Leveraging Google Merchant Centre Free Listings For Exponential Organic Growth By 15x Increase in Organic Clicks
The Client
Our client is one of India’s leading fashion and lifestyle ecommerce platforms, offering an extensive range of apparel, footwear, accessories, and lifestyle products. As a dominant player in the Indian online fashion retail market, the platform serves millions of customers across the country with a product catalog featuring thousands of brands and millions of SKUs across various fashion and lifestyle categories.
Operating in the highly competitive fashion ecommerce space, the brand constantly seeks innovative ways to increase product visibility, drive traffic, and maintain its market leadership position without proportionally increasing advertising costs.
The Objective
The fashion ecommerce platform partnered with Infidigit to achieve the following objectives:
- Dramatically increase organic product visibility across Google search without additional advertising spend
- Enhance product discovery for millions of SKUs across diverse fashion categories
- Reduce dependency on paid search advertising to improve overall marketing ROI and customer acquisition costs
- Capture greater share of organic fashion search traffic in an intensely competitive market
- Optimize for mobile-first shopping behavior, given that the majority of Indian ecommerce traffic originates from mobile devices
- Scale organic reach beyond what traditional SEO strategies could deliver for such an extensive product range
The Challenge
Despite being a market leader, the fashion ecommerce platform faced several critical challenges in maintaining and growing its organic search visibility:
1. Product Discovery Limitations
With millions of products in the catalog, ensuring adequate visibility for inventory across all categories was increasingly difficult through traditional SEO alone. The sheer scale of the product range made it challenging to give each product adequate organic exposure.
2. Intense Market Competition
The fashion ecommerce space in India had become intensely competitive, with both established players and new entrants vying for the same customer base and search visibility. Standing out in search results required innovative approaches beyond conventional SEO tactics.
3. Rising Paid Advertising Costs
Heavy reliance on paid search advertising was becoming increasingly expensive, putting significant pressure on customer acquisition costs and overall profitability. The platform needed a more cost-effective solution for product visibility.
4. Evolving Google SERP Layouts
Changes to search engine results page layouts meant traditional organic listing positions were receiving less visibility, particularly for product searches. The platform’s organic presence was being diluted by new SERP features and formats.
5. Mobile-First Shopping Behavior
With the majority of Indian ecommerce traffic coming from mobile devices, optimizing specifically for mobile search visibility became critical. Traditional desktop-focused strategies were no longer sufficient.
6. Limited Organic Reach at Scale
Traditional organic search strategies were not delivering the scale of visibility needed to effectively showcase the platform’s extensive product range across thousands of brands and categories.
The Solution
Infidigit identified Google Merchant Centre’s free listings feature as a strategic opportunity to expand organic product visibility without increasing advertising spend.
Google Merchant Centre is a tool that allows retailers to upload their product data to Google and make it available across various Google services. When Google expanded its free listings program in 2020, it created an unprecedented opportunity for merchants to showcase their products in the Shopping tab and other placements without paying for ads.
Strategic Approach
Infidigit developed and executed a comprehensive implementation strategy:
1. Comprehensive Product Feed Optimization
- Ensured all product data was accurately structured, complete, and optimized according to Google’s specifications
- Created feeds containing detailed information for millions of SKUs including high-quality images, accurate titles, detailed descriptions, pricing, and real-time availability
- Implemented automated feed updates to maintain data freshness and accuracy
- Optimized product attributes specifically for apparel categories including size, color, material, brand, and style information
2. Strategic Category Focus on Apparel
- Prioritized key apparel categories where the platform had strong inventory depth and competitive pricing
- Focused initial efforts on high-performing categories to maximize impact
- Expanded gradually to additional categories based on performance data
- Tailored product information to match common search queries in each category
3. Technical Integration Excellence
- Integrated the platform’s inventory management system with Google Merchant Centre for real-time product availability updates
- Established automated processes for adding new products and removing discontinued items from the feed
- Implemented structured data markup on product pages to enhance Google’s understanding of product information
- Ensured seamless data flow between backend systems and Google’s platform
4. Rigorous Quality Assurance
- Established comprehensive quality control processes to ensure feed compliance with Google’s requirements
- Monitored for and resolved any feed errors or disapprovals promptly
- Maintained accurate pricing and availability data to provide the best user experience
- Conducted regular audits to maintain listing quality and eligibility
5. Strategic Timing & SERP Adaptation
- Implemented the solution to coincide with and capitalize on Google’s SERP UX/UI changes that increased visibility for shopping results
- Monitored Google’s evolving SERP layouts and adjusted strategy accordingly
- Optimized product data to take maximum advantage of new visual shopping features
- Ensured mobile optimization given the prominence of shopping results on mobile devices
The Result
The implementation of Google Merchant Centre free listings delivered exceptional and measurable results for the fashion ecommerce platform:
Primary Achievement
1,379.78% increase in organic clicks an extraordinary 15X growth in organic traffic through strategic implementation of free listings
15x
Improvement in Organic Traffic
Enhanced Product Visibility
- Products appeared prominently in Google Shopping tab results across key fashion categories
- Significant increase in visibility within image search results for fashion queries
- Featured placements in mobile search results, particularly important given the platform’s mobile-heavy customer base
- Products appeared for a substantially wider range of relevant search queries
Category Performance Transformation
- Key apparel categories experienced dramatic visibility improvements
- Enhanced presence in highly competitive fashion search terms
- Broader reach across diverse product subcategories and attributes
Cost Efficiency & ROI Improvement
- Achieved massive traffic growth without proportional increases in advertising spend
- Substantially reduced dependency on paid search for product discovery
- Dramatically improved overall marketing ROI and customer acquisition costs
- Created sustainable, cost-effective organic acquisition channel
Competitive Market Advantage
- Gained significant visibility advantage over competitors slower to adopt free listings
- Captured increased share of organic fashion search traffic in the Indian market
- Strengthened market position across key product categories
- Established early-mover advantage in leveraging Google’s expanded free listings program
Enhanced User Experience
- Customers could discover products more easily through Google search
- Rich product information in search results improved click-through quality and relevance
- Seamless experience from Google search discovery to product pages
- Better product matching to user search intent
60+
Client Testimonial
200+
Global Brands
70+
Awards & Recognition
130+
Success Stories
Beauty & Fitness
Health
Our Solutions
200+ brands scaled revenue using our data-backed playbook.
Let’s Begin with Your Details
- Your data is properly secured encrypted by SSL.
- We hate spam too, your inbox is safe with us.
