Amazon keywords are relevant to the Amazon search terms that the user types in Amazon’s search bar to look for a particular product or category.
A keyword connects a customer to a related product they’re looking for. Thus, keywords and Amazon product listing optimization is vital.
If you want to boost your e-commerce conversions, the right types of keywords and keyword research strategy can do wonders in increasing your sales and conversion. This can bring in loyal customers to your product listing.
Now, let’s look at the seven types of keywords for keyword research to help you create the amazon keyword research strategy and boost your sales on the platform:
1. Niche Keywords
Niche keywords are one of the types of keywords that focus on a specific area of industry. Most of them are long-tailed keywords that have three or more words. An example would be “sustainable jacket.” It covers a clear and specific topic appealing to a specialized part of a given market. In this case, it’s sustainable clothing.
Niche keywords usually have a lower search volume since they’re more specific, bringing in more site traffic.
2. Brand Comparison Keywords
This type of keyword is used when users are serious about making a conversion but still weighing down options. Users that type commercial keywords on search are likely a step ahead of but not quite in the conversion phase, although close.
For example, keywords like “Clearasil vs. Neutrogena facial cleanser” indicate the users are serious about buying but still exploring options for the best choice. To know more, check out this ultimate guide to optimizing listings using Amazon Keywords.
3. Product-Specific Keywords
These keywords relate to the specific offerings of your brand. These are usually phrases or terms referring to the products and services of your company. That’s why you need to optimize your listings for particular keywords.
You need to identify keywords for your services and products to allow your existing and prospective clients to find your products through search. For instance, you’ll likely get results from a reputable brand if you search for a “copier.” Whatever phrase that’s typed, you’ll come up with results that are offering these products and services in a particular industry.
4. Long-tail Keywords
Sometimes, users use specific phrases when searching for a specific product or service.
These keywords are made up of several words and are longer than the average keyword. These are known as long-tail keywords. A great example of a long tail keyword would be, “best running shoes for injured knees.”
The graph below shows the benefit to using long-tail keywords. As the long-tail keyword gets longer two positive trends occur: lower competition and higher conversion rate.
5. Problem-solving Keywords
People who use these keywords want answers, not to be sold to. To target this particular audience, you must include who/what/when/where/why/how, and general phases.
Let’s say you’re selling sporting goods. Examples of keywords might include “what are the current trends in the sporting goods industry?”
6. Transactional keywords
These are often referred to as “do” keywords or the keywords buyers use when they have already decided they want to buy a specific product or service. Usually, buyers are at the conversation stage of the purchasing process.
For instance, they might type, “buy hiking shoes online,” once they’re ready to buy.
7. Seasonal Keywords
Seasonal keywords are keywords relating to seasons of the year. These keywords will usually have high traffic during certain times of the year, like people looking for “presents,” or “Christmas presents,” during Christmas.
If you have information that shows your customers look up these products during a specific time of the year, then you need to put that information into good use.
Over to You
So there you have it. By identifying the different types of keywords, we hope you can create a high-powered listing to win sales and profits in a highly competitive Amazon market. Good luck!
Using Amazon analytics is a key unlock to ensuring your business performs and grows as much as possible. But with the influx of information available, it can be challenging to focus on the metrics that truly matter.
In this guide to Amazon analytics, we’ll go through the details of the most critical insights for your business:
Conversion Rate
Click-through Rate
Retention Rate (Repeat Sales)
Market Basket Analysis
Search Queries
Average Prices
What is Amazon Analytics?
Before we dive deeper into specific metrics, let’s do a quick overview of Amazon Analytics, what these metrics are, and who has access to them.
Amazon Analytics is available for sellers in the Amazon Brand Registry and not for third-party sellers—so the reports aren’t accessible to just anybody. If you aren’t part of the registry yet, know that it can take some time for you to get registered, but you will gain access to the following benefits (among others):
You can use Amazon Seller Data analytics to improve business performance by using customer and product-related data to enhance your strategies. It will allow you to position your products better and add an edge to your store compared to generic sellers who might not have the information you gain from Amazon Analytics.
Conversion Rate
Let’s say, for example, that you’re an Amazon seller, and one of your most popular products typically gets 1000 views per day and about 50 or 60 sales in the same time frame. This puts your conversion rate at around 5-6%, which actually isn’t that bad!
Conversion rate is essentially your percentage of conversion or how many converts you have compared to your number of visitors. This metric is arguably one of the most important because it tells you how well you’re actually selling your products beyond exposure alone.
A good conversion rate is vital because you need viewers to actually buy your products in order for you to make a profit. Moreover, the benefits of a good conversion rate have plenty of downstream impacts on your business because you are likely to get the following:
More exposure
More reviews
More repeat customers
Note, however, that conversion rate isn’t everything. You could have insanely high conversion rates yet still fail your bottom line because you were not able to manage your expenses versus your sales.
The key here is balance.
Make sure you already have a sustainable model first where you can successfully source and sell on a profit. If you keep your expenses too high, then you’d also have to increase your sales to match in order to break even—good conversion rate or otherwise.
And if your conversion rate is less than desirable, it’s time to assess and ask yourself the following questions:
Are you selling an inferior product?
Are you reaching the wrong target market?
Are the reviews deterring potential customers from making a purchase?
Are you not providing sufficient product information?
Are you often not in stock?
The goal of these questions is to assess where you’re going wrong. Because at the point of viewing, the issue is no longer exposure—the customer is already seeing your product. The problem now becomes solely about how you sell and, potentially, the quality of your work.
Getting to the root of the issue is essential if you want to grow and progress your business. Without diagnosing the reasons for your low conversion, you’ll be stuck repeating the same patterns over and over, which is the last thing you want as a business.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Your click-through rate is the number of clicks versus the number of impressions. This number indicates how many people actually click on your campaigns—ideally, around 2-3% of impressions.
This Amazon metric is another vital piece of the puzzle because it allows you to assess the efficacy of your campaigns. You will probably benefit most from this when used alongside A/B testing. For example:
Millennials vs. Gen Z as a target market
Advertising in California vs. Florida
A funny catchphrase vs. a more serious heading
A video vs. a GIF
When you compare two differently produced ads to one another, it will be easier to determine which methods will earn you a higher CTR.
But remember, with A/B testing, you need to be careful not to change, ideally, more than one thing at once. If you release wildly different ads, the sources of the disparity in CTRs may become imperceptible.
Retention Rate (Repeat Customers)
With Amazon Analytics tools, you will also be able to assess how many of your customers eventually go on to become repeat customers.
While it might not seem that relevant initially, your retention rate lends helpful information as to what makes your brand stick. It could boil down to any of the following:
Good quality
Reasonable price
Accommodating customer service
Excellent product-market fit
Brand authenticity
Paying attention to your retention rate is crucial because you’ll easily be able to address any issues that come up when your retention rate drops. Did you recently change suppliers? Have you let customer service slip a little bit? Has your product not been reaching the right market?
The questions are endless—and the answers are incredibly valuable.
Nevertheless, there is still no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to your retention rate. And the data might not come as fast as you need to be a dynamic and responsive seller.
For example, a seller specializing in consumer goods may have a much higher short-term retention rate than sellers who sell gadgets simply because of how different sales typically look in these different segments. If you’re selling cheaper, high-volume items like snacks, you’re more likely to have a higher retention rate.
Search Query Dashboard
Courtesy of Ecomcrew.com
The search query dashboard is a relatively new Brand Analytics feature that lets you take an in-depth look at your query numbers.
In this dashboard, you gain access to a lot of valuable data, such as:
Search Volume
Rank
Conversions
Clicks
Impressions
Cart Adds
Total Searches
All in the context of search queries. And with this new information, sellers can now see compiled data on paid and organic search data for each search term—allowing for better, more improved marketing strategies.
This all boils down to where your customers hear about your products—ads or organic traffic. When you can pinpoint where your customers are coming from, then you will be able to tailor your marketing strategies to serve specific areas better.
For instance, if most of your customers come from ads, it might benefit you more to improve your SEO strategies rather than increase ad spending.
Information from the dashboard can also help spot trends early and identify sales opportunities within a given time frame. Because the dashboard shows which search queries are ranking, it will be easier to assess the audience’s needs.
Market Basket Analysis
Courtesy of Analyticsvidhya.com
Your market basket analysis is one of the most exciting things to gain from Amazon product analytics.
The market basket is the term used to refer to a set or bundle of products that are often bought together at the same time, such as:
Toothbrush and toothpaste
Coffee beans and syrups
Metal straws and insulated cups
And the list goes on. The bundle could even be comprised of products that do not conventionally go together, which is why market basket analysis is so valuable.
If your customers are purchasing unexpected products together, you never would have been able to predict that—missing out on the potential sales made from selling in bundles.
In other words, a market basket analysis allows you to understand your customers needs better. Why are they buying this product and that product together? What needs do these products fill?
The answers to those questions may be inferred from the results of your market basket analysis.
And although at first, it may seem like the benefits stop at creating bundles of products, this simply isn’t the case. As a seller and business owner, you will benefit immensely from understanding your customer, which you can do by analyzing their needs.
Average Selling Price and Average Order Value
With Amazon Analytics, you can also determine your Average Selling Price (ASP) and Average Order Value (AOV). While different, these two are helpful metrics to boost your bottom line.
Let’s start with your Average Selling Price. Your ASP is the average amount you make per item that you sell. Keep in mind that average data can be significantly skewed by outliers, so if you have 20 items below $20 but have one thing at $500, know that that will substantially impact your ASP.
Your ASP is a valuable piece of information because it tells you how many times people need to purchase from your store for you to reach a sales threshold. A higher ASP might benefit your business because then fewer people would have to buy your product for you to turn a profit.
Nevertheless, a higher ASP may not always be a good thing, especially if you’re dealing in an industry with low-priced goods.
Similarly, your Average Order Value is the average amount each buyer spends per order. This is a pretty similar metric to ASP, only that you’re using the number of buyers as opposed to products as your baseline.
Using ASP and AOV, you can better determine how many products you need to sell and how many buyers you need to convert to achieve your goals. These numbers are most useful for financial analysis like:
Break-even analysis
Gross Profit
Gross Margin
Target Revenue
Budgeting
As an Amazon Seller, it can be easy to get caught up in marketing data, but using information from Analytics to assist your financial process is equally important. With the correct data, you can successfully create projections and support the long-term goals of your business.
Why Should You Pay Attention To These Metrics?
At the end of the day, not all data points are made equal. Some pieces of information are more valuable than others, especially considering the context of your industry and the types of products you sell.
For example, retention rate might be more useful in the short-term for a seller of fast-moving goods while less critical (but not entirely irrelevant) for a seller of appliances.
Regardless, all those metrics mentioned above are vital to the success of your Amazon store because they focus on the most important thing: data.
If there’s one thing you’re sure about when running a business, it’s that the data will not lie to you. It doesn’t matter how much or how little effort went into a marketing campaign. If the customers don’t like it, the data will show the truth.
Numbers like your retention rate and CTR are good points of analysis for your business because they allow you to view your brand factually. As an owner, you may experience plenty of bias concerning your products, and data is a fantastic way to bypass this scenario.
Tips for Analyzing Amazon Analytics
Numbers, even valuable ones, are just a bunch of gibberish if you don’t know what they mean. And the same is true for Amazon product analytics.
Here, the true value lies in storytelling: how well can you capture the customer’s desires behind just a handful of numbers? How do you know what happened behind the scenes when all you have for proof are these random digits?
Understandably, knowing the story behind your data is challenging; at the very least—here’s how you can make it easier.
A/B Testing
We mentioned this in passing earlier, but A/B testing is key if you want to obtain valuable data. If you don’t A/B test where applicable, you’ll be stuck guessing what factors impact your insights.
A/B testing is a pretty simple concept. You test drive two or more variations of the same campaign in an effort to ascertain which one of them is the best. Reviewing results after testing the variations will allow you to uncover the information you would have otherwise not gotten without testing variations.
Metrics are Interconnected
Most of the metrics we mentioned above are connected to each other in some way. Analyzing each metric in the context of another metric provides a clearer picture of what’s happening with your Amazon products.
For instance, let’s say that you, an Amazon seller, are worried about your decreasing average sales price and increasing AOV after a major shop revamp where you added more low-value items. If you are going to look at your ASP alone, alarm bells will probably start ringing in your head. And if you’re looking at AOV alone, you’d probably be relieved.
But when you look at both of them together and assess the facts of the situation, it’s pretty clear what happened. You added more low-cost items to your portfolio, which decreased your ASP but increased your AOV because customers were more likely to buy low-cost items even though their total would increase.
Pay Attention to Time
Time is an invaluable factor in the success of your analysis because not all periods are the same. There might be times during the year when your shop naturally has more sales (e.g., holidays), while you may not have as many at other times.
If you consider time in your assessments, you are more likely to catch variations due to seasonality and the cyclic nature of product interest.
Plus, you’ll then be able to tell which periods are better to run campaigns in and which months of the year you need the most stock.
Conclusion: Amazon Analytics
Amazon now provides sellers with so much information through Amazon Analytics, and capitalizing on the most important ones can do plenty of good for your business.
While maneuvering the many different metrics may be initially challenging, it gets easier with practice and constant technique readjustment.
For even more Amazon data and seller solutions, Viral Launch is here! The Viral Launch software suite for Amazon sellers offers insights into product ideas, keywords, competitors, and even Amazon PPC automation. Soar past your competition with accurate, real-time and historical data.
Congratulations! You’ve developed a product and finally got it set up with an Amazon listing! All that hard work is now ready to pay off… but HOLD ON! Why isn’t your product showing up as one of the top items when you search for it on Amazon? If nobody sees your product, how are you going to make a profit? You’ve got to get seen! Fortunately, there are several simple strategies to put in place to greatly increase the visibility of your Amazon listing! Let’s get started:
Create Those Keywords!
You may have heard of keywords before, but if not, please listen up! Because they are a fairly simple way of amping up your listing’s notoriety as long as you know which ones to use. Let’s begin with the actual definition:
Keywords are the words and phrases people look for when searching for something online.
It is very important to compile a list of keywords relating to your Amazon listing. From there, you can enter these words into the backend of your listing’s search engine optimization (SEO) bar. BUT FIRST, how the heck do you discover which keywords are YOUR keywords? Here are some helpful tips:
In the Amazon search bar, type in a range of words to see what the drop-down suggestions are. Compile a list of whatever words are relevant to listings like yours.
Check out any competitor results to see what is already out there and then compare what you learn.
Utilize long-tail and short-tail keywords while making your list. Long-tail keywords are rather specific and usually have a low search volume. They may have a higher conversion rate because the customer typically knows exactly what they are looking for. Short-tail keywords represent broader searches that typically have high search volume and may have lower conversion because the customer is browsing for different options.
Do you need help finding the right keywords? Check out our Keyword Research tool to help get your listing higher on Amazon.
A Great Title!
GRAB YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMER’S ATTENTION with a catchy title. The product title (product name) is one of the primary fields used by Amazon and search engines to measure the relevance of a detail page as part of a customer search. To increase the chances of someone clicking on your title, try incorporating the following:
Your title should consist of only the minimal amount of information needed to identify the product.
Keep the length of your title somewhere between 60 and 80 characters for optimal efficiency. Longer titles usually are tougher to read than shorter ones. It’s also a good idea to check the titles of similar products that land at the top of an Amazon search page.
Make sure the title matches what is on your product’s physical packaging.
NEVER use all caps in your title. Rather, just capitalize the first letter of each word except for prepositions (in, on, over, with), conjunctions (and, or, for), or articles (the, a, an).
If your title contains numbers, list them as numerals (1,2,3) instead of spelling them out (one, two, three).
Lastly, your title can include proper punctuation, like hyphens (-), forward slashes (/), commas (,), ampersands (&), and periods (.). You can also use abbreviated measurements like “cm”, “oz”, “in”, and “kg”.
Nail That Description!
Be sure and deliver a detailed explanation of your product’s usage, features, and benefits in the bullets and description sections. Also, add any specific product information that may not be explained anywhere else in the listing. Here are some helpful particulars on precisely what to put in your product description:
Include any brand names.
Add in all sizes when applicable.
Add what type of material the product is made of, like polyester for a shirt.
Include important details like colors, packaging, and quantity.
For an even more comprehensive list of product description details, check out Amazon Seller Central for every guideline.
High-Quality Images!
If you want to increase your product’s visibility, then you’d best make sure its images are of the highest quality. Make certain your product looks great and has all of its features showcased front and center. This is going to help make your product stand out from a crowd of competitors, which will help boost your overall Amazon visibility.
To get high-quality images of your product you can either hire a professional photographer or utilize a wide range of online tools to create images yourself.
The Price is Right!
The price of your product can greatly influence its sales growth and conversion rates, which leads to better visibility. By researching your competitors, you can understand how to give your product a competitive price and make compelling price point adjustments along the way.
You can adjust your product’s pricing automatically through Amazon’s Automated Pricing page, without having to revisit the SKU every time you want to make a change. There are also other ways you can optimize your price point such as:
Take shipping costs into consideration. Offering free shipping is a great way to increase your sales. Be sure to clearly spell out your shipping policy and utilize Amazon’s Info & Policies page to adjust shipping settings.
Create a Competitive Buy rule or a Competitive Lower Price rule through Amazon’s Compare Prices page. This will allow you to automatically match your product’s competitive price which will increase your chance of being featured in the Buy Box.
Run A/B testing with different price points to see if it makes a difference in your sales.
Keep track of your product’s Brand Dashboard ranking and manage your product reviews. Positive reviews lead to a better search ranking, so be sure to follow the best practices for maintaining positive feedback/ratings.
In Closing
Congratulations again! In addition to having a soon to be bestselling Amazon product listing, you now have some helpful tips for getting it seen by the widest customer audience possible. Take some time to research the above suggestions and see what works best for your particular product. Remember, you have already laid out the groundwork by getting your listing up and running. Now is the time to finesse its finer points to give online customers a proper representation of how wonderful your product truly is!
“How do I get my product in front of more customers?”
That’s the million-dollar question every Amazon seller should be asking themselves.
As we’ve outlined before, optimizing your product listing remains a foundational building block for maximizing your visibility. And part of optimizing your listing’s copy means utilizing as many keywords as possible that customers use to find products like yours.
You may find competing brand names in your keyword list during the optimization process. Depending on your product, this may be more prevalent than you’d guess.
You may be wondering: “Can I use a trademarked phrase in my Amazon product listing?”
Sometimes, a brand name becomes synonymous with the product, and the brand name becomes a generic term for its market. Think about Kleenex, Velcro, Bubble Wrap, Jacuzzi, Chapstick, Popsicle, and the list goes on and on.
While rare, brand names can rack up significant searches and even become the dominant way customers find products. Data via Keyword Research.
But what do you do when a competitor’s brand name is found in the search terms? Can you include their name somewhere in your listing to index and potentially rank for a recognized competing brand to steal their sales?
These are great questions, and to arrive at these questions means you’ve done your homework on Amazon SEO. One seller in our Facebook group for Amazon sellers asked it this week.
When selling authentic goods, a seller may use a trademarked name to list them. For example, a seller who lists an authentic “Pinzon” product is not necessarily infringing on the Pinzon trademark owner because the seller is using the trademark to identify an authentic product.
When using a trademarked word in its ordinary dictionary meaning.
When making truthful statements that a product is compatible with a trademarked product. For example, if you offer a cable that is compatible with the Kindle e-reader, you can use the brand name “Kindle” to indicate that compatibility in the text of your detail page. You cannot use a logo to indicate compatibility, only the brand name. Any statement you make about compatibility must be true. If you want to indicate the compatibility of your product with a product of a different brand in the product title, please build your product title as follows, taking also account of the Amazon Brand Name Policy. If you do not apply this format to your product title, your listing may be removed as potentially trademark infringing.
As Amazon continues to fight against counterfeit products on its marketplace, it has tightened up on the usage of trademarked terms in listings not belonging to the trademark holder.
Violation of these rules opens sellers to warnings, suspension, or a ban from the Amazon marketplace. On the bright side, you can use these same rules to protect your brand from others if you’re enrolled in Amazon’s Brand Registry Program.
What about in the backend search terms?
Still, the answer remains no.
While one might think the backend search terms are the optimal place to index for trademarked terms without confusing a customer as to who the seller is, that is not the case. Amazon finds listings that violate this rule and violators likely face punishment as a result.
In fact, Amazon’s recommended strategy for backend search terms is not to use any brand names.
Can I do anything to gain visibility on trademarked keywords?
Although you can’t use trademarked brands as keywords, there’s a way to potentially earn visibility for a name brand that customers are searching for: PPC advertising.
Keyword targeting allows sellers to appear for search terms that they bid on. Below, you can see how a competitor can sweep in to be prominently displayed in search results for a search for a trademarked product.
An example of how you can gain exposure through a Sponsored Brands ad with a trademarked search term.
However, there are many pros and cons to consider depending on your product, market, and the brand you’d target.
For example, Nike is one of the largest, most recognized brands on the planet and has built strong brand loyalty. So it may be reasonable to believe a customer searching for “Nike shoes” may be looking for a specific Nike product or that they’re dead-set on buying shoes with the famous Swoosh.
It’s also likely this brand had to outbid Nike vendors and major brands like Adidas, Reebok, and so on. Most likely, these ads probably aren’t cheap!
The sneaker market is incredibly competitive and full of industry whales like the brands mentioned above. With the degree of difficulty to consistently rank organically for high-volume search terms, PPC presents the opportunity to compete and even have a positioning advantage over name brands.
Additionally, this particular brand does have one huge selling point over Nike that sellers should consider: price. Certainly, many will breeze right past the ad and scroll down through Nike’s extensive catalog. But others just looking for a comfortable shoe might balk at paying prices up to 4 times that of the brand running the sponsored ad.
Ultimately, these measures will vary from product to product and should be heavily considered if you’re looking into experimenting with this keyword-targeting method.
In Conclusion
So, what’s the answer to: “Can I use a trademarked phrase in my Amazon product listing?”.
No, but with Amazon PPC we can still take advantage of branded keywords!
For the most part, Amazon sellers are limited with options to poach customers from competitors through trademarked terms. However, options exist to gain visibility from searches your rivals generate through their brand.
Do you have any experience with Amazon trademarked terms? Feel free to let us know about your experience in the comments!
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Whether you’re just starting or a longtime seller, every seller should be taking advantage of these tips on how to improve your Amazon ranking.
On Tuesday, Amazon kicked off their Amazon Accelerate virtual conference for current and prospective sellers looking to boost their Amazon ranking.
After one particular session, guests participated in a live Q&A with Conner Sigman, an Account Representative at Amazon. As they took questions from the digital audience, one question dominated in popularity:
“How do I get on the first page [of search results]?”
It’s a question that’s raged on since 1999 when third-party sellers were allowed to sell on Amazon’s platform. But rarely do we get answers straight from the source on how to maximize rank. Sigman answered with five helpful tips sellers should be doing to increase their opportunity to land on the coveted page one.
At Viral Launch, we strive to provide helpful solutions for Amazon sellers. Since our inception, we’ve studied what steps sellers can take to improve organic Amazing ranking.
Below, we’ll share five recommendations on how to rank higher on Amazon and how our software suite of tools can help you accomplish these tasks.
Step 1:Choose Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA)
“Using FBA immediately will give you the Prime badge and give you options for a couple of different advertising opportunities,” Sigman explained.
FBA comes with not-so-fun fees, but the cost is well worth the benefits of being a part of Amazon’s legendary fulfillment program.
Utilizing FBA guarantees the customer receives the complete Amazon treatment they are accustomed to experiencing. Free two-day shipping, valuable Prime badges, and Amazon-led customer service ensure a sturdy foundation for your product. Customers want to know that they’ll receive items quickly and be taken care of appropriately if any help is necessary.
Amazon takes care of all of that for you, simultaneously making your product more likely to be purchased while also taking cumbersome aspects of e-commerce off your plate. Choosing the FBA route will also help you out with #4 on this list!
Step 2: Optimize your product detail page
Consider your personal buying habits. Customers are drawn to main product images that pop off the page and sales-inducing copy that stands out.
“Product detail page is another really good opportunity to show how important your product is and how it differentiates from the rest,” Sigman said about product listings.
A crucial part of the formula to elevate your Amazon ranking is increasing sales velocity. Above all, your product detail page must have captivating product images to make a positive first impression and SEO-friendly, sales-inducing copy.
Viral Launch offers a few helpful tools to help your listing stand out for this step.
Listing Analyzerperforms a SWOT analysis on key aspects of your listing, including photos and copy, to make sure it’s optimal. Listing Analyzer informs you of what facets of your listing are thriving and what has room for improvement.
Keyword Research and Listing Builder are a powerful duo that provides everything you need for an optimized listing for your listing’s written content.
Keyword Research provides valuable data in the form of an exhaustive keyword list and search volume estimates to inform you of your most potent traffic drivers.
Listing Builder allows sellers to experiment with their listing’s copy and strategically place keywords in areas with the most indexing weight.
To be eligible to rank for a specific keyword or phrase, it must be included somewhere in your listing. The title and bullet points possess the most indexing weight, so you’ll want to prioritize your more prized keywords accordingly.
Consider #1 and #2 to be the base level foundation for a successful, high-ranking listing. While these two alone do not guarantee a high ranking, it’s nearly impossible for a third-party seller to climb their way to the top without them in place.
Once you master these tips, the rest becomes much easier to execute tactfully.
Step 3: Drive traffic through advertising and promotions
You’ve set your listing to convert, but how will people find your listing?
The two popular avenues to boosting discoverability for your Amazon listing are advertising or running promotions that drive external traffic.
To boost Amazon ranking through either of these options, your product listing would need to receive credit for purchase as if it came via a keyword either through advertising or search. When driving external traffic to your product listing to improve rank, make sure you use a two-step URL that includes the targeted keyword to achieve the intended results.
Two-step URLs require the customer to arrive at a search results page where your product is featured exclusively to complete the purchase.
Running a Launch, or a discounted promotional giveaway to a buyer group with substantial size can be an excellent way to drive exposure and sales to your listing without relying on customers to stumble upon your product listing organically.
The ManyChat Approach
Another great option to boost external traffic to climb the Amazon ranks is ManyChat. ManyChat requires a bit of technical skill, but the results make it a no-brainer to learn. As we detailed in a prior post focusing on driving external traffic, we sum up the ManyChat process as such:
“To recap the basic steps for a ManyChat campaign:
Create ads and posts to provide an offer to your audience and direct them to messenger for engagement with ManyChat.
Develop a ManyChat script, first implementing some sort of simple engagement step.
If someone engages with the chat, provide them with the coupon code, steps to claim the code, and a link to purchase using a targeted URL.”
Advertising your product is a great way to get your product in front of potential customers. Amazon offers Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising that allows you to choose exact keywords or opposing product pages to advertise on to capture some sales.
“The first thing I would say is to start a pay-per-click campaign; even if you want to budget $5 a day, it will help a lot.”
Kinetic and Keyword Manager are two tools within the Viral Launch fleet of seller tools that help you run, monitor, and automate your PPC campaigns.
Keyword Manager showcases your high-priority keywords and notifies you of its organic and sponsored rank for each keyword. You can even sign up for rank change notifications to stay up-to-date on how ads or promotions impact your Amazon ranking in real-time.
Kinetic is our all-encompassing PPC automation tool that simplifies creating and optimizing your PPC campaigns from start to finish.
Step 4: Earn reviews
You searched for a product. Attractive product images caught your eye. The compelling copy explains why you need this and answers any questions you might have. But before you Add to Cart, you want to see what customers have to say about this product.
Sigman highlighted Amazon’s stance on customer reviews, “The product detail page and customer reviews are also something we really cherish here at Amazon.”
By placing average review rating and review count directly below the product title, customers can quickly see past consumer feedback. Bad reviews or no reviews at all risk losing consumer trust, and that can spell doom for your product.
Amazon’s Early Reviewer Program helps sellers garner their first five reviews to compete with more mature products. We strongly recommend paying the program’s fee to get your listing off the ground, but the program ends after your fifth review.
After the fifth review, there are very few options with Amazon’s terms of service for sellers to generate reviews. You’ll find competitor tools and Facebook groups to help boost reviews. But, Amazon can and will erase those reviews and provide a warning or ban to sellers who utilize black-hat methods.
Within the Market Intelligence Chrome extension, sellers can send review requests in bulk. It’s a time-saving hack that is entirely within Amazon’s Terms of Service!
Step 5: Be Price-Competitive
It’s no secret that Amazon can be a dog-eat-dog marketplace, and that’s a hallmark of its success. A competitive marketplace means sellers have to box out competitors, resulting in a lower price for customers. Sellers need to remain price-competitive to keep a steady flow of sales coming in.
As previously mentioned, sales velocity is critical towards boosting and maintaining your Amazon ranking. If your product isn’t price-competitive with others in your market, picking up optimal sales velocity is an uphill battle.
With Viral Launch’s Market Intelligence and Listing Analyzer tools, you can quickly inspect and examine your competition. As displayed in the image for #2 on this list, Listing Analyzer will show you the average market price.
Market Intelligence takes a more granular approach to keeping tabs on rival sellers. Search a keyword to find your product, and you’ll see a full list of significant metrics of each top-selling competitor.
Clicking on any of the data points in orange and you’ll also be able to see this data historically. As a result, you catch sight of when your competition raised or lowered their price and how it impacted sales.
One Last Note On Sales Velocity
The importance of sales velocity can’t be understated regarding boosting or maintaining rank. Sales rank is updated hourly on Amazon, so the Amazon ranking algorithm continuously checks for sales trends.
To rank with the top-sellers in your market, you need to sell like them. Market research tools like Market Intelligence provide all you need to know about how competition performs on page one. Depending on the market, it may only take a day or two of high sales velocity to see results.
Utilizing PPC or a Launch are two tried-and-true strategies for boosting visibility.
At Viral Launch, we possess a tool for each step of your Amazon journey to help you achieve out-of-this-world results. Start your free trial today!
In the pursuit of maximum visibility, too many sellers neglect keyword optimizing their product listing.
You’ve performed product research and found the perfect product to sell. You found the right manufacturer. You’ve created your Seller Central account and are ready to start your FBA career. Next up: Product Listing Optimization.
It’s time to get down to business on your Amazon marketing strategy! That begins with making sure your product listing is set up for maximum visibility and able to convert shoppers to buyers.
We consider your product images and copy to be the foundation of a successful Amazon marketing plan. Every aspect of your selling experience will benefit from high-quality images and sales-inducing copy optimized for search.
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Although many don’t think of Amazon as a search engine, that’s precisely what it is.
Is your listing optimized to take advantage of this humongous audience?
Sellers who don’t optimize their listing to reach all the customers for their product are not only leaving sales on the table; they’re encouraging customers to buy from competitors, resulting in ranking changes that further minimize your visibility. Whether creating a new listing or enhancing your existing listing, Viral Launch’s Keyword Research tools are all you need to maximize visibility, increase exposure, and most importantly — boost sales.
STEP 1: Find your seed keyword
First, we’ll need to determine our seed keyword. In the Amazon world, this would be the most relevant keyword that has the highest search volume. In other words, the most popular term that customers are using to find your product on Amazon.
Think about the product you want to sell. If you were a customer, what would I search for my product to show up as a result?
For some products, this is as simple as it sounds. But for others, it can be trickier than you’d think.
Consider soft drinks. Is it soda, pop, or are you like me and use “Coke” as a catch-all for every fizzy beverage? Without a doubt, this likely depends on where you’re from or where you currently live.
From this example, you can see how colloquial language can change depending on geography and how the same product may have a few different primary keywords.
Finding the right seed keyword is one of many reasons why Viral Launch’s Keyword Research tool is a must-have for writing your listing. Filled with years of search volume data, Keyword Research makes the process of finding a seed keyword and knowing your primary keywords a simple one.
For the remainder of our SEO exercise, Keyword Research plays a huge role not only regarding what keywords we use but where we place them. The proprietary keyword metrics such as Priority Score, Relevancy Score, and Opportunity Score provide valuable insights for us to draw from and prioritize our keywords.
Dig around with keyword research before deciding upon your seed keyword. You may be surprised at what keywords fetch the most searches for your product.
Step 2: Find Relevant High-Volume Keywords
Filter out keywords that aren’t relevant to your product. Use the filters to customize your keyword list, removing competitor brand names and any keywords that don’t apply to your product.
After you’ve found the right seed keyword, you’ll have a comprehensive list of related keywords along with helpful data points such as Viral Launch’s exclusive Priority Score and Relevancy Score. We recommend sorting by search volume estimates, as these are going to be where much of the traffic via search.
Sort this list by search volume estimates to get an idea of what keywords or phrases people are using to find your product. Since search volume estimates are an incredibly powerful indicator of consumer demand on Amazon, we can quickly see which keywords are being used to find your product and the depth of the market.
Ensuring that your product is indexed for the majority or all of your keywords are the first step in making sure your listing shows up for customers. Without indexing for these keywords, achieving sustainable sales is an uphill battle, to say the least.
As you filter through your list, you’ll find keywords that don’t apply to your product, such as competitor brand names. Unless you’re selling one of these brand names, it’s best to remove them entirely from your keyword list.
How to Filter
We recommend using the “Keyword Excludes” filter to take irrelevant or inapplicable keywords for maximum efficiency. Due to Amazon’s robust size, it’s impossible for a machine to automatically pull a keyword list ONLY related to your product. But the “Keyword Excludes” filter allows you to take out keywords that do not apply to your product. Once completed, you’ll have a keyword list made exclusively for your product.
In the image listed for this step, you’ll see I’m filtering out “La Croix” since that is a competing brand. Further down the list, this brand name is mentioned multiple times. Filtering it out just once will get rid of all mentions of “La Croix” with that exact spelling.
For the same reasons we remove results with competitor names, you’ll want to eliminate other results that aren’t relevant to your product, such as size, color, dosage, or product specifications that don’t apply to your product.
Once you’ve finished filtering, put these keywords into action by adding them into your listing’s copy. You can do this yourself OR use a tool like Listing Builder to make the process much more streamlined.
STEP 3: Piece It All Together
The beauty of Listing Builder is that it allows for experimentation with your listing’s copy and enables real-time feedback for you to see how each change affects your listing.
Creating a listing can feel a lot like putting a puzzle together, and Listing Builder empowers you to move the pieces around to see what works.
You’ll see your filtered-down list of keywords, sortable by search volume estimate, priority score, and opportunity score. On the right, you’ll see the fields for an Amazon listing that you can use without affecting your actual listing.
As you type each keyword in, you’ll notice that each keyword will be crossed off your list. This feature assists you to be as space-efficient as possible with your listing. Likewise, Amazon doesn’t place extra weight on keywords for repeated use, so once you’ve used it once, there’s no need to add it again for SEO.
Know your (character) limits
Your product listing has a character limit for title and bullet points, typically between 50 and 200 characters for each. Your limit depends on what category Amazon recognizes your product as, and this can play an enormous impact on how you execute your strategy.
If you include your brand name in your title to align with Amazon’s style guide, 50 characters become even less. Product listings with 50 character titles will have to be more “meat and potatoes” while extended character limits allow more room for sales-inducing, descriptive language.
Across all listings (except for listings with EBC), you will have up to 2000 characters to use at your discretion.
HOOK CUSTOMERS IN WITH YOUR TITLE
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and your title is the first impression on the shopper. A thoughtfully crafted title and a professional main product image are a recipe for you to get customers to choose your product over the other search results.
Amazon recommends starting your title with your brand name. We always recommend meeting their style guidelines to ensure you don’t get your listing suppressed.
Staying within their guidelines can be a pain and stand in the way of the keyword or phrase you’re just dying to fit within your limits. But we must remember this is only part of doing business since not following the guidelines can defeat the purpose of optimizing the copy in the first place.
DON’T BE A BOT
A common mistake that sellers make is keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing describes including as many keywords as possible without regard for readability or sense. Not only is keyword stuffing against Amazon-style guidelines, but it’s also not shopper-friendly.
Nobody wants to read your keyword list, so don’t make it your product listing! All too often, sellers use various keyword stuffing methods and see great optimization scores, but wonder why their product isn’t selling.
Writing a keyword-optimized listing is both an art and a science. It requires the science of search data with the art of integrating these keywords into your listing in sales-inducing language.
Ideally, your listing is indexed for each and every keyword on your list. Depending on character limits and how many keywords are relevant for your product, this might not be possible. But don’t panic! This underlines the importance of being strategic with which keywords get left on the cutting room floor.
Our end goal is to increase rank, which occurs when you achieve sales through searches for keywords that you’re indexing for. Don’t get too caught up writing to the algorithm! Remember the goal is to inform and market to the reader you’re trying to convert to a customer!
MAKE SURE YOUR BULLET POINTS HAVE BITE
Once your title has been expertly crafted, the bullet points should be next up on your order of operations. This is where customers get to know your product. What’s unique about it? What sets it apart from the competition?
The bullet points are an excellent place to boast selling points and add keywords that couldn’t be squeezed into the title. Most listings will include five bullets, so think about 5–7 selling points of your product. Prioritize them, and place them in a way that makes the most sense.
Sticking with our fictional soda example, let’s highlight a few of the selling points to start it off.
TASTE THE TROPICS: Quench your thirst with a can of our refreshingly sweet, all-natural orange soda
Within 100 characters, we caught the shopper’s attention with a catchy slogan, informed the customer it comes in a can, and highlighted two major selling points for our fictional orange soda: it’s refreshing and completely natural.
We’re answering customer questions while addressing a few primary benefits of this particular soda. We’ve used a few crucial keywords as well, all without appearing to stuff them unnaturally.
CLOSE THE DEAL WITH A KILLER PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
The customer found your product and liked what they saw with your title and header image. They saw your bullet points, and they haven’t left looking for competitor products. You’ve got this customer on the hook.
Now close the deal.
Psychologically, the customer is looking for a final reason to buy or not buy your product. Answer any potential questions they may have. Show and tell the customer why your product is superior to others on the market.
Your product description likely has a 2000 character limit and offers minimal indexing weight. But do not make the mistake of ignoring this section because it won’t increase your visibility.
The longer character limit and lack of indexing weight make this area ideal for describing your product’s selling points.
Take on the mentality of a customer. What’s in this product? How is it made? What sets it apart from Competitor X? How does this product make my life better?
Answering these questions could be the difference between a customer adding to cart or starting their search over again.
DON’T SKIP THE BACK-END SEARCH TERMS
Sellers frequently make the mistake of leaving their back-end search term areas blank! Just because customers can’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t have value.
The backend search term fields are a terrific way to grab “low-hanging fruit” in the form of relevant search terms containing common misspellings or search queries made in foreign languages. Toss those lower relevance keywords that you weren’t able to squeeze into the title or bullet points here.
The backend search-term field is a lifesaver for including keywords that wouldn’t make sense to include in a product listing such as common misspellings and Spanish phrases.
Importantly, leaving this area blank willingly misses out on thousands of searches each month and the sales that come with them.
Also, you’ll see optional areas to fill out, such as Intended Use, Target Audience, Other Attributes, and Subject Matter as backend fields. While we have found no significant correlation between these fields, Amazon occasionally tweaks its algorithm.
Despite the lack of tangible benefits, we recommend filling these fields in case these fields come into play later.
In Conclusion
An expertly crafted, keyword-optimized product listing makes you more likely to land you on the coveted Page One of results. Of course, this comes after sales trickle through via the keywords you’re indexing for. Then, you’ll see your rank improve so you can start receiving
Both inexperienced and veterans sellers should optimize their product listings for maximum performance. Optimizing your product listing by keyword is a tactic that rookie and experienced sellers alike should be doing. Trends change, so it’s worth monitoring your keyword performance and optimization score every few months. Monitoring keywords keeps you on top of your game and give your product detail page an edge over the competition.
With Keyword Research and Listing Builder, it’s never been easier for sellers to create their keyword-optimized product listing. If you have any questions about Amazon’s guidelines, their product page style guide comes in handy.
Additionally, our customer support team is always willing to help provide clarity. Sign up today and select a plan that includes our listing optimization software bundle to maximize your listing today
By the end 2020’s first quarter, more than half of sales on Amazon’s marketplace were through third-party sellers. It’s grown even more competitive since then, and Amazon product listing optimization is the best strategy for sellers to avoid getting lost in the crowd.
An Amazon listing score is a measure of how well your listing adheres to the keyword strategy that our Keyword Research tool has suggested for your product. The research tool uses search volume directly from Amazon’s data combined with a forecasting formula generated by in-house data scientists for statistics you can trust.
We generate the Amazon listing score by analyzing the keyword list the tool gathers related to the primary keyword you’ve chosen for your product. It’s based on how many of the suggested keywords are in the listing, how keywords with the highest search volume are prioritized by placement, and how many of them are the most relevant.
What’s the Value in an Amazon Listing Score?
The forecasting formula we utilize is proprietary, though it’s based on applied weights in volume, relevancy, priority, and keyword phrasing. This means you can use the Amazon listing score to optimize any listing, at any time, with the highest-quality keywords of the moment.
These three strategies will help you get the most value out of the Amazon listing score:
1. Optimize listings from the start.
The point of Amazon listing optimization is to make your listing eligible for indexing and ranking for a keyword. Optimized listings on Amazon are the most visible ones, and greater visibility is essential for being ranked higher.
Think of your listing’s copy as a foundational piece. Once you’ve successfully indexed for a keyword, you’re eligible to be ranked as you generate sales through keywords, increasing your likelihood of organic sales as your ranking climbs. Enhancing a listing’s keyword ranking also boosts your chances of organic sales by putting your listing directly in front of customers’ eyes (at zero cost).
2. Grab the low-hanging fruit of keywords.
The keyword opportunity score within the Listing Builder and Keyword Research tools will help you find the low-hanging fruit: keywords that receive search volume but are largely neglected.
For example, if you sell first-aid kits, indexing for a niche phrase like “first-aid kit for cars” could be what puts your listing in front of customers. Also, include common phrases in other languages, like Spanish, and common misspellings in the listing’s back-end search terms.
3. Keep listing optimization reader-friendly.
Your product’s Amazon listing score will help you ensure the listing is optimized, but it’s up to you to make it as reader-friendly as possible. Keyword stuffing is a terrible strategy, and Amazon will do its best to weed it out. Amazon listing optimization is both an art and a science. Use marketing-minded language while incorporating the right keywords to masterfully create a listing that’s not only optimized, but also set up specifically to drive sales.
A lot of Amazon sellers rely on trial and error, blindly tweaking their listings’ keywords, copy, or photos without any hard data to back up their decisions. Gain a greater competitive advantage by using keyword research and our Amazon listing score to optimize your Amazon listings with proven, high-quality keywords and phrases.
Selling on Amazon is unlike running any other online store.
The beauty is that it’s both marketplace and search engine rolled into one: Buyers search for and purchase what they need without ever having to navigate to another site. This makes for an exciting and dynamic seller experience — but it also means sellers must market correctly in order to see real results.
Because of this layout, you need to treat Amazon as a search engine when advertising your products. If you want to get your products in front of people who are searching for them, you’ll need to know how to optimize the right keywords for your Amazon listings.
Any failure to understand how to optimize your Amazon listings gives your competitors an advantage in your market. Don’t give your rivals the upper hand!
How Do Keywords Work on Amazon?
On any other search engine, such as Google, getting a brand or product to rank high means building up your organic search engine optimization. The same is true on Amazon. The majority of sales happen organically, with products that are highly optimized.
When optimizing your listing, be strategic. Keep SEO in mind to set up your product for the highest potential visibility, and most important, make sure to get things right the first time. Editing a listing that was already written can hurt the listing’s SEO ranking.
For example, make sure to include the most frequently used variations and prioritize the right keywords for the right audience at the right time. You’ll need the help of our Amazon keyword tool, which is designed to help you find and use every relevant keyword.
For one of Viral Launch client, the strategic use of the Amazon keyword tool helped it reach $40,000 in sales within 30 days of its new product launch. By the end of the launch, the product had gone from ranking No. 300 to No. 1 in search results for the targeted keyword.
A Few Amazon Keyword Tips
Our Amazon keyword tooltells you which keywords shoppers use most often when they shop for products like yours. It also helps you include these keywords in your listing without breaking Amazon’s character limits in any of the fields.
When used correctly, the Amazon keyword toolgives you the power to find all the keywords and variations relevant to any product. To use them to your ultimate advantage, keep these three points in mind when choosing which keywords to use:
1. Lean heavily on search volume data.
Our Amazon keyword toolgives you actionable data about the search volume of any keyword. The industry-leading search volume estimates generated are constantly updated, so the data is always fresh and safe to rely upon.
Each time you research a keyword, the tool will also provide exact and broad match data surrounding it. You can see the immediate and far-reaching impact it could potentially have on your SEO ranking, as well as the keyword’s current standing in the market.
2. Dive into the keyword’s history.
Every relevant keyword around your product has a history, especially those that have the highest search volumes. Our keyword tool is the only one that can bring you exhaustive historical data, helping you dive deep into the history across the entire market — including competitor usage.
Accurate historical keyword data is important for several reasons. It includes historically relevant horizontal keywords you can use to boost the product’s listing. Additionally, it gives you full market context so you can strategize around each keyword’s popularity trends.
3. Keep the keyword’s relevancy in mind.
Although search volume is essential to choosing the right keywords, relevancy to your product is just as important. Some terms might have attractive volumes but may not actually fit the customer base for your specific product.
Because the majority of Amazon sales happen organically, our Amazon keyword tool can give you deep insights into which keywords and variations are most relevant to which products with the Viral Launch Priority Score. It allows you to easily compare terms, finding the most appropriate ones for your listing based on relevancy and search volume.
Finding the right keywords for your Amazon listings is vital to successfully selling on Amazon. But you can’t do it manually. Learn more by starting your free trial of Viral Launch to get access to our suite of keyword research tools.
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Amazon is a search engine first and foremost. Customers will inevitably find any product you list by using search queries, so optimizing Amazon product listings is vitally important to your success as a seller. That means knowing not only which keywords to use, but also where they carry the most SEO weight.
For example, your listing’s title has the biggest SEO impact, followed by the bullet points, description, and back-end keyword fields. Because it functions like a search engine, Amazon indexes all of these fields for its SEO purposes.
You should prioritize Amazon’s keyword best practices to find the most relevant keywords and give each listing the greatest exposure.
How to Optimize an Amazon Listing
Having a comprehensive SEO-based keyword strategy is important, but optimizing Amazon product listings is about more than just choosing keywords. For instance, there are also Amazon title best practices to consider. We strongly recommend writing a title that begins with about five words followed by a colon. This establishes an ideal canonical URL to help with external SEO efforts (such as Google listings).
Additionally, your listing’s click-through rate, conversation rate, and other audience engagement metrics have a definite impact on organic SEO ranking. To help maximize that impact, follow these tips when optimizing your Amazon product listings:
1. Start with a keyword tool.
Choosing the best keywords to optimize your Amazon listing takes research. Fortunately, you can make keyword research and analysis much easier with help from a comprehensive keyword research tool.
Our unique tool offers historical keyword data alongside current data, showing the full scope of the keyword landscape. You can get insights into Amazon-specific search queries with highly precise breakdowns of keywords relevant to your product.
2. Infuse relevant language in your keywords.
It’s critical to describe your product and form your keywords using the exact language that customers use in their search queries. For example, plenty of people will discover the stereo headphones you sell by using the term “headphones,” but thousands of others might also search for earbuds, headsets, and other variations of the same keyword. Make sure you adjust your listing not only for the main keyword, but also for other relevant terms your audience might be using.
3. Make sure to categorize your listing correctly.
The descriptions and keywords you use will go a long way in defining your product. But you still have to assign categories and subcategories that will determine its placement on Amazon’s website. If you’re not sure which categories or subcategories to choose, search for your product in Seller Central and see which categories similar listings fall under.
4. Use plenty of high-quality photos.
According to a 2018 e-commerce survey, 73% of U.S. consumers who shop online say they won’t consider a product that has fewer than three images. To stand out, then, use multiple high-quality images of your product.
A mix of studio and lifestyle shots that feature your product in the most attractive light can help consumers envision themselves using it. Our photography resources can help you learn how to capture the perfect product photos to catch potential customers’ attention.
5. Optimize pricing to fit the market.
No matter how keyword-rich and image-heavy your listing is, you won’t get much engagement or many sales if your prices are too high for your market. For most new sellers (and even most veterans), it’s difficult to sell any product at a premium price point. Fewer conversions also mean a less favorable keyword ranking. Instead, try slowly increasing your prices as your listings perform better.
6. Keep everything you do within Amazon’s terms of service.
No matter what you try to optimize, do so while staying within the bounds of Amazon’s terms of service. Its terms place strict rules that can have a direct impact on SEO rankings, particularly regarding customer feedback and reviews. For example, sellers are prohibited from compensating users for favorable reviews and ratings.
To be a successful Amazon Seller, you have to approach optimizing your Amazon product listings as you would with any other search engine. Take the time to research which keywords best support your product and use them to create an attractive, informative, and optimized listing.
For more information about how to optimize your Amazon listings, speak with one of our experts today!
The title of a product on Amazon carries a lot of weight when it comes to organic rank and click-through rates, and if your listing isn’t in step with the official style requirements, the upcoming Amazon policy enforcement should motivate you to make some changes.
Amazon recently announced that on July 22 it will be “suppressing ASINs from Amazon Search that violate Amazon’s title guidelines.” According to the announcement, the reason behind this new enforcement is that titles that don’t comply with Amazon’s guidelines “result in a poor customer experience.”
As shown in the news release above, the announcement mentions some specific requirements:
No promotional language can be used, such as “free shipping” or “100% quality guaranteed.”
Other examples would be “Best Seller” or “Hot Item.”
No non-readable characters can be used, such as HTML code.
The length of a title can’t exceed 200 characters. Titles must include “product identifying information,” which describes what the product is, such as a garlic press or first aid kit.
Although not mentioned in the announcement, the Amazon Style Guide also contains a number of further requirements, such as prohibiting the use of all caps or special characters (such as ! or $.)
No one wants their business disrupted, so it’s important to understand the effect of what this new level of Amazon policy enforcement may have on your brand, and then take some practical steps to ensure you can maintain your visibility and sales.
What This Means for Amazon Sellers
The most important element of a product listing is its title, and having it optimized for organic search is a vital part of gaining visibility under any conditions.
The “suppression from search” for those who violate the title guidelines is open to interpretation, but the announcement indicates that this suppression would actually be a removal from search entirely.
Amazon mentions that if a product title is penalized, “[o]nce the issue is fixed, we will remove the search suppression and the ASIN will appear back on Amazon search.”
From this statement, the penalization wouldn’t be a matter of your product taking a drop in organic ranking and be languishing many pages deep in a search. It would be an outright elimination from organic search, and the effect on your product’s visibility and sales would bring your business to a halt.
Considering the amount of products that exist in Amazon’s marketplace, how quickly they will be able to roll out this tighter enforcement is uncertain. It likely won’t happen immediately, yet ensuring your title is compliant with the style guide so that your product remains searchable should be your current top priority.
Getting Your Listing Ready for Compliance
To avoid losing visibility, ranking, and sales, we’ve provided a list of crucial steps for becoming compliant with the title guidelines.
In case you aren’t clear on the guidelines or need access to them, we’ve created a downloadable spreadsheet, Amazon Style Guides by Category. It breaks down what the title counts have previously been for each category and provides links to the style guides for each category. The announcement states title character counts cannot exceed 200 characters, so it remains to be seen if certain categories will continue to be limited to 50 characters.
Another requirement in some categories is that businesses must include their brand name in their product titles. Although this helps promote your brand, it essentially restricts the character limit even more, forcing business to balance visibility, precision, and helpful information.
How To Stay Compliant
Before the deadline arrives, follow these five tasks help you stay compliant and avoid any issues:
1. Access your style guide from our spreadsheet and track down the category-specific limitations for your title. Find the exact character count and if you’re exempt from having to include your brand name. Keep in mind that Amazon updates style guides regularly, so be sure to stay up-to-date.
2. Write a new title, staying within the new limit for your category and including your brand name, if required. Our tool Listing Builder can help you quickly devise a new one and move any previous info from your title into your bullet points.
3. Set up organic rank notifications for a particular keyword in Keyword Manager. Go to the Notification Settings, and under Rank Change Notifications, choose to receive messages based on whether the rank increases or drops, or only if it drops. You can then specify how high or low you want the rank positions to be and in this instance you should set wide parameters for the notifications. The tool will then message you if your organic rank changes after the new policy goes into effect. (You can also receive notifications on your Sponsored Rank, as shown in the GIF below.)
4. Set up buy box and Best Seller Rank notifications in Competitor Intelligence for your ASINs. If any changes occur, we send an alert to keep you informed. Using CI, you can track keywords a competitor is targeting and indexed for, and see the keywords’ organic rank. You can then choose to receive change alerts for the keywords’ ranking. This can occur on an hourly basis, as shown below.
5. If notified that your ASIN is affected, implement your new title and bullets to your product listing. After you make this update, Amazon will re-index your listing. As a result, you’ll temporarily see a drop in your organic ranking. But based on your sales history, reviews, and traffic, you’ll see your rank resume its position.
Stay Compliant, Stay Successful
The recent announcement regarding titles has received a variety of different reactions. And many sellers may be asking why it took Amazon so long to enforce its own policy. No matter how you feel, ensuring your title meets Amazon’s policy requirements safeguards your listing. Since visibility remains crucial, avoiding penalization and a loss in visibility helps maintain your sales opportunities.
For any help getting in step with Amazon’s product title guidelines, contact us at service@viral-launch.com. Our team ensures your product listing complies with Amazon’s style guide and remains optimized to increase your visibility, conversions, and business growth.
