Category: Ranking and Launches

Amazon Product Launch Checklist: 3 Steps To A Successful Launch

There is a proven strategy for a successful product launch on the Amazon platform, and it’s been around for a while. Here, I will outline an Amazon Product Launch Checklist that ensures success.

So many Amazon sellers still seem to get it wrong and are left wondering why their initial sales tanked during their product launch. I am about to share with you the EXACT product launch strategy that will generate sales, get your product listing ranked organically, and provide you with long-term sales momentum.

What Do You Need to Launch a Product on Amazon?

Many Amazon sellers overcomplicate the product launch strategy.

Instead of spreading yourself too thin and focusing on many different ways to launch, all you really need is:

  • High demand – low competition product
  • The strategy in this blog post
  • Viral Launch
  • Money to invest in PPC ads

High Demand – low competition product

You’ll find a high demand – low competition product by using the Viral Launch Product Discovery Tool.

Having a product that has high demand and low competition will inevitably help you as you will be able to generate a lot more sales with less competition.

This Product Launch Process

Spreading yourself too thin and trying to do “all the things” whilst launching a new product will lead to overwhelm, frustration, and distraction from the methods that actually move the needle and lead to a successful launch.

Focusing on the 3 pillars in this post works. It’s a proven method to increase sales, rankings, and long-term success with selling on Amazon.

Image Source: Unsplash

Viral Launch

Having the right tools for the job is essential.

Launching a product on Amazon without the following features in Viral Launch is like trying to build a house with a teaspoon:

  • Viral Launch Keyword Tool
  • Viral Launch Listing Builder
  • Viral Launch Competitor Intelligence
  • Viral Launch Kinetic PPC tool.

All of these tools are vital to helping you with your keyword research, helping you with listing optimization, competitor analysis, and running successful Amazon PPC campaigns.

What Is The Goal Of A Successful Product Launch?

The overall goal of a product launch on Amazon is to generate enough sales within the first few weeks to boost your listing’s organic ranking.

The 3 main focuses of your launch should be on:

  • Click Through Rate (CTR) – otherwise known as Traffic
  • Conversion Rate – the % of clicks vs purchases on your product listing
  • Positive Reviews

All 3 pillars play a big role in getting your product listing in front of a target audience.

The reason to focus on these 3 tasks when launching a new product, is Amazon considers these 3 to be the highest determining factors when selecting which products should rank highest in the search results.

Ultimately, nailing the CTR, Conversion Rate, and collecting positive reviews is the highest priority when launching a new product on Amazon.

We want our customers to go through this process when looking for our products:

  • Search for your product using your target keyword,
  • Find your listing,
  • Click on your listing,
  • Make a purchase.
  • Then leave a review once they receive it.

If you can nail this simple process, your product launch will be a huge success!

Amazon A9 Search Algorithm

Amazon’s search algorithm (A9) is what decides which products show up first in the search results for any given keyword.

The A9 Algorithm ranks products using the following metrics:

  • Click Through Rate (CTR) / Traffic
  • Conversion rate
  • Number of positive reviews

Here is how the A9 algorithm applies to the 3 pillars, and why you focus on these 3 aspects during your product launch.

1. Traffic

The number of customers clicking on your product listing is called your Click Through Rate (CTR).

Amazon crawls the following aspects of your product listing to learn how relevant your product is too specific search terms:

  • Product Title
  • Bullet Points
  • Back-end search terms
  • Product Description

Using the performance history of your product, the Amazon A9 algorithm prioritizes the search results and ranks them in order of the likelihood of a customer purchasing your product and being satisfied with it.

2. Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate is based on how many people clicked on your product listing and made a purchase.

If 100 people clicked on your listing, and 20 people purchased your product, your conversion rate would be 20%.

The factors that can influence your conversion rate are:

  • Price
  • Reviews
  • Main Image and other images
  • Your listing content

The higher your conversion rate, the higher Amazon will rank your product listing.

3. Positive Reviews

Positive reviews are essential to your success on Amazon.

Positive reviews provide social proof from previous customers, and they reassure your buyers that your product solves their problems.

Positive reviews also increase your conversion rate, which increases your ranking, which increases your traffic, which increases your chances of increasing your conversion rate.

See how the flywheel keeps turning if all 3 of these pillars are aligned?

The Ultimate Amazon Product Launch Checklist In 3 Simple Steps

Ranking on page 1 of Amazon isn’t easy – but it is SIMPLE.

It’s not a complicated process, but you do need to be consistent, focused and nail the following 3 steps:

Product Launch Checklist Step 1 – Create The Perfect Listing & Keywords To Increase CTR

Creating the perfect product listing is focus priority number 1.

The reason to focus on your product listing and Click Through Rate first is that a highly optimized and attractive-looking product listing will draw customers to your listing early on.

You can build your listing inside Amazon Seller Central, or you could fully optimize your listing whilst you build it using the Viral Launch Listing Builder:

To create an optimized product listing, you need to perform keyword research to know what keywords to include in the product title, bullet points, and product description.

Product Title

Your PRODUCT TITLE is THE MOST important line of text on your entire listing!

This is your opportunity to tell your customers what your product is so they can easily find it in their search results.

It should also include the most relevant keywords at the very start of your title to help Amazon’s A9 algorithm understand what your product is all about.

To find the keywords that your product listing needs to rank for, use the Viral Launch Keyword Research tool.

Some points to keep in mind when creating your product title:

  • You’ve got up to 200 characters, including spaces.
  • No promo phrases. eg FREE SHIPPING, or Buy One Get One Free.
  • You’re allowed to use hyphens to create spacing, but no other characters for decorations. (! £ $ * [ ])
  • Try to avoid duplicating keywords

Product Images

The main image of your product listing should grab your customer’s attention.

Your main image should have a white background, and showcase the best product features.

Bullet Points

The bullet points should be keyword rich, and highlight the main features and benefits of your product.

This is where you have a chance to capture your customers’ attention and show them why they should choose your product over the competition.

Here is the best way to structure your bullet points:
  • BULLET POINT 1 – A benefit to your customer
  • BULLET POINT 2 – A benefit to your customer
  • BULLET POINT 3 – A benefit to your customer
  • BULLET POINT 4 – A benefit to your customer
  • BULLET POINT 5 – A promise to reduce risk to your customer

One trick that I use to know the best benefits to your customer, is to check out your competitor’s product listing and head to the commonly asked questions section.

Here’s how I find, and process this information:

  • Head to your top competitors’ listings and find commonly asked questions about the product.
  • Find the common pros and cons and write them down.
  • Come up with solutions to the cons, and highlight the main benefits that are mentioned.
  • Include the solutions to the cons, and highlight the pros in your product bullet points.

Doing this will help to reassure your customers that your product will benefit them and solve their problems.

Product Description

The backend search terms are important for Amazon’s A9 algorithm to understand what keywords your product should rank for and further optimize your listing on their platform.

Here is what your product description should do:

  • Summarize the benefits that we listed in our bullet points.
  • Reassure or convince our customers that our product is exactly what they’re looking for.
  • Remove risk once again
  • Ask for the sale.
  • Use up as many of the remaining keywords that we didn’t manage to use in our product title and bullet points.

Product Launch Checklist Step 2 – Generate Traffic and Sales to Increase the Conversion Rate

Getting customers onto your product listing is only half the battle.

The next step is to get your customers to make a purchase.

But first, let’s focus on getting customers onto your product listing, and the best ways to do this:

  • Friends and family
  • Paid ads using Amazon PPC campaigns

During the product launch, the focus is on traffic sources that we can rely on and have full control over.

Other posts may tell you to look for external traffic by leveraging influencer marketing, relevant Facebook groups, review sites, or other social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram.

These are great methods to boost sales later on, but during the initial product launch, we want to focus on getting qualified customers (people who are actively searching for our product) onto our listing and making a purchase.

Friends and Family

Reaching out to friends and family is a great way to generate sales early on.

Image Source: Unsplash

Make an email list of people that you know who may be interested in your product, or who would want to support you in your new venture.

Send them an email letting them know that you will soon be launching your new product and that they can purchase it at a discounted rate using a special discount code.

This is a great method, as you could send them a link as soon as your product is live, so you gain a spike in sales right away, and you could ask for a supportive review in exchange for the discount.

Here are some important considerations with this method:

  • Do not make a purchase or leave reviews within the same household as Amazon can trace this.
  • Having friends leave honest reviews is totally fine, but I wouldn’t have family members with the same last name as yourself do this.
  • Make sure they actively search for your product, scroll and find your listing and make the purchase right away. This means you convert the sale for the right keyword, and the conversion rate is recorded as the purchase was made right away.

Amazon PPC Campaigns – Paid Traffic

The quickest way to get sales and conversions onto your listing is through Amazon’s PPC campaigns.

Amazon’s Sponsored Products (PPC) ads are a great way to grab the attention of potential customers in a short amount of time, and they can be highly targeted.

You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, so you are only spending money on customers who have an interest in your product.

This is a great way to quickly boost sales while also increasing the visibility of your product listing.

Using the Viral Launch Kinetic PPC Tool makes setting up your campaigns, running and optimizing them, and making sure you are maximizing sales super easy.

Once you have sales and conversions coming in from your PPC campaigns, make sure to keep an eye on them.

Make sure to check the performance regularly and adjust bids or add/remove keywords as needed depending on which ones are performing best for you.

Doing this will help ensure that your campaigns are optimized correctly and stay cost-effective.

Making The Sale

When you have traffic on your listing, the focus shifts to making sure they convert.

Using reviews, images, and videos are great ways to give customers more confidence in their purchase decision.

Make sure your product images are clear and professional-looking, as well as informative. Include multiple angles of your product so customers can get a full understanding of what they will be getting.

Videos are also great for showcasing features and benefits that might not be made clear just through the images.

Finally, reviews are super important when it comes to making sales on Amazon. People want to read reviews from real customers who have purchased your product in order to have which leads onto the final stage of the launch strategy…

Product Launch Checklist Step 3 – Collecting Positive Reviews

The third phase of the product launch checklist is acquiring positive reviews from verified purchases.

You can follow up with the family and friends that supported your launch, and ask them to leave a review around 48 hours after taking delivery of the item.

Another option is to create product inserts that your suppliers add to your product packaging.

It could be a small card saying thank you to your customer for their purchase, and letting them know that you are on hand to help with any potential issues.

You can also ask to leave a review too on this product insert.

Getting More Support With Your Launch

If launching a product on Amazon seems like it might be too daunting for you to go it alone, Viral Launch has a completely FREE course that walks you through the steps required to start an Amazon FBA business and launch your own products.

There are many FBA Courses available online, and they’re worth looking into, but the Viral Launch course is a great place to start.

Conclusion: Amazon Product Launch Checklist

Launching a product on Amazon can be an intimidating task, but with the right strategy and tools, you can maximize the success of your launch.

It’s really important to keep your launch strategy simple and focus on the pillars that will move the needle in terms of ranking on Amazon’s page 1, and pleasing the Amazon A9 algorithm.

These 3 pillars to be included in any Product Launch Checklist are:

  1. Click Through Rate (CTR) – otherwise known as Traffic
  2. Conversion Rate – the % of clicks vs purchases on your product listing
  3. Positive Reviews for social proof

Leveraging contacts that you already have, and running successful PPC Ads on the Amazon platform with the Viral Launch Kinetic PPC Tool is a great way to generate early customers.

Maximize Sales and Rank With Amazon Keyword Tracker Notifications

If your Amazon listing’s rank falls, how soon would you know? Our Amazon keyword tracker helps you keep tabs on rank changes.

Amazon sellers realize that most of their sales come from organic search results, and 70% of shoppers don’t venture beyond the first page of search results. That means staying visible is a major key to successful sales. Monitoring with our Amazon keyword tracker can help you do it.

On top of your own rankings, you can learn a lot more and gain a much greater competitive edge by paying the same attention to the ranking of your competitors’ listings. With Keyword Manager, our keyword tracker for Amazon, you can be notified instantly if your rank — or a competitor’s rank — changes. You can react instantly to the data to see why your competitor jumped or fell in rank and protect your own listing’s position in the process.

From Tracking Ranks to Boosting Sales

It’s a fact of life on Amazon’s market that keyword ranking jumps around like crazy. Sometimes, every other session will show a different order of products for the same keyword search. Notifications eliminate the need to constantly refer to a ranking dashboard to see how that fluctuation has affected your listing. Set the parameters and let the system tell you when it’s time to adjust your selling strategy.

Knowing the exact time your ranking drops or falls and reacting to it in real time can give you a leg up over competitors. At the same time, you must know when those competitors drop in rank so that you can use it to your advantage. As you get familiar with making the most of Amazon keyword rank tracking, boost that advantage by using real-time data and custom notifications to maximize your sales strategy, such as:

1. Increasing PPC spend at just the right time: 

When your rank starts to slip for a particular keyword, the rank tracking tool will notify you immediately. You can boost PPC spend to more aggressively target that particular keyword and gain back some of your position as soon as possible. Our PPC tool, Kinetic, allows you to automate the entire process.

2. Attributing efforts to results: 

The transparency you get with our rank tracking tool allows you to see just how effective your advertising efforts are, which is essential to devising any Amazon selling strategy. After boosting PPC spend, set ranking notifications to be more strict so you’ll instantly know whether the additional spend is working.

3. Prioritizing the highest-ranking product variations: 

For products that have multiple variations (such as small, medium, and large), rank tracking gives you an entirely new dimension of performance to track. For example, if the small versions of the product start ranking highest, you can boost your ad efforts and stock up on smalls before the sales boost.

In Conclusion

As can be seen, Amazon keyword rank tracking is essential for anyone who wants to sell on Amazon. Since the market is driven by a search engine, our keyword tracking tool helps you stay in tune with the constant fluctuations in the keywords for which you’re competing. Get notified instantly, at whatever threshold you set, so you can optimize your listings appropriately. 

Don’t let the competition pass you by! Get started with our Amazon keyword tracker and monitoring tools today!

How To Launch a Product on Amazon

Launching a new product on the Amazon marketplace involves a lot more than you might realize at first. It’s not just a matter of listing the product. You also have to find and incorporate high-quality images and written content, organize early promotions and advertising strategies, generate early reviews, and ultimately make the product visible. It sounds like a lot — but the right guide can teach you all the steps to launch a product on Amazon.

These early steps are critical to the product’s long-term success and your own growth as an Amazon seller. Those who put enough time and effort into their product launches can gain traction and market share faster. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently revealed, third-party sellers now generate more revenue on the marketplace than Amazon itself.

This also means that the market is getting more crowded and that gaining exposure is increasingly difficult for every new Amazon product launch. From choosing the right product to planning out the right launch strategy, however, there are a few things you should know — and a few things you should avoid — to get a leg up when launching a new product on Amazon.

First of All, There’s No Point in Launching a Product If It’s Not the Right One

Before you ever get started launching a product on Amazon, you must choose the right product. Start by researching several product markets as thoroughly as possible so that you can set realistic expectations. For example, in some markets, first-page products can sell 10,000 units per month, but it’s often unrealistic to expect you’ll reach those numbers quickly.

You can raise sales volume faster in niche markets with thinner competition. However, these markets typically see lower sales volume, so make sure you have a thorough understanding of your expected sales before entering the market. You can forecast revenue and measure barrier to entry using Amazon product research tools.

With that in mind, you’ll also have logistics and manufacturing costs, as well as Amazon fees, marketing, advertising, research, content production, and other costs to consider. You need to thoroughly understand where your point of profitability lies so you have a goal to aim for. Then, you can plan a much more successful Amazon product launch strategy.

Once You Know What You Want to Sell, Find Out How to Successfully Launch an Amazon Product

If implemented correctly, a new Amazon product launch will drive sales early, and early sales are critical in helping you gain early traction in the market, improve your keyword ranking, and net some early reviews to give your product an advantage.

In addition, early sales can teach Amazon’s algorithm that your product is a quality option for shoppers, which helps promote easier ranking and sales growth in the future. Shape your Amazon product launch strategy using these six steps as a guide:

1. Take time to read the terms of service.

Before launching any product, carefully read and understand Amazon’s terms of service. You’ll want to do everything you can to give your product the best chance at success, but you do not want to risk your account by unwittingly violating the rules.

2. Be prepared not to make a profit at first.

Properly driving success on Amazon while sticking to the terms of service takes capital, so be prepared not to make a profit with early sales. Amazon’s market isn’t a get-rich-quick platform; running your online business is just like running any other business. That means stimulate long-term sales requires spending on marketing and advertising, offering discounts, and more.

3. Reorder inventory before you run out of stock.

As you watch your sales and profits, you may be tempted to wait until your initial inventory runs out before ordering more. If you do so, you’ll risk running out of stock before you can replenish it. Being out of stock means shoppers will bypass your product listing, and it can negatively impact the listing’s keyword ranking.

4. Take advantage of early review generation.

Keeping an adequate amount of stock is important, but buyers might still scroll past a product that hasn’t even been reviewed yet. In one e-commerce study, up to 79% of buyers say they check reviews before making any purchase on Amazon. You can sign up for Amazon’s early reviewer program, set up and send out email sequences to customers, and craft a social media announcement strategy that adheres to Amazon’s terms.

5. Take advantage of Amazon’s massive customer base.

Unlike using your own branded website, Amazon’s biggest benefit is that it brings customers to you. The challenge is getting your product in front of them, which means focusing on Amazon SEO. Generate as many sales as possible up front, which will kick-start your listing’s keyword ranking. After all, thousands of people are already searching for your type of product. Now, it’s your job to get in front of them. Amazon sponsored ads are a great way to put your new product in front of eager shoppers. Learn how to run ads with our free Amazon advertising course.

6. Keep researching after the product launches.

The more you know, the smarter decisions you’ll make when it comes to ordering, listing, advertising, and scaling. Use data to gain insights into missed keywords, sales trends in your market, and your advertising opportunities. The insight you gain will help you create an even more effective strategy the next time you have a new Amazon product launch.

The path to a successful Amazon product launch strategy is different for every seller, product, and market. But the most important tips for any successful Amazon product launch are to understand what kind of market you’re getting into, to ensure that your expectations align with what’s possible in that market, and to drive initial sales. To learn more about what it takes to launch your product successfully on Amazon, sign up for your free trial with Viral Launch today.

The Science of Search: Advanced Amazon Keyword Research Tactics

We are taking a deep dive into the foundation of every successful strategy on Amazon: keyword research.


When looking to private label a product on Amazon, it’s extremely evident that the markets are flooded. Now more than ever, it can be an incredibly difficult feat to drive sales for a new product with no reviews and no sales history. That said, there is still a (literal) wealth of opportunity in the Amazon space for savvy sellers who package a well developed strategy with their product offering.

At Viral Launch, we’ve seen one recurring fundamental reason for a product’s failure on Amazon… lack of strategy. It’s not good enough to source a product, throw up a listing, and wait for the sales, and (perhaps unfortunately) focusing on sourcing a product that’s objectively ‘different’ or ‘better’ than your competition doesn’t matter much when you’re given one image and around 100 characters to draw the attention of shoppers.

Everything on Amazon comes down to strategy, and strategy is the result of thorough research. Sourcing the right product and ensuring that it’s positioned correctly in the market is the key to driving success on Amazon. While we have recently published two lengthy posts which cover how to generate product ideas and how to launch and rank products, due to ever increasing importance, we’ll be taking a deep dive into the foundation of every successful strategy on Amazon: keyword research.

The Strategy Behind a Well Crafted Listing

It’s important to recognize that while many people think of Amazon as more of a digital store, the reality is that Amazon.com is first and foremost a search engine. For this reason, when creating a product listing, it’s important to understand that your written content must serve dual purposes.

The first purpose is to produce an attractive listing. Like an advertisement for your product, you need to ensure that you’re using persuasive language and providing a value proposition to help sell your product. If your content doesn’t make sense, doesn’t read attractively, or doesn’t adequately explain the tangible value of the product, shoppers will inevitably be inclined to choose a different product.

The second purpose of your listing is to appeal to Amazon’s search engine. Because your product is inevitably found through customer search queries, ensuring that you’re understanding the keywords that shoppers are using to find your product (and understanding how to prioritize them in your listing) is critically important for driving success. With this, diversifying your keywords as much as possible helps you to index within the results of more searches, thus widening your listing’s potential visibility.

Ultimately, a well optimized listing (a balance between keyword rich content and sales language) is the cornerstone of a successful product. If you focus too heavily on making  a persuasive appeal to your shoppers, there is a good chance that you’ll end up limiting the quantity of searches for which your product will be indexed. On the other hand, if you focus too heavily on overloading your listing with high value keywords, it may show up in more searches but it’s likely that the product’s conversion will be low. Even if you can get your listing in front of people, if it doesn’t read well, or draw people in, you’re not going to be able to maximize your sales perspective.

Great listing content is a fusion between art (sales language) and science (keyword research). The art of this equation is something that comes from understanding your product and the benefits, differentiating factors, and qualities that can persuade buyers. The science comes from market research, data analysis, and in most cases, a quality set of tools to help your pursuit.

This article will be addressing the science of keyword research.

Keyword Research

While the purpose of this article is educational and not a sales pitch, and while there are several tool suites that can be utilized to help you conduct research, this article will be referencing the Viral Launch research tools for ease of reference.

While some of this should even be done prior to sourcing a product, when beginning to analyze keyword markets, Keyword Research should be the foundational reference point for building your listing content. To start, you’ll want to search for your product’s primary keyword. This is logically the keyword that you would search if you were looking to buy a product in your market. From there, Keyword Research will populate a list of associated keywords along with key metrics such as search volume, relevancy score, etc.

This list of keywords of populated keywords contains many of the important search terms that you should seek to prioritize in your content. Because Keyword Research is algorithmic, however, you’ll need to review these results to pull out the best keywords to include.

For starters, sort your results by search volume. This should give you the most competitive keywords in your market. These are the terms being searched most heavily by shoppers and have the potential to drive a large volume of sales. That said, they’re also going to be difficult and expensive to rank for, meaning that while it’s important to include these terms in your content, you’re going to want to target some quick-win keywords as well that can help you to drive sales early on.

It’s important to note that you’ll also want to remove any ‘branded’ keywords from consideration. For instance, if you’re selling socks, keywords like ‘Nike socks’ may have high search volume, but since you’re not Nike, these keywords can’t be targeted by your content.

Once you have identified a good selection of high volume keywords, it’s important to now look for keywords with high opportunity. A high opportunity keyword is a keyword that is not included in the content of many/any competing listings. Within Keyword Research, opportunity is scored from 0-1000. Keywords with a 1000 opportunity score means that no listings on page one have this exact phrase keyword included in their content. The lower the score, the more listings include this term.

To identify high opportunity keywords, it’s recommended that you sort by opportunity score, and look for any keyword with an opportunity of 750-1000 with a search volume of at least 1000 searches per month. There are typically plenty of keywords that have high opportunity, but if no one is searching for them, there isn’t much potential to drive sales. Because each section of a listing has a character limit, it’s important to prioritize keywords that have better potential to drive sales (i.e. keywords that have search volume).

Finally, performing a quick review of high priority and high relevancy keywords will help you to catch any other terms that may have been missed. Particularly, priority is determined by assigning a score based on search volume and opportunity, meaning that it will help to show keywords that are easy to rank for while having some degree of customer audience.

It’s also recommended that you repeat this process by searching several high volume keywords within Keyword Research. Though the majority of the keywords should overlap, ensuring that you’re not missing any other valuable keywords can be helpful.

As you collect these keywords, you are able to move them over to your keyword bank, allowing you to create your listing within Listing Builder. You’re also able to copy and/or export your list to a CSV file. It’s highly recommended that you keep an organized record of your targeted keywords for reference for tracking and advertising purposes.

Competitor Intelligence

While using Keyword Research is a great way to understand your market and build a collection of high volume keywords, it’s also important to understand your product market within the context of the competition. By understanding what keywords your competitors are running ads to, driving sales through, prioritizing, and/or ignoring, you can begin to build a strategy around how to position your product within a market.

With Competitor Intelligence, you can review your competition’s keyword data and use their data to your advantage. Through keyword analysis on several market competitors, you can construct keyword lists based on a few different considerations.

Primarily, Competitor Intelligence can show you what keywords are driving sales for your competition. The tool is able to present any listings, organic ranking for each keyword, ad placements, and keyword search volume, allowing you to review and monitor the keywords that correlate to a bulk of your competitor’s sales. Through this, you can start to build a profile of the keywords that drive the most sales for listings in your market and prioritize your listing content accordingly.

Additionally, using Viral Launch’s Reverse ASIN 2.0 technology, Competitor Intelligence will also show relevant keywords for which your competitor is not indexed and/or ranked for. Comparable to opportunity score, if there is little to no search volume for these keywords, they may not be worth prioritizing. However, if your top competitors are missing a few quality keywords in their listing, it may create opportunity for you to drive sales with little competitive resistance. Especially early on in the life of your listing, understanding how to drive easy sales by capitalizing on the missed opportunities of your competition can be a useful tactic to begin building visibility, sales history, and reviews. This data has the power to help you drive sales through opportunities that your competitors don’t even know that they’re missing.

Ultimately, through viewing the keywords that your competitors are using to drive sales, as well as the overlooked keywords which have the potential to drive sales, you can ensure that you’re not missing a single opportunity!

Listing Analyzer

For Existing Product Listings:

If you have an existing product listing that you’re seeking to improve, the best strategy is to start by using Listing Analyzer. By linking your Seller Central account to your Viral Launch account, you’re able to seamlessly pull your product catalog into the Viral Launch interface.

From the Listing Analyzer tab in your Viral Launch dashboard, you can run an analysis on your product. Our software will pull metrics and keyword data from your listing, presenting you with an overview of your product in comparison to the market, along with a listing quality score. Through this tool, your listing’s images, reviews, competitiveness and copy are analyzed and you are also provided with a list of competitive and comparative products.

Additionally (and most importantly within the context of this article), Listing Analyzer will also provide you with an extensive list of keywords which are relevant to your product market. This data is relatively similar to Keyword Research (with regards to the metrics provided), however you are also able to review whether or not the keyword is being utilized in your listing.

From this list, you are able to select keywords that are relevant to your listing and move them into Keyword Manager to monitor, track, and/or incorporate into your listing.

On a final note, it’s important to make sure that you’re putting your best foot forward when it comes to optimizing your listing with the strongest keyword spread possible. That said, if you are working with an older product, particularly if it’s selling relatively well, changing your listing content can create a ‘reshuffling’ of your keywords within Amazon’s system. Because of this, you can sometimes see a short term detriment to ranking and sales as your listing is reincorporated into Amazon’s SEO structure. Therefore, while it can be beneficial in the long term to fully optimize your listing, you may need to weigh this against the potential setbacks to determine if and when to change your content. Ultimately, while this can be a good tactic for working with a new listing, altering your content becomes more complicated as your listing ages.

For a New Product Listing:

If you are beginning your keyword research prior to having an active listing on Amazon, you will want to begin your process by building out your keyword list through the use of Keyword Research and Competitor Intelligence.

Once you have a listing on Amazon, it’s advantageous to run your product listing through Listing Analyzer to further ensure that you’re maximizing your keyword/ranking potential.

While you do need an existing listing in order to run an analysis, it’s worth it to think of Listing Analyzer once your product listing is up on Amazon as a final check to verify listing quality. At this point, you can review the provided keyword data through the tool and make any final adjustments if you notice any missed terms.

Note: If you are running an analysis on a brand new listing, it’s unlikely that you will have a perfect score, as review quantity, revenue generation, etc. in comparison to the market factor in to the assessment. While you want to note these data points as a means of knowing what’s needed to maximize competitiveness for your market, early on, the best use of Listing Analyzer is to verify your keyword list and review competing and complementary products for the purpose of product targeted advertising.

Keyword Manager

Now that your keyword bank is compiled (and hopefully added to your listing), it’s time to start benefiting from your research. Keyword Manager helps you to track your keyword bank and understand how and where you’re driving sales.

Considering it’s almost impossible to go a single day without encountering the immense reach of Amazon, it’s obvious that the largest e-commerce marketplace is also an insanely saturated e-commerce marketplace. While employing thorough keyword research into your listing is a critically important element of success, it is very unlikely that you will magically appear at the top of the search results. Amazon favors products that perform and as a new product, you have to prove that you can get sales in the market in order to gain visibility. Driving sales is not always easy, especially with a new product with no reviews or sales history, but with the proper strategy around marketing and advertising, you can begin to generate sales and improve keyword ranking (thus driving organic visibility).

By utilizing Keyword Manager to track your relevant keywords, you can monitor your progress to better determine which keywords are producing the most growth, and which keywords you’re having more trouble with. You can use this data to develop a strategy to continue building momentum, and you can ensure that you’re not missing a beat by establishing notifications and hourly tracking on your most critical search terms. If your ranking fluctuates, or your ad positioning changes, you’ll be able to respond quickly and efficiently to address the situation.

While Keyword Manager isn’t explicitly a keyword research tool, it’s a great resource for helping you to fully capitalize on your keyword strategy. With the ability to review organic and sponsored positioning, prioritize by opportunity and search volume, and track your movements in your market, Keyword Manager gives you the tools you need to harvest the fruits of your (keyword research) labor.

Conclusion:

As more sellers enter the Amazon marketplace at an accelerating pace, the importance of thorough research and a deep understanding of your product market is crucial for driving success. Robust keyword research is the cornerstone of any successful strategy for launching a product on Amazon. Developing a well prioritized bank of keywords helps you to establish a wide breadth of searches through which you can gain visibility and sales, while also enabling a deeper understanding of how to use PPC and marketing to effectively grow your product.

Ensuring that you have the broadest range of keywords possible, and knowing how all of your keywords interact with the market informs you on how and where to drive sales and ranking. Through adequate keyword research, you can understand where your competition drives sales, which keywords generate the most sales for your market, and which keywords you can most easily gain ranking traction for.

The importance of performing your due diligence when performing keyword research cannot be overstated. Implementation of this process will ensure that you’re well positioned to take on the competition and achieve success with your business. To learn more about how to successfully launch and rank products, check out our blog post here.

Amazon Product Launch Strategy From the Experts

What Makes for a Successful Amazon Product Launch?

After your listing goes live, it’s time to start driving sales with a successful Amazon product launch.

Because regardless of how great your product is, if no one’s buying it, it doesn’t matter. Being successful in this space all comes down to product visibility.

When someone searches for your keyword, you want to be the first product seen. The tricky part? Most people aren’t looking past Page 1.

But in the crowded Amazon marketplace, how do you get there? It starts with having the right product launch strategy. And after working with over 8,000 brands to run more than 35,000 launches, Viral Launch knows exactly how to create a successful launch campaign. Our launch experts are ready to help you today!

What a Product Launch Does

Amazon rewards sellers who bring in outside traffic and sales with more predominant search placements. Product launches, also referred to as promotional giveaways, are a common practice on the platform and a way to help boost sales, which in turn will benefit ranking. The concept is pretty simple, although it can seem confusing at first, especially for new sellers.

So, let’s break it down a bit more.

A product launch is designed to project your listing to Page 1 for a major keyword or phrase relevant to your product. Remember, the higher you rank, the closer you are to Page 1 (if you’re not there already!). The goal is to get your listing to appear in organic search results and increase your organic sales.

Shoppers like launches for the discounted prices. Sellers benefit from launches because they can:

  • Boost keyword ranking
  • Improve organic traffic for a better conversion rate
  • Increase sales velocity and sales history
  • Give your product more authority on Amazon.com

Boosting your sales means more than extra money in your pocket. Increasing your sales velocity improves your ranking, and products with a higher rank have better visibility. It truly is a cycle, with one thing impacting another for better or for worse.

Who Would Benefit from a Launch?

Once you’ve selected a product, found a supplier and got your listing up and going, you want to see those sales rolling in. The truth is, without any outside effort, you’re really leaving it to Lady Luck for your product to take off.

Launches can help any seller gain a competitive edge. If you’re new to Amazon, you’re starting from scratch with no reviews and no sales. That makes it awfully tough to get your product in a good position to sell. Running a launch puts your product in front of more buyers right from the start. Who wouldn’t want that?

If you’re an established seller, launches can help a stagnant product sitting on Page 20 start moving again. And even if your product is selling, is it selling enough? Are your margins being met? Use a launch to drive exposure and move your listing up in ranking and in search results.

Developing an Amazon Product Launch Strategy

Letting your listing become lost in the crowd leaves you with untapped potential. More importantly, untapped profit. Running a launch can be very beneficial, but be aware it’s an upfront investment. Also, note that not every Amazon product launch strategy is the same. Everyone in the space has their own opinion of what works and what doesn’t. Regardless of what approach you take, make sure you:

  • Pay attention to your bottom line and don’t let the wrong launch strategy cost you money in the long run.
  • Take advantage of the holidays and/or special sales days. Target the influx of holiday shoppers, and remember to run launches before big sales events like Cyber Monday and Prime Day in particular.

Check out this podcast with VL Launch Director Andrew Field for more tips on launching your next product. 

The VL Launch Strategy

Viral Launch has long been known as a successful launch platform. Let’s learn the basics behind our Amazon launch strategy.

First, we’ll determine a keyword (we recommend targeting no more than 4) with a good search volume that will convert well for your product. Next, we’ll analyze the market to determine the number of units required to give away at a discounted price on our own buyer deal site. This discount typically ends up being about 90% off and is based on the sales of Page 1 products.

We typically recommend running a giveaway for a period of 7-10 days. This is long enough for Amazon to recognize the sales, but still short enough to limit the number of products being given away.

Amazon’s algorithms are always being updated and tweaked, so it’s important to stay up to date on best practices. Some sellers are finding success with shorter launches/higher giveaway days, even to the point of only giving away a large number of units for one day. We are currently doing testing and looking at our large data set to keep everyone informed.

Creating Your VL Amazon Product Launch

Before you begin to reap the benefits of your unique Amazon product launch, you need to set and schedule it on our platform.

You’ll be required to input the following:

  • Target keyword
  • Launch duration
  • Units to give
  • Promo price
  • Coupon codes

Once that’s all set, the system will take it from there. A major advantage of the VL launch platform is its ease of use. You don’t have to be an expert in any way! And while launches can easily be set up by yourself, you can always talk with a Viral Launch Seller Coach to receive expert advice and guidance.

Maintaining Your Rank After a Launch

A successful Amazon launch strategy will see a listing increase in rank and ideally land on Page 1. But you don’t just want a better ranking, you want better sales, too. How can you maintain your rank position and rack up more sales numbers? Here are 4 ways:

  1. Listing Optimization: Maximize your ranking and purchasing potential by optimizing your listing. Use relevant, high-volume keywords, and find the high-opportunity keywords that competitors aren’t targeting. The better you position your product with high-ranking keywords, the more you’ll boost your visibility.
  2. Price Strategy: Price your product in line with your competition. If your price is a lot higher than most of the Page 1 competitors, you probably won’t convert as well.
  3. PPC: Paying for sponsored ad content can also drive people to your listing. Similar to promotional giveaways, PPC (Pay Per Click) generates traffic through targeted keywords and can contribute to ranking improvement.
  4. Customer Service: While you can’t incentivize reviews, you can encourage review generation with great customer service and email follow-up campaigns. When customers have a pleasant shopping experience with you, the more likely they are to leave reviews and even promote your product themselves.

Recap

Keyword ranking and visibility on Amazon are crucial for your success. Launches are a fast, easy way to increase your rank, sales, and reviews.

Watch this VL launch series for more information on how to run a launch and learn more about our proven strategy. Schedule yours or talk with a Viral Launch launch expert today!

How To Increase Sales on Amazon: What We’ve Learned From Working With 8,000+ Brands

Is your Amazon product stuck in a rut? Selling consistently can be a challenge, and with sales lower than you want them to be, you’re probably left wondering what you’re doing wrong. Your low sales volume could be due to any number of things. Maybe your listing isn’t optimized well for main keywords. Maybe people are choosing to buy a similar product with more reviews. If your stock isn’t moving as fast as you would like, we’ve got some tips to help you learn how to increase sales on Amazon.

Before we begin, it’s worth noting that there’s no one quick fix to increase your product’s sales. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a silver bullet. Amazon uses a variety of factors to determine which products appear on page one for any specific search. And just because your product is on page one, doesn’t necessarily mean it will convert well. These tips give you a range of ideas that will all work together to help boost your sales.

1. Optimize Your Listing

In order to make sales on Amazon, you have to get your product in front of shoppers. No one is going to buy a product they’ve never seen. In order to rank in Amazon’s search results across all major search terms and get your product seen, your listing needs to be optimized for relevant keywords related to your product.

This can be achieved by using a keyword research tool to help you identify high volume keywords. Be sure you are utilizing a tool that utilizes only Amazon data. When you search the main keyword that describes your product, the tool should give you the monthly search volume for that exact word as well as other suggested keywords to use and their monthly search volume.

Once you have a list of relevant keywords to your product, you can start writing your listing. Unlike Google, Amazon’s search engine focuses on unique keywords, meaning if a keyword is in the listing once, no extra weight is give if it is used again.

While using a keyword multiple times doesn’t give your listing an extra boost, the placement of keywords does matter in ranking. A keyword placed in the title will carry more weight than a keyword placed in the bullet points or backend. With that in mind, it’s usually best to place the highest volume keywords in the title to capture as many searches as possible.

To keep track of all the keywords while writing, we recommend using a listing builder tool. Many of these tools will remove a word from your “master keyword list” once you have used it in the listing.

If you don’t feel particularly confident in your writing abilities, another option is to hire a professional copywriter to create your listing for you. An experienced writer will be able to work with you to write engaging and informative copy that captures all main keywords and adheres to your brand voice. If you’ve got the money in your budget, this option could take one thing off your plate.

It’s important to remember that an optimized listing can only get you so far. Yes, it will ensure that you are indexed for all relevant terms and provide useful information, but it takes a combination of things to convert sales. Make sure your entire listing is strong from top to bottom. This includes investing in professional photography, ensuring your product is priced competitively, and getting to the top of search results.

 

2. Focus on Increasing Your Review Count

Over 85% of online shoppers say they trust product reviews as much as they trust a personal recommendation. This means that having a high number of reviews plus a high review rating can translate to big sales for your product. However, about 90% of Amazon shoppers never leave feedback, meaning the vast majority of shoppers are never giving their opinion.

Obviously there’s no way to ensure every person that buys your product will leave a review. But there are a few tactics you can use to help encourage past buyers to login and write their thoughts on your product.

Marketing Inserts

Many Amazon sellers find that a small insert in your product packaging can nudge buyers to visit your review page and leave their thoughts. This simple reminder can also contain information on who to contact if for some reason there are any issues with the product at the time of delivery. This allows you the chance to make things right before the buyer torches you in a bad review.

That being said, there is a risk in adding these inserts to your product packaging, since Amazon’s terms are written so loosely. While some sellers see success with marketing inserts, add them at your own risk and know that Amazon could take action.

Email Follow Up

Email follow ups are a great way to communicate with buyers. It’s usually best to send a series of emails that builds up to asking for a review. You can create an email template for each of the follow up steps and use an automated email system to send these out:

  • Delivery Confirmation –  Sent 1 to 5 days after delivery, this email will confirm the delivery of your product. This is also a great time to provide a contact number and let the customer know they can reach out with any issues they might have. You always want customers to contact you first with any problems in order to deter them from leaving bad reviews.
  • Review Request – The third email, sent 5 to 15 days after delivery, should contain a request for a review. Explain to the customer how reviews help your business and that you would really appreciate it if they took the time to leave their opinion. You can even include a link that will take the customer directly to your review page.

It’s best to end your email sequence at 2 emails. Any more than that, and it may appear spammy to customers. While nothing will ensure every single customer leaves a review, an email follow up sequence will help to nudge customers in the right direction

Important Note: When asking customers to leave reviews of your product, be sure to not offer any incentive for a review. This is against Amazon’s terms of service. It’s crucial to not break any of these rules when it comes to asking for reviews, as Amazon has recently been cracking down and suspending accounts for review manipulation. Make sure you read the terms of service thoroughly and that you aren’t in violation of any of them when asking customers to leave feedback. For more info. concerning email follow-ups, check out our video below!

 

3. Run a Promotional Launch or Giveaway

At first thought, this may seem counterproductive in your search for how to increase sales on Amazon. How could giving away your product at a discount help make it a success? But there is a science behind this process that could help boost your ranking and improve your sales in the long run.

What is a Launch?

A product launch is a targeted giveaway meant to project your listing to page one of search results for a major keyword. The overall goal of this process is to increase organic sales, but you’ll have to giveaway your product at a deep discount in order to boost keyword ranking. To rank among your top competitors, you must match or slightly exceed their daily sales for a short period of time. Usually this discount is 90% or more so that you’re able to sell the required number of units per day.

Who Can Help Me with a Launch?

The Amazon Seller Coaches at Viral Launch are here to help you in every step of this process. First we’ll help you identify a keyword to target for your launch. Then using Amazon data for your specific market, we’ll determine the number of units you’ll need to give away in order to achieve page one status.

Typically, launches run for 7 to 10 days. This range is the sweet spot. It allows enough time for Amazon to recognize the sales, while also being short enough that it limits the number of units you’ll have to give away. This will allow you to boost ranking while also saving money.

While a large portion of our data points to 7 to 10 day launches being the most effect for sales history and velocity, Amazon’s algorithms are constantly changing. This means it’s important to keep an eye out for the latest best practices. Some Amazon sellers have recently found success giving away a larger amount of inventory within one day for a larger, sharper sales peak to boost ranking.

What Happens After a Product Launch?

Once your product is ranking, the goal is to get enough organic sales that you can maintain your page one ranking. This places a lot of importance on your listing, photos and price. Be sure your copy is optimized for your main keywords. Upload professional product photos and make sure your product is competitively priced. All these factors will help you convert and maintain your ranking.

4. Utilize PPC Ads

PPC (Pay Per Click) ads allow your listing to get more exposure for a targeted keyword. When you set up a PPC campaign, you set a daily budget and bid on a click price. Amazon will then post your listing as an ad for targeted keywords. You do not pay unless the ad is clicked. However, keep in mind that just because someone clicks, does not mean they will buy, so be sure your listing and photos are optimized to convert sales. There are two types of Sponsored ads in Amazon Seller Central:

  • Manual – This allows you to pick the specific keywords you want to target. If you know which keywords your listing converts best for and you want to target them specifically, this is a great option.
  • Automatic – This option allows you to set a budget and then Amazon’s algorithms will select which keywords to present your product for. These ads can be a bit unfocused or random, but can give great insight into which terms your product converts well for and can still help to get your product seen.

Use the Data

One thing people often overlook about PPC campaigns is that it gives you tons of useful data about your listing, impressions and conversions. This can help you improve your listing and increase sales. For example:

  • High Clicks, Low Sales – If you’re getting a lot of clicks for a keyword, but low sales, you may be able to tweak your copy and optimize the listing in order to take advantage of the customer interest in the specific keyword.
  • High Conversions – If you’re getting a high number of conversions for a specific keyword, you may want to put even more focus on and budget into that keyword, as it’s clearly paying off for you.
  • High Impressions, Low Sales – If it seems that you’re getting a lot of impressions, but no one is buying your product, this may mean that your chosen keyword isn’t relevant to your product. This then causes people to click the ad, but leave the page as soon as they realize it isn’t what they want.

Bonus Tip: External Traffic

While it’s against Amazon’s guidelines to include any links or marketing language in your listing that takes shoppers away from their site, you are allowed to push visitors from other sites to your product on Amazon. You can utilize your company website, blog, etc. to bring people to your Amazon listing.

If you have a website or blog with decent traffic, start including links to your product listing. You’d be surprised of the difference this can make. The goal is to get as many eyes on your product as possible, so the more paths to your listing, the better.

Keep in mind though that for some sellers, driving external traffic isn’t always the best use of effort or money. First focus on using the tips previously mentioned in this post and take advantage of the immense traffic that Amazon already provides.

Get to Work!

Remember there’s no magic bullet for increasing your sales on Amazon. A variety of factors go into ranking, converting and staying competitive in any market. Don’t simply pick one of the tips out of this list and assume it will mysteriously solve all of your problems. Take your time, gather data, do research and create a strong overall listing with optimized text, professional photos and a competitive price. With all these factors working together, you’re sure to find the methods that make your revenue grow!

 

Amazon Sales Rank: Why it’s Important & How to Improve It?

For even the most seasoned sellers, mastering the intricacies of Amazon can be difficult to say the least. Like with any online or internet-based venture, things change on Amazon sometimes seemingly overnight. It can also be difficult to get concrete information about some of their elements – especially Amazon sales rank, also known as Best Sellers Rank (BSR).

[YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN: 5 Tips on How To Improve Your Amazon Ranking]

This metric is quite possibly the most disputed and researched element in Amazon’s arsenal. Sellers truly have a love-hate relationship with BSR. Viral Launch’s own CEO Casey Gauss made it his own mission to learn more about the mysterious metric by reverse engineering Amazon’s algorithm. You can learn more about that in his Definitive Guide to Understanding BSR.

But for now, let’s answer a few questions:

What is Amazon Sales Rank?

Essentially, Amazon Sales Rank is used to determine a product’s popularity within a category. It actually exists for all products, even those that aren’t part of a category. Products can have a sales rank of 1 to over a million. The lower your number is, the more sales your product is getting and vice versa. Basically, it’s calculating the period of time since an item last sold, so if you want a low BSR, ideally you want the period of time between sales to be as small as possible. Just think of your BSR like your golf scorecard – the lower the number, the better you’re doing.

You can find the BSR of any product in the Product Information section of a listing. As an example, I searched for a random product – in this case, a phone charger.

As you can see in the image above, you get quite a bit of info at a quick glance.

This particular phone charger’s BSR is 28 in its main category of Cell Phones & Accessories. You also have the option to look at a list of the Top 100 products in that main category. Once you boil it down to subcategories, it ranks 1 and 28.

Why Does Amazon Sales Rank Matter?

From a seller’s standpoint, BSR matters for a few reasons. For starters, it’s an indication of how well your product is selling compared to competitor products, which gives you an idea of where you’re at in the marketplace. So ideally, you want to have as low of a BSR score as possible.

Just remember, when looking at BSR for the products you’re selling it’s an indication of past sales. Think of it this way, does a report card from a previous semester impact your grades in next semester? No. It’s just an indication of your past performance. So like a report card, BSR has no bearing on your future sales and won’t directly help you drive organic sales. This is actually one of the biggest misconceptions about BSR.

For more info about BSR misconceptions, check out this blog about Busting BSR Myths.

How Can I Improve my Amazon Sales Rank?

Now that you know a little background about Amazon sales rank, let’s go over some guidelines of how to improve it. The very best way to improve your Amazon sales rank is to make more sales. I know, that seems pretty obvious, but it’s something newer sellers still struggle with. Here are a few ways to improve your chances at more sales:

  • Optimize your listing: Choosing the right keywords for your product is imperative. It’s also important to make sure you include keywords in your listing, especially in your title and bullets. This will help your listing be seen by more people, increasing the chances of your product being bought. There are a lot of keyword tools out there, including Keyword Research from Viral Launch, that can help you with this.
  • Create great copy: Along with including keywords in your listing copy, you also have to do a great job selling your product to customers. Make sure to highlight all the important aspects of your listing and tell people why they should buy it.
  • Use professional photos: In addition to copy, product photography plays a huge role in increasing conversions. Many people think a few smartphone photos and some Photoshop is all you need and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Professional photography can make a huge difference in selling your product to customers.
  • Run a giveaway: Giveaways, or Launches, as they’re called here at Viral Launch, are a way to increase your listing’s ranking for a major keyword. In short, we target a major keyword associated with your product and do product giveaways – usually around 90% off – for a period of 7-10 days. As your product racks up the sales, it is organically moved up in rankings. While the goal of a launch is to improve keyword ranking (which is more crucial to generating organic sales), an improved BSR is frequently a side effect of a promotional campaign.
  • PPC Campaigns: Pay-Per-Click Campaigns are essentially the “sponsored content” you see when browsing Amazon, Google or other search engines. Basically, you pay a small fee to search engines for a specific keyword. This helps get your product in front of more people who are searching for similar items.

One thing you don’t want to do while chasing a lower BSR is intentionally miscategorizing your product in a less competitive subcategory. Some sellers try this tactic because they think it will be easier to achieve a lower BSR. However, we don’t recommend this because it limits the product’s visibility as many searches filter to a relevant subcategory. This means your product could be filtered out of valuable results.

Final Thoughts

Here at Viral Launch, part of our mission is making sure sellers have the best possible information about all things Amazon in their arsenal. That’s especially true when it comes to a widely disputed, misunderstood and, frankly, confusing topic like Amazon sales rank. Is it important? Sure. It’s great to know how your product is doing in comparison to others. But you should view BSR as more of a symptom rather than a cure. If your product isn’t performing well compared to its peers, check out competitor listings. Try to see what they’re doing right and you might find ways to improve your listing. Just remember, what your BSR is today has no bearing on what sales you’ll make tomorrow.

Want the latest Amazon news, tips, and insights from experts sent to your inbox? Sign up for our email list below!

Amazon Keywords: Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Listings

When it comes to creating a new product listing on Amazon, knowing which keywords to include and where to place them within your Amazon listing can make all the difference. Keywords are incredibly important to your products sales, ranking, and overall success. Properly researched and targeted Amazon keywords are the lifeblood of your listing.

The best use of targeted keywords and keyword variations can often result in improved search volume, increased traffic, longer sessions, and most importantly, improved sales.

Often times you will hear the process of targeting Amazon keywords referred to as Amazon SEO. In broad terms, SEO refers to the process of “Search Term Optimization,” a system of sophisticated techniques used by content creators and marketing teams to optimize the search volume and page rankings for web content, social media sites, or news stories. For our purposes “Amazon SEO” is often used alongside or in place of keyword ranking and keyword optimization.

This guide will take you step-by-step through the procedures used by leading Amazon sellers and keyword experts to get the most out of your Amazon keywords. We’ll cover:

  • Industry-leading keyword tools, which can help take the guesswork out of determining which keywords to target while helping you to understand which keywords are most important for your product.
  • Tips and tricks to improve your keyword rank while exposing some myths and misunderstandings associated with keyword search volume.
  • Key factors when it comes to assembling and arranging your Amazon keywords within the body of your product listing.

So let’s jump in!

PS, if you’d like to check out our video walkthrough on optimizing and writing your listing, check out our video below!

 

1. Determine Which Amazon Keywords To Target For Your Product

To begin, let’s explore two of the leading keyword software tools available to Amazon sellers, beginner and expert alike. A good keyword tool is vital for sifting through the thousands and thousands of variations which can occur within any given keyword phrase. One of the most common software tools for establishing Amazon keywords is Google Keyword Planner.

Part of Google’s AdWords tools, Keyword Planner is a simple, easy-to-use keyword tool that allows you to quickly establish Google search volume for virtually any keyword phrase or product. Google Keyword Planner features easy-to-read graphs, plus a full breakdown of keyword search volume, and keyword priority.

One drawback to Google Keyword Planner is the broad scope of the tool’s results. Keyword Planner has been designed to collect results from Google’s search algorithm exclusively. These Google-only search trends tend to skew results from groups of exclusively E-commerce keywords, to a broad range of internet content and web searches.

For example if you search “best skateboards” in Keyword Planner, your results will include data for searches referencing popular skateboarders or skateboarding videos. Because of this wide net tendency, you’ll want to pay special attention to your results, being sure to eliminate keywords phrases that involve multimedia, name brands, and specific locations, persons, or businesses.

One way to specialize your keyword searches is to use Amazon-specific keyword software. Doing so allows you to make sure you’re only seeing searches from Amazon, instead of external search engines like Google or Bing. Again, search behavior is very different. An Amazon keyword tool will allow you to best optimize your listing for Amazon search.

For example the Viral Launch Amazon Keyword Tool gives users a huge range of keyword statistics and metrics in one, easy-to-understand place. One huge advantage of Viral Launch Keyword Research is its superior Amazon specific data which gives you extremely accurate breakdowns of the most important keyword insights.

You will see a list of all your product’s relevant keywords, alongside helpful metrics: volume, opportunity, priority, and relevancy. With one search, you have all the information you need to write your listing or optimize your keyword targeting in sponsored ads. 

Check out how to use Keyword Research to ensure your listing is optimized specifically for Amazon.

2. Aggregate Then Curate Your Products’ Top Amazon Keywords

Once you have your list of targeted keywords and keyword phrases, you’ll need to condense your findings down to the highest ranking and most relevant words. This process can be tricky and even experienced sellers often get it wrong. One of the most common mistakes new sellers make is to over-emphasize exact search volume.

Though volume, or the pure number of searches for a word or phrase, is very important, it is not the only factor to consider. You also want to consider metrics such as opportunity, relevancy, and broad search volume. These metrics can reveal a host of chances for you to target neglected keywords and untapped markets.

For instance, you can target keywords with high search volume and high opportunity scores. A high opportunity score means that keyword is being overlooked by competitors and is easy to rank for just by adding it to the title of your listing. You would be surprised how many high volume search terms are not included in your competitors’ listings. By giving these keywords priority in your listing, you can quickly gain visibility and pull in sales from overlooked keyword markets. 

You might also consider looking at broad search volume. Broad search volume represents all of the keyword phrases that contain that keyword. For example, if you are looking at the term “rattle” and see a broad search volume of 76,518, that means that 76,518 searches contain the term “rattle.”

By looking at the broadest spectrum of search rather than just the narrow spectrum of exact volume, you can get a better overall picture of which keywords are most important to your product. A balance of keywords from these different categories is vital for producing a well-balanced listing which targets multiple demographics and search pockets. Read more about the 3 crucial keyword scores shown in Keyword Research.

3. Capitalize On Strategic Amazon Keyword Placement

Once you have determined the keywords or phrases you wish to target, you can begin to assemble your listing’s title and bullet points. It’s vital for you to keep in mind how the Amazon search algorithm places greater emphasis or “weight” on certain portions of your listing. This means that certain sections of your listing contain greater ranking power than others when it comes to customer search. A simple breakdown from highest priority to lowest is as follows:

  • Listing Title
  • Bullet Points
  • Backend Keywords

By far the most important element of your listing is the title. The title is weighted extremely high and constitutes the most powerful search portion of your listing. When beginning to assembling your title, you want to focus the most effort on the first 5 words. These first 5 keywords in your title will constitute what is known as the Canonical URL.

In simple terms, the canonical URL contains the 5 words that are indexed for online search engines like Google. This search engine indexation is vital for pulling in

 outside traffic. A recent Survata study showed that 36% of product searches start on search engines like Google, not on Amazon. If you don’t choose the most relevant and powerful keywords for your title, you put your listing at a disadvantage from being discovered through Google searches.

Next, you want to complete your title keeping in mind that your remaining keywords should be used from left to right in order of importance. The Amazon algorithm reads listing titles with this left to right, making it vital for you to use your highest ranking keywords first.

Once the listing title is complete, you will focus on your listing’s bullet points. The bullet points, or key product features are a chance for you to continue to include relevant keywords and phrases. Many categories have extremely limited character counts for the bullet points, so it’s important to maintain a strategic outlook when building out this section. Don’t hesitate to use various keyword plural forms while including as many keywords gathered from your research as possible without compromising the readability of the bullet.

Pro Tip: Most research indicates that your product description is not affected by Amazon keywords or search engine keywords. This being said, your product description is a great opportunity for you to expound on your product’s unique features and quality. In short, your product description is a chance for you to make a unique and memorable marketing pitch for your product without concern for using the proper ranking keywords or phrases. Use the 2,000 characters allowed in this section to your advantage by creating a unique brand voice and addressing any features that are not covered within the title and bullets.  

4. Repeat Keywords and Use Various Plural Forms

Once you have developed a draft for your product’s title and bullet points you want to scan your listing for missed opportunities. Many sellers neglect to include the plural forms and variations of phrases in the listing. Anytime you can include plural forms or mix-and-match various phrases into new threads, you improve the likelihood that your listing will index and rank for multiple variations. This multi-pronged approach coupled with the strategic inclusion of high ranking keywords gives your listing the best opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

5. Leverage Backend Amazon Keywords

All Amazon listings are allowed 250 bytes to include keywords that are not in the title and bullet points. This is a powerful opportunity for you to include outlier keywords which are not seen by Amazon shoppers. These hidden backend keywords can include phrases or terms that may not make sense in the context of your listing. It also gives sellers the chance to exploit the use of common misspellings or slang used in many searches. These misspellings and common phrases can be singled out when doing your keyword research with either Google Keyword Planner or more powerfully with Viral Launch Keyword Research.

When you are in the midst of your keyword research, start to compile a list of candidates for these backend terms. Once you have drafted your title and bullet points, review your list and compile the top ranking words which you have not included in the listing proper. Take caution to exclude name brands or copy-written material from you backend terms, as this practice can be grounds for your listing’s removal.

Once you have established the highest-ranking keywords that you have not included in your title or bullets, simply copy and paste these terms into the edit listing portion of your Seller Central.

Pro Tip: Our current research is showing an emerging trend of powerful foreign language search terms. These keywords, (often in Spanish for US markets) are many times direct translations of the highest ranking english keywords or phrases. The inclusion of foreign language phrases is a powerful way for sellers to tap into underserved markets and exploit this portion of your listing to its maximum advantage. Note* The foreign language phrases are included within the Viral Launch Keyword Research Tool.

In conclusion, we encourage every seller who is forming a new listing to keep these three principles in mind.

  1. Research: Be sure to take your time and do the proper research to establish which keywords  and phrases to target. No matter what software you end up using, take the time to be thorough and don’t miss out on high ranking words or outliers in your market.
  2. Target: Always keep in mind where you are placing keywords within your listing. Always remember that your title and bullet points are the key aspects of your listing when it comes to achieving keyword ranking. Always Apply the principles of keyword placement and plural forms to achieve the best results.  
  3. Diversify: Remember to think outside the box for where unused keywords might be used. Utilize the backend terms to the best of your ability to capture these outliers and put them to work for your listing.

The application of these 3 simple principle coupled with the powerful software tools and data available online can put your listing in a powerful position to start converting keywords to cash in no time.

Pro Tip: Use a Listing Builder, like the one included in Keyword Research, for a seamless experience writing your Amazon listing. Listing Builder allows you to write your listing and see, in real time, which important words you’re still missing. View your optimization score and how many potential searches your could include in your copy.

Amazon Giveaway: How to Determine Giveaway Units

Using search volume to determine the number of Amazon giveaway units needed to drive keyword ranking is an extremely flawed method.

A significant number of sellers are running promotions and giving away far too many units in promotions. When asked how they are determining the number of units they are giving away, many sellers site their keyword tool. As a result of these bloated suggestions, countless sellers are wasting thousands of dollars in extra inventory and advertising spend.

In this post, I’ll show you what’s wrong with using search volume. And then I’ll walk you through the current best strategies for determining the right number of units for a giveaway. After running over 30,000 product launches, we’ve learned a thing or two about what it takes to drive ranking, including how to best estimate number of giveaway units.

Two Major Flaws In Using Keyword Volume To Estimate Giveaway Units

Flaw #1: Conversion Rate

Remember that sales volume, not search volume, is the important metric for keyword ranking. If there are a hundred-zillion searches per month for a product but only 10 sales, you only need to drive enough sales to compete with those 10 purchases.  

Conversion rate from search to purchase can be drastic. We have access to some insider, Amazon data, and what it shows is that for some keywords, the percentage of searches that result in a sale can be as high as 50% and as low as 0.01%.

Talk about a drastic difference! That means if a keyword gets 10,000 searches per month, there could be anywhere from 5,000 sales to 10 sales.

There’s no way around this huge variation in conversion rate. What if you took an average? Let’s call the middle a 25% conversion rate. That would mean 25% of 10,000 searches are sales. So monthly sales would be 2,500. But 2,500 giveaway units isn’t going to do much if the keyword is actually converting at 50%. That would mean sales were actually 5,000.

On the other hand, it would be extremely excessive to give 2,500 units if the conversion rate was only 0.01%. In that case, you would have only needed 10 sales. But instead you threw away inventory.

As you can see, without an understanding of conversion rate, estimating Amazon giveaway units using search volume is very misleading.

Flaw #2: Sales Distribution

The second major flaw in determining number of giveaway units from search volume is the distribution of sales across search results. Sales distribution can be summed up with this simple question: what percentage of shoppers who run a search, purchase the #1 ranking product? What about the #5 ranking product? The #15?

If 100% of shoppers who search a keyword end up purchasing the #1 ranking product, sales distribution would be low. Actually, in the case of 100%, the distribution would be 0.

If 10% of customers purchased the #1 ranking product, another 10% purchased the #2 ranking product, and so on, the distribution would be higher and would look like this.

So what is the likelihood that sales distribution is consistent for most keyword searches on Amazon?

If you search, “AA batteries,” you don’t have to scroll very far before you find what you’re looking for. The products are all generally the same with minimal difference other than price and quantity.

Conversely, when shopping for, “father’s day gift” or “baby bandana bib,” style and preference are important considerations for shoppers. Prospective customers are much more likely to browse the results, ultimately purchasing the style, bundle, or color they like most.

Now that you understand what sales distribution is and how it can vary wildly, you can begin to see the second flaw in using search volume to estimate number of Amazon giveaway units. Keyword tools do not consider sales distribution. In fact, they don’t have any information about sales distribution at all.

And that’s a problem for you as you determine the optimal number of giveaway units for your launch. Sales distribution plays a critical role in the number of sales your product needs to outrank the competition.

For example, let’s say 80% of the sales for a keyword search are split between the top 5 products. If your goal is just to land in the top 15, then you don’t actually need to compete with those top 5 products. You only need to match the other 20% of the sales for that keyword.

If you did want to land in the top 5 for that keyword, you would need to match the sales of those top 5 competitors. That would mean giving away enough product per day to match 80% of the sales for that search term.

Now let’s look at conversion rate and sales distribution together. Say conversion rate is 2.5% for that keyword with 100,000 searches. That’s 2,500 monthly sales. And if 80% of sales are distributed among the top 5 listings, that means 2,000 monthly sales are going to those top 5 sellers.

So if you want to land in position 6 – 15, you only need to compete with the remaining 500 monthly sales. If we assume that sales distribution between products 6 – 15 is even, we can estimate that each product has about 50 sales per month. Divide that by 30 days in a month, and you’ve got about 2 sales per day, or 2 units a day that you need to give away in your launch. 

As you can see, estimating the number of giveaway units needed to be sold per day to match competitors is highly dependent on the conversion rate AND the sales distribution across the results. Both of these numbers are currently unknown to existing tools and can vary significantly across searches. These factors are what make keyword tool calculations a shot in the dark at best when it comes to giveaway unit recommendations.

How to Estimate the Number of Giveaway Units

First, let’s talk about how a launch works. The idea of a launch is to match or exceed the number of sales for listings on page one for your targeted keyword in a short amount of time. We recommend 7 days, as Amazon recognizes sales history in 7-day buckets.

In order to sell a large number of units in only a few days, you’ll likely need to use a giveaway platform. But how do you determine the number of Amazon giveaway units you need to match or exceed the monthly sales of your competition?

Unfortunately, there is no simple or straightforward answer for you just yet. We will, however, share the processes we have used here at Viral Launch to estimate the number of units to give for tens of thousands of launches over the last few years. We guarantee that this approach is far better than using search volume to estimate the number of Amazon giveaway units you need for a successful launch.

Step 1: Know Your Keywords

First and foremost, knowing your main keyword is critical to a successful Amazon business. Using an Amazon keyword tool such as Keyword Research, allows you to identify your product’s most relevant words. A good tool will help you prioritize by showing you search volume and relevancy for each keyword. We call that our Priority Score.

Step 2: Determine Your Budget

Your budget for your promotional campaign is an important factor in determining which keyword you should target. The higher the sales volume, the more units you will need to rank alongside the page one performers. If your budget is big, go for a keyword that gets a lot of sales. If your budget is smaller, go for a keyword with fewer sales.

Step 3: Determine Monthly Sales Volume for Your Keyword

Once you have selected the keyword you’re going to target based on your budget, search volume, and relevance to your listing, you need to determine the number of Amazon giveaway units to get ranking on page one.

Use a sales volume estimation tool like Market Intelligence to determine the number of sales your page one competitors are doing each month. This will allow you to see the sales volume you need to match or exceed over at least a seven day period.

A simple way to do the math is to take an average of sales for listings on page one you are looking to rank alongside. Let’s say you are looking to rank in the top 5 positions for your keyword and the average sellers are selling 3,000 units per month (100 units per day).

From your keyword research in Step #1, you should have a good feel for your market’s most popular keywords. Let’s say there are 2 high volume keywords, each highly relevant to your product market.

We would suggest giving away at 50% of the average sales volume. So 1,500 units per month or (1,500 / 30 days = 50 units per day) 50 units per day.

Multiply that by a minimum of 7 days of promotions to equal a suggested Amazon giveaway of 350 units. 

We understand that the math is not perfect. There are potentially hundreds of words these top performing products are generating sales through, including PPC, outside traffic, etc. We are working hard to develop a solution for better determining the number of sales per keyword as well. However, until we have this more granular data, we are relying on this tried and true method of determining the number of units to sell from a solid metric, sales volume.

The Takeaway

Now that you understand the technique behind creating an Amazon giveaway strategy based on sales volume, NOT search volume, you can apply some of these techniques to your promotions. No matter what traffic source you’re using (i.e. discounted promotions, Amazon Sponsored Ads, or Facebook promotions) to reach page one, you need to match or exceed the average number of sales for your targeted keyword.

Basing these Amazon giveaway estimates on search volume alone could cost you tens of thousands of extra dollars and cut into the bottom line of your business. Take advantage of the advice and knowledge of the true Amazon experts at Viral Launch and make sure your next promotion sets you up for success.

LAUNCH YOUR PRODUCT

4 Problems with Amazon Keyword Tools & How We Solved Them

If you’ve been creating your own Amazon product listings using Amazon keyword tools, you know about frustration.

Trying to decide which product features will entice customers can be tricky. Trying to write for Amazon SEO is hard. Everyone seems to have a different opinion about how to deal with backend search terms. 

And until now, doing keyword research has been anything but easy.

Thanks to sub-par Amazon keyword tools, you haven’t been sure that the keywords you’re putting into your listings or sponsored ads are any good. And you’re worried that you’re missing out on the right keywords.

You’ve literally been paying for other keyword tools to tell you bad information that you spend hours sifting through, and it’s costing you impressions and sales.

That’s why we created Keyword Research.

The new, cutting-edge, Viral Launch keyword research tool is designed to give you the most comprehensive list of relevant keywords. You get exact search volume from Amazon data along with historical trends. You can also easily find keywords no one else is leveraging using Opportunity Score and see bid costs to optimize your sponsored ads with Sponsored Ad Bids.

You’ve wasted time poring over poor results. Battled doubt that your keyword list is the best. Feared missing the right keywords. Wondered if missing those keywords is costing you sales revenue. No more.

When we looked at other Amazon keyword tools on the market, we found that they were causing 4 major problems. Here’s what they were and how Keyword Research solves them.

1. Wasted Time 

If you’re an Amazon seller, one thing you really can’t afford to waste is time. And, up until now, one of the biggest time-wasting aspects of creating your listing has been searching for the right keywords.

Maybe you begin with a shortlist of search terms that seem to best describe your product and its core uses. You collect terms you assume customers are using to search for products like yours. Plugging in terms to your Amazon keyword tools and then combing through pages of results for each is tedious. Before you know it, you’ve burned two hours and want to toss your laptop out the window.

Keyword Research streamlines this process by allowing you to enter just one root keyword and get all the keywords you need. You can adjust your keyword results by search volume, priority or relevancy. Then you can easily copy unique words, phrase volume pairs or all phrases, and paste them into any document for reference. You can even download selected results to a comma-separated values file (CSV) for easy data storage and transport.

Our extremely sophisticated set of algorithms quickly delivers a comprehensive list of your market’s most relevant search terms. That means no more inputting 25 different keywords and having to make judgment calls on what to include and what not to include. Simply search and you’re set.

2. Irrelevant Results

After using other Amazon keyword tools, you’ve no doubt come away wondering if you’re getting the most relevant, up-to-date results. Say you’re selling a fish oil supplement. When “Fish oil diffuser (89,400)” and “Go Fish oil (30,100)” come up in the search results, you know your skepticism is justified.

Customers aren’t actually searching for those products because those products don’t exist, which casts doubt on every other keyword result on that list. Even performing a traditional reverse ASIN lookup for one ASIN misses some of your most relevant keywords and can yield irrelevant results that aren’t important to include in your listing like “customer service.”

Keyword Research uses Reverse Market Lookups, a master reverse-ASIN lookup that reaches across all your Amazon markets. Reverse Market Lookups take the listings of all of your top competitors into consideration instead of just one. And you get a list of the most relevant, high-volume keyword searches on Amazon for a panoramic view of your keyword’s market footprint.

Say you’re selling a trash can. When you search that phrase using Keyword Research, you get related keyword phrases like “kitchen trash can” and “stainless steel trash can,” as well as horizontal keywords like “garbage can” and “trash bin” which don’t actually include the seed term.

You won’t get all of these crucial horizontal phrases with just one search in other Amazon keyword tools. And with horizontal terms like “garbage can” racking up over 40,000 searches per month, you cannot afford to miss out. Check out this head-to-head comparison of top Amazon keyword tools to see just how many terms they missed compared to Keyword Research.

Horizontal keywords help you cast a strategically wide net to catch as many customer searches as possible. This is exactly the type of advantage that can push you ahead of your competition.

3. Inaccurate Search Volume 

If “Fish oil diffuser” and “Go Fish oil” are showing up in results for other Amazon keyword tools, you should be doubting everything else on those keyword lists.

You can’t feel confident that you’re positioning your listing for success if you have to choose from results like that. Other tools source data from search engines like Google and Bing. That data reflects what people are searching on those search engines instead of what they’re searching on Amazon, which functions in an entirely different way.

Keyword Research washes all of the doubt away. With accurate search volume based only on Amazon data, it shows you exact and broad search volume, two key metrics when prioritizing keywords for your listing. In descending order, exact search volume provides you with a full view of exact keywords searched over the previous 30 days. Broad search volume shows you the number of searches over the same period that contain a specific keyword phrase.

Using our trash can example, we can see that in the last month over 110,000 people searched for that exact phrase, while over 730,000 searches contained that phrase. This lets you know how many people are searching for the root keyword associated with your product, and how many times that root keyword is showing up in related searches.

4. Not Enough Information

Many Amazon keyword tools offer nothing more than inaccurate search volume and a list of top categories for a keyword. With Keyword Research, we wanted to make sure sellers had all the information they needed right in front of them.

And with an Advanced subscription to Keyword Research, not only do you get the most relevant results and accurate search volume, you can also access key features designed to give you multiple advantages over your competitors. You can begin ranking for the right keywords, help maximize your listing’s visibility, and drive more sales.

To help you do just that, we’ve sweetened our Advanced subscription with Search Volume Trends, Opportunity Score, and Sponsored Ad Bids.

Search Volume Trends allow you to see if a keyword is increasing or decreasing in popularity so that your listing. You can see trends for both exact and broad search volume. Some search terms may have less historical data than others, but as our database continues to grow, our historical data will as well. 

Opportunity Score is a rating from 1 to 1000 that shows you markets where the ranking potential is high because the searched term is underutilized. Because high-opportunity keywords are less competitive, these markets may also have lower quality listings. This is a golden opportunity for you to gain sales.

Opportunity Score shows you keywords that have not been integrated into the front end of top performing listings, so you can incorporate them into your listing and begin ranking for them. Just a simple change can help you add thousands of dollars in sales every month. Read more about Opportunity Score and the other scores in Keyword Research.

No other keyword tool features anything like the Opportunity Score, which reveals gaps in the market that you can immediately take advantage of. And with updated data at your fingertips, you’ll always know what the latest keyword gems are and in which market they’ve been hiding.

Sponsored Ad Bids allows you to see bid costs so you can better understand competition level for every keyword on your list. With these features at your fingertips, you’ll spot high search volume, high opportunity, low bid, and trending keywords to put your product on the cutting edge of customer search.

Keyword Research is the best amazon product research tool for sellers looking to capitalize on untapped opportunity. Make sure you never miss another keyword, and target the exact phrases customers are typing into the Amazon search bar. Subscribe to Keyword Research, get the most comprehensive and accurate keyword report in the galaxy.

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