good interaction of both is what makes the difference. Everything you see on top of the search results page that is marked with “AD” is paid. You can imagine this process as a simple auction with the only difference that this time, you do not bid for a physical product, you bid for a word. A search term to be specific.
Every search term you want to be ranked on, you need to bid for. The one who decides which word will belong to whom, is Google. It decides based on qualities and the best price. In the end you will be listed within Google Shopping which is a choice bar shown on top of the search results page. Here your product will be listed together with the price and the link to your website. The disadvantage of this is that you always have to pay Google a margin on top of your bet. This is where CSS partners come into play.
CSS what?
CSS stands for Comparison Shopping Services and those compare products and prices from different retailers. What happens, if you as a user click on it, is that you will be forwarded to the website of the seller and there you can make your purchase. It all started with Google Shopping as the only available service and advertisement. However, this resulted in an unfair market as other sellers had no chance to push their own businesses. Therefore, changes in regulations were made and now multiple sellers and companies can publish their products within Google Shopping. Besides the regular CSS Google, different Google CSS partners were built. The difference here is that certain websites can be part of that partner programme and you as a retailer can buy a publication there. In the end you will not see the difference on the search results page.
The advantages of Google CS partners
But what is the difference or the big advantage of a Google CSS partner? It is the price! Because as mentioned before, when using Google as your CSS, you have to pay Google a margin, thus your price is a bit higher than your actual bid or you have to consider a higher bid because there is always a loss through paying the margin. This does not happen when you go to a CSS partner. Here you have the huge advantage that you do not rely on Google anymore. In the sense that you have more options to choose from to make your products visible for potential customers.
In addition to that, clients using CSS partner programmes do always have a second advantage which is actually pretty competitive and provides you an immense difference in the auction game of search terms within Google. This is because, as mentioned before, Google keeps a margin of the sum spended in the auction. In fact, they keep 20 percent of the sum you paid. As a result, the retailer who opts for the regular CSS loses an auction if there is another retailer that bids the same amount of money while using a CSS partner programme as those retailers do not have to pay the 20 percent.
A final advantage worth mentioning is that according to Bigshopper, which is such a CSS partner, your data will stay private and protected. A partner such as Bigshopper does not have access to your data or your accounts.
Save your money with a Google CSS partner!
In conclusion this means, therefore, that customers of Google Shopping have to plan and take into account more budget for the auctions, because they have to keep the 20 percent in mind. Using a Google CSS partner on the other hand, does save money and helps win auctions, thus ensuring better Google ranking. It also stands for certain conditions that have to be met. The use of a CSS partner has many benefits and should definitely be considered!
