Amazon SEO Strategy: Keyword Research and Other Tips

Intro

Just like any other platform Amazon has its own internal ecosystem, and if you understand that ecosystem you have a better chance of standing out and reaching more customers. Of course, the best foundation is to find a product that’s high demand low competition and find a quality sourcing agent to find those products, however not every seller is that lucky to sell in such a niche.

What every seller can do is understand how the Amazon A9 algorithm works. Then, make adjustments to their listings that can make them stand out, rank well, and get as much “real estate” as possible. Unfortunately, you get limited space on Amazon, as there are only so many characters you can use to optimize your listing. It’s all about using that space as efficiently as possible.

How Do Keywords Work on Amazon?

Before we get into getting the right keywords, we need to discuss a few different terms. The first term is a** search term**. A search term is anything a customer types into the search bar on Amazon. It’s from those search terms that we gather keywords. In other words; we want to find search terms we find relevant and extract keywords from them.

There is also a term called indexing. You’ve heard the old expression “All roads lead to Rome”? Indexing is basically an indicator of how many “roads” lead to your listing. The idea behind it is to include relevant and short-tailed keywords in your listing copy in order to be included in as many searches as possible.

Short-tailed keywords are simply single words or short phrases with high search volume that might be included in a greater number of longer phrases that will send the customer to a page where your listing is one of the results. The idea is to find relevant searches that contain keywords to describe our product and find ways of including those in our listing. So that we may be among the search results.

Another relevant factor is **organic ranking. **Since we are trying to be one of the search results on a given page, we would also like to be as high up in the results as we can be. Being indexed only qualifies you as one of the search results.

Getting a higher rank is something you can achieve using Pay per Click (PPC) advertising, which is a crucial activity that heavily relies on SEO.

How to Get the Right Keywords?

In order to do a good job of acquiring keywords, we should have an idea of what people are searching for that is related to the products we are selling. That’s easier said than done. You can always just simply put in the words that make some common sense and it should get you some results, however, that approach is not going to cut it if you want to get the best results you can possibly get.

In order to do a proper job, you will need some help in the form of tools that actually aggregate search term data. For example, the 2 tools from AMZScout we are going to use for the 2 approaches:

Getting the longer-tailed keywords

This is a very simple approach. Let's say that we are selling something simple like weighted blankets. Using a tool like the AMZScout keyword search, you can simply put that short-tailed keyword, and see what sort of searches come up that contain the phrase:

Above we can see the most common searches that contain the term “weighted blanket” align with their monthly search volumes. You can then proceed to pick out another term from the list if it closely describes your product and do another search.

Getting your competitors’ keywords

Since we went over the explanation of indexing, it should be clear that any active product that is selling cannot be doing so without some decent indexing. You can use a software tool to select some prominent competitors in your niche and see what keywords they are indexed under.

Here we can see an example of one of the leading products in the weighted blanket niche using the AMZScout reverse ASIN lookup tool:

This is a great practice you can do for multiple competitors. It’s also a good habit to get into in order to see if there are new keywords to include in your listing.

Optimizing Your Listing

Once you have a list of your relevant keywords it’s time to actually include them in your listing. The listing is segmented into several sections, each section has a higher relevance in terms of how much importance it has in accordance with the algorithm.

This is where the balancing between the “for the sake of the customer” and “for the sake of the algorithm” comes into play.

The listing images - This has 0 bearing on your SEO. It is all about your customers. There are some lax rules and guidelines when it comes to images, however, your sole focus should be on making the best presentation possible for your customers. Odds are they might not read anything.

The product title - Your title is the most important section for SEO, so you should do your best to include your most relevant and high-volume keywords in the title. Try and make sure that your title makes sense, but don’t be too concerned about it. In almost all categories the limit is 250 characters. Make sure you take full advantage of all of them.

The bullet points - You get 5 bullet points, each one with 500 characters worth of space. This is the part of your listing where the balancing act is the most relevant. Each one needs to make sense, relay important information, and use the space to include relevant keywords. A good way of achieving this is to start each bullet point with a point that stands out, either by using capital letters or emojis while filling out the rest with text describing the point. Your bullet points are where you put in the keywords.

Here’s a good example from the weighted blanket listing:

**Product description **- This part of the listing is 2000 characters long, and has very little bearing on your SEO. You can use the description to offer additional information to your customers and put in a few keywords. However, there is a trick: you should be aware that your product is very much able to show up as a Google search result. This is why you should apply some Standard Google SEO skills in order to boost your chances. After all, the product description is much more visible on the mobile version of Amazon.

The backend - The backend is invisible to the customer and is all about the algorithm. You get 250 characters with spaces to fill it out. You should use this space for keywords that would otherwise not make sense in the visible section of the listing. Such as foreign translations of your main keywords, most common misspelling, etc.

Some Helpful Tricks and Tips

Don’t repeat keywords unnecessarily - You might have to repeat the same words throughout the listing for the sake of grammar and syntax, however, there is no benefit to having any keyword show up multiple times in a listing.

Use your brand name in the title - Keep in mind that search terms are not static and they change over time. You might find people searching for your brand specifically after a while. Make that possible by catching those keywords and using them in your PPC.

**Use your SEO keywords in your Pay per Click **- Including a keyword gets you indexed, and getting more sales through that particular search increases your organic ranking. Use the Amazon PPC tool to sell on your most relevant keywords in order to rank higher and get more organic sales as time goes on.

Evaluate your listing and PPC regularly - Make a habit of examining your listing. Look into your competitors and adjust your PPC in order to identify new opportunities.

Summary

SEO on Amazon is all about getting the right information and finding the right balance between catering to the algorithm while at the same time creating an attractive offer for potential customers. It’s important to remember the compounding effects of indexing and organic ranking over time. SEO as well as PPC is not something you do once and it works perpetually, it’s something you make small adjustments to continually.