10 min read
What a disappointment it is to go through all that trouble of creating your dream e-commerce website only to find out that people are not visiting it. Not to mention buying from it.
Especially if you are just getting started.
Your only options are cold calling, e-mail campaigns, social media, SEO, and Ads.
And the best place to advertise, with around 90% of market share, remains Google Ads.
In the hyper‑competitive world of online retail, simply having great products isn’t enough. Online visibility is everything.
You could win the lotto and go viral for some reason, but the chances of that are zero to none.
As the backbone of pay‑per‑click advertising is Google’s Ads platform.
There is no better way than with Google to put your e‑commerce store in front of potential customers at the exact moment they’re searching for what you sell.
The only sure fire way to get searchers to your website is with a Google Ads campaign, that turns searchers into customers.
In this post, we’ll explore how e‑commerce websites can make use of Google Ads to drive targeted traffic and maximize return on ad spend (ROAS), without blowing up your wallet.
We’ll look at the essentials, setting up shopping campaigns, plans, countries, keywords and bids.
After reading this post, you should have a much better understanding of how Google Ads has to be set up in order for you to dominate in the e-Commerce battlefield.
For our example, we will use a German-based gym supplement e-commerce store.
Let’s say they have 10 products, from products A to J, one of which is Gold Whey Isolate (SKU001). They also have 3 product categories, categories K, L and M.
We want to advertise that SKU in different European countries, for our example, Romania and Ireland. These are broadly speaking our steps.
Campaigns (one per country)
Gym Supplements – RO
Location: Romania | Language: Romanian
Bidding: Manual CPC for the first 7–10 days to collect data
Gym Supplements – IE
Location: Ireland | Language: English
Bidding: Manual CPC for the first 7–10 days
Ad Group, one per SKU
Name: Gold Whey Isolate
Exact-match transactional keywords only, in the campaign’s language:
Romania
[cumpără Gold Whey Isolate]
[preț Gold Whey Isolate]
[comandă Gold Whey Isolate online]
Ireland
[buy Gold Whey Isolate]
[Gold Whey Isolate price]
[order Gold Whey Isolate online]
Negative Keywords (ad-group level)
Block all non-transactional intents in each market:
[review]
[beneficii]/[benefits]
[cum funcționează]/[how it works]
[rețetă]/[recipe]
[sample]
Ads
Responsive Search Ads whose headlines and descriptions match your exact keywords and focus purely on the transaction, e.g.:
“Cumpără Gold Whey Isolate – Livrare Rapidă”
“Buy Gold Whey Isolate – Free EU Shipping”
Typical setup sequence:
Create the Search campaign (one per country)
Create the Ad group (one per SKU)
Add your exact-match, bottom-of-funnel keywords
Add negative keywords to block non-transactional/middle-of-funnel queries
Set bids according to your ROAS targets
Create & launch your Responsive Search Ads
SEO Spy will use Google and Bing search to find out who your competitors are.
With your target keywords noted down, he will search for results in both search engines and note which websites appear at the top of the results.
Rankings are fluid, so only examining the top 3 is shortsighted; the top 20 is a better idea.
These high-ranking sites typically successfully reach your intended audience and represent your main competitors in the SEO landscape, but it could also be because your competitors have strong backlinks.
Next, he analyzes these top-ranking pages to identify the elements that help them outperform you. He examines their content quality, site structure, and use of keywords and backlinks.
If he decides that the page is a worthy advisory, he puts it on his list.
There are a number of free and paid SEO Spying tools we incorporate.
The number one tool, that is free, Google search and Bing search.
Google Search and Bing Search remain fundamental, free methods for manually examining competitor rankings. They offer you the current state of affairs. Search for your keyword and see who comes up in front of you.
SEMRUSH offers a comprehensive, multi-tool suite covering nearly all aspects of online visibility. Inside their platform, you can manually supply competitors, and the platform will compare your keywords’ rankings and backlinks to them.
Ubersuggest has the capability to look at keywords and rankings of your competitors, and is cost-effective.
Ahrefs excels in deep and fast backlink analysis and organic keyword research.
SpyFu is ideal for analyzing your competitors’ paid and organic keyword strategies.
A “gap” refers to something, such as a topic, keywords, backlinks, content, or some technical SEO practices, that your competitors have capitalized on, but your website has not.
Finding gaps is the search for understanding what they have. What exactly contributes to your competitors outranking you for search queries?
Once you see which competitors rank higher and note where they do better, it’s time to use skyscraping.
Skyscraping means finding out what others do better than you and then creating better content, stronger backlinks, and improved technical SEO for your website.
By filling these gaps, and doing better on all fronts, you can outrank them.
Ranking your website in a competitive industry is about understanding where your competitors have an edge over you, and closing those gaps.
By using SEO Spy tactics, we identify the keywords, content strategies, backlinks, and technical SEO elements that we need to incorporate and improve on.
Once we documented these gaps, the next step is skyscraping. We take what your competitors do well and creating even better content, try to get stronger backlinks, and fine-tuning your technical SEO setup.
This systematic approach not only fills the gaps but also gives you the upper hand, steadily pushing your website toward the top of search engine rankings.
Around 3 hours.
We combine human ideas with AI.
But to be clear, we do not just throw something at AI and let the AI write it.
The SEO Sergeant focusses on keywords, and pays very little attention to what competitors are doing. He ensures that your message gets out.
SEO Spy is more concerned with what your competitors are doing.
This post was written by Zahid Hassan on 5 April 2025.
This page was last updated on 7 April 2025 by Christiaan Gouws.
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