Many have asked: what makes Amazon’s search algorithm so great?
Well, there’s a name for it: A10.
Amazon profits from its position as a search engine. At the same time, note that Amazon is first and foremost an online marketplace—a place to sell goods, and Amazon wants to sell a lot.
You should know that the most important aspect of A10 is to organize the results of a search to promote as much merchandise as possible. Because of this, the most relevant, high-performing products are the ones that come out on top. High-converting products are those that have a high click-through rate, ultimately leading to higher traffic and—hopefully—shoppers to purchase the product. It’s how eCommerce SEO works.
The Relationship Between Amazon Keywords & Product Relevance
Amazon keywords are the foundation of your ad. They’re so critical that without compelling Amazon product ad campaigns, your products are irrelevant. Let’s put it this way, you may have a great product on your hands, but if nobody ever gets to see the product then how great it becomes irrelevant.
Optimize all text content for keywords
Say you’re writing an article on holiday sales statistics. It would be a good idea to include the phrase “holiday sales statistics 2020” in your title, meta description, headings, and elsewhere. You’ll write this post in anticipation of when people go online to research holiday shopping statistics.
Optimizing an Amazon product listing works in much the same way. Below are a few tips on how to optimize and boost your sales.
Place more keywords on your product details page
The product details page allows you to outline all the best features and advantages of your product in concise bullet points. This is where you can place keywords that you can’t fit in the product title. You will also need to optimize your product details page because this information is what consumers search for on the search engine.
Amazon listing optimization can be beneficial for a variety of reasons. This is a great opportunity to move your potential buyer closer to the ‘Add to Cart’ option. Your exceptional product title has captured their attention, and now your informative descriptions ensure conversion.
Provide complete information on your product details page
Remember that a high conversion rate is important for product ranking on Amazon. If you forget all about your product details page your bounce rate will soar, and you will fall off search engine results.
Answer a few of these questions on your details page:
- Why does the consumer need your product now?
- Why shouldn’t they explore another shop?
- What makes your product unique?
The logic here isn’t that different from the logic behind crafting your product title—use keywords that make your product relevant to prospective customers’ queries.
Enroll in the Amazon Brand Protection Program
Setting up a business on an eCommerce platform comes with a host of problems, and the possibility of being hijacked is one such challenge. One of the first things that businesses check when they suspect a hijacking is if other pages are using their logo or product shots. If they are, then they know that they’ve been hijacked.
Needless to say, hijacking is detrimental to your business, especially if you’ve spent time and money in designing your logo, shooting photos, and cataloging goods.
You may address the hijackers and state your intent to sue them if they refuse to remove the listing/s as soon as possible. Otherwise, notify Amazon as soon as you can. One other thing you can do is to test-run and order from the offending seller and send a report to Amazon once the parcel arrives.
Protecting your business is your top priority, as hijacking affects your entire brand. Fraud is a serious issue for businesses, and you can avoid this by close monitoring and signing up for Amazon’s Brand Protection Program.
Create your content with conversion rates in mind
Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is all about maximizing your website and content to enhance conversion rates. A high conversion rate indicates that the website is attractive, well-designed, and configured to achieve its goal.
The conversion optimization process allows you to improve your lead numbers, increase income, obtain a higher value from your existing customers and management, and improve your growth.
Conversions can happen outside of Amazon too, for example, on your business’ website. Not only do you want to attract people to your content, you want people to stay, explore, and eventually convert them into customers. Through the optimization of your site, you have the ability to obtain more conversions.
Explore backend keywords
You’re probably familiar with the term “hidden keywords“. These refer to the unique sets of keywords that sellers can enter in the backend of their Amazon seller account (i.e., keywords that won’t be displayed in public).
Essentially, hidden keywords are your chance to provide Amazon with more details of your product that consumers won’t be able to see, just like how alt text for images allows you to give Google more information for quicker image indexation.
Let’s say you’re selling homemade bumper stickers for a politically involved person. Amazon customers search for keywords like “bumper stickers for liberals”. You’d ideally like to cash in on the search for other left-leaning car accessories, but you don’t have space and you don’t want to make your titles and descriptions too generic.
This is where backend keywords come into play. Remember that, due to space limitations, you can only attach 250 backend characters for each product. Avoid repeating the information in your title and bullet points, as it will waste space. You also mustn’t use commas or any other punctuation to separate your search terms.
With the hard limit placed on the number of characters in a search query, Amazon has indicated that it pays attention to backend keywords. The company does not want sellers to fill character fields with irrelevant information and competitors’ brand names. Aggregate the targeted keywords across your product catalog, and it will boost your search rankings significantly.
How to conduct keyword research on Amazon
To put it bluntly: maximizing the volume of search queries associated with product listings and making your inventory as visible as possible in search results is how keyword research can help you. To get there, you’ll need to find the appropriate keywords to optimize your listings with. Below is an overview of the keyword research process for Amazon and a guide to Amazon SEO.
Incorporate complementary products
As consumers frequently buy products together, complements are products that are often purchased with one another. For example, if your product is peanut butter, you know that the prospect for jelly, marshmallow, and bread is also out there. By tagging relevant features to your product, you get it noticed by people who aren’t directly looking for it and whose search behavior indicates that they may be interested.
Sometimes complementary products can be easily identifiable. However, in other instances, you’ll need additional research. Look at your competitors’ product pages to see which products are selling. This shows the different areas of complements that you can appeal to.
Type these keywords into Amazon’s search engine and check the suggestions. When you begin to enter keywords for a search query, Amazon shows you suggestions based on the population’s search patterns.
Amazon is a free keyword tool in its own right, and it is very useful to your keyword strategy. Do this step enough times and eventually, you’ll find yourself with a pretty solid keyword list.
Examine what’s being ranked on Google
If you have a separate website for your business, take advantage of these facts: consumers are more likely to search on Amazon than on Google. While 42% of online shoppers start on Amazon, 40% start on Google.
These statistics are clear on one thing: there are millions of consumers online. Many millions of consumers search directly on these two platforms to find products like yours. If you think of it this way, it sounds like a no-brainer to incorporate Google into your research strategy.
Use search engine ranking analytic tools to see if your website is ranking highly for targeted search terms. Don’t just focus your keyword research on your Amazon listings and seller account, but optimize the content outside of Amazon as well. Believe it or not, this is an effective strategy because it allows you to build awareness among consumers who are a little more hesitant about your brand.
Utilize a keyword research tool
This is perhaps the most obvious tip, but it would be foolish not to incorporate a keyword research tool into your strategy. The internet offers a wide variety of useful keyword search tools for free or for a small subscription fee, so choose one that suits your budget and your needs.
Google’s Keyword Planner is available to any Google Advertiser free of charge. When you open your account, the Keyword Planner will be offered as a tool. With this, searching for different keywords and seeing the most popular ones on the web becomes a simple process.
There are also many tools out there that focus exclusively on Amazon-specific keywords. We recommend Sonar, a competitive research tool. Sonar can help you find long-tail keywords, or search phrases that are the most useful to retailers.
Narrow down your audience
Many businesses have trouble filtering their audience. This is more evident in small businesses where logistics can be a nightmare. There’s nothing more off-putting than shopping for a product and realizing that it can’t be delivered to you.
If you’re one such business, large networks are not for you. To get a higher conversion rate, it’s best if you get local keyword search volumes instead of looking at national metrics.
For example, products such as contemporary art-deco furniture and keywords related to it will bring consumers interested in furniture to your store. However, if you’re shipping from North America and the customer is in Asia, turning that lead into a sale will be next to impossible. In this way, location-specific search engine optimized keywords can have a major influence on marketing strategies.
Picking more location and demographic-based keywords can also help you maintain your budget. Boosted mentions in this article that using digital ads are among the best ways to reduce ad spend. Remember that business decisions like this can depend on your area and your target market.
Another way to narrow down your audience is by being specific with your keywords. An example would be keywords like “oak wood day bed” versus “wood bed”. Obviously, you will attract less traffic with a long-tailed keyword than with the more common keywords. But the traffic you attract will be dedicated, devoted, and more willing to purchase your product or service. Always keep in mind that your end goal is to get the sale, everything else—like more views—is just a means to an end.
Implement keyword strategies
In marketing, targeting optimization is a continuous process and it takes a lot of time to fine-tune your campaigns. To help you out, Amazon has three keyword options—exact match, phrase match, and broad match.
To give you an example, let’s assume the keywords you’ll be using are “running shoes”:
- Exact: your ad will be displayed only for the exact search term “running shoes”. Matching is not sensitive to capitalization.
- Phrase: your ad will be displayed for the keywords “running shoes” along with words before or after it, such as for the search terms “running shoes for men” and “size nine running shoes”.
- Broad: the order of the keywords in the search is not significant, and you can include synonyms, abbreviations, plural forms, etc. Your ad will be displayed for a term like “mens sneakers for jogging”.
It is a good rule to shift your high-performing keywords to exact matches so that you get the best targeting with the lowest wasted ad spend. With exact match targeting, your product will not be advertised in search results from irrelevant terms. Do keep in mind that the broad match option is used to increase visibility and impressions but will not maximize returns, and this can be used to increase your brand’s audience.
Each of these options have a place in your strategy, so spend time exploring them to pick which ones are right for you, your brand, and your keywords.
Takeaway
Utilizing Amazon properly allows you to find suitable keywords and increase targeting, but you should also look elsewhere to find relevant key terms to drive your campaign’s performance. By implementing the right keyword research strategy and using the right keyword tools, you will give your products the best chance of being discovered online.
Don’t neglect the rest of your content as well. Remember that no matter how powerful Amazon’s A10 is, at the end of the day it’s real people that are the driving force behind a brand’s popularity and sales. More than just visibility through fully optimized product titles and product pages, with fully optimized content you’ll turn the boost in visibility into clicks and conversions too.
Author’s Bio
Jayce is the managing director of Seller Interactive, an Amazon marketing agency that offers Amazon SEO services to brands built on Amazon. With content marketing skills that have taken him to top brands such as GoDaddy and Toyota, he’s cemented his knowledge and expertise in helping brands reach new heights.
Rate This Post! [Total: 1 Average: 5]
