Congratulations! You’ve developed a product and finally got it set up with an Amazon listing! All that hard work is now ready to pay off… but HOLD ON! Why isn’t your product showing up as one of the top items when you search for it on Amazon? If nobody sees your product, how are you going to make a profit? You’ve got to get seen! Fortunately, there are several simple strategies to put in place to greatly increase the visibility of your Amazon listing! Let’s get started:
Create Those Keywords!
You may have heard of keywords before, but if not, please listen up! Because they are a fairly simple way of amping up your listing’s notoriety as long as you know which ones to use. Let’s begin with the actual definition:
Keywords are the words and phrases people look for when searching for something online.
It is very important to compile a list of keywords relating to your Amazon listing. From there, you can enter these words into the backend of your listing’s search engine optimization (SEO) bar. BUT FIRST, how the heck do you discover which keywords are YOUR keywords? Here are some helpful tips:
In the Amazon search bar, type in a range of words to see what the drop-down suggestions are. Compile a list of whatever words are relevant to listings like yours.
Check out any competitor results to see what is already out there and then compare what you learn.
Utilize long-tail and short-tail keywords while making your list. Long-tail keywords are rather specific and usually have a low search volume. They may have a higher conversion rate because the customer typically knows exactly what they are looking for. Short-tail keywords represent broader searches that typically have high search volume and may have lower conversion because the customer is browsing for different options.
Do you need help finding the right keywords? Check out our Keyword Research tool to help get your listing higher on Amazon.
A Great Title!
GRAB YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMER’S ATTENTION with a catchy title. The product title (product name) is one of the primary fields used by Amazon and search engines to measure the relevance of a detail page as part of a customer search. To increase the chances of someone clicking on your title, try incorporating the following:
Your title should consist of only the minimal amount of information needed to identify the product.
Keep the length of your title somewhere between 60 and 80 characters for optimal efficiency. Longer titles usually are tougher to read than shorter ones. It’s also a good idea to check the titles of similar products that land at the top of an Amazon search page.
Make sure the title matches what is on your product’s physical packaging.
NEVER use all caps in your title. Rather, just capitalize the first letter of each word except for prepositions (in, on, over, with), conjunctions (and, or, for), or articles (the, a, an).
If your title contains numbers, list them as numerals (1,2,3) instead of spelling them out (one, two, three).
Lastly, your title can include proper punctuation, like hyphens (-), forward slashes (/), commas (,), ampersands (&), and periods (.). You can also use abbreviated measurements like “cm”, “oz”, “in”, and “kg”.
Nail That Description!
Be sure and deliver a detailed explanation of your product’s usage, features, and benefits in the bullets and description sections. Also, add any specific product information that may not be explained anywhere else in the listing. Here are some helpful particulars on precisely what to put in your product description:
Include any brand names.
Add in all sizes when applicable.
Add what type of material the product is made of, like polyester for a shirt.
Include important details like colors, packaging, and quantity.
For an even more comprehensive list of product description details, check out Amazon Seller Central for every guideline.
High-Quality Images!
If you want to increase your product’s visibility, then you’d best make sure its images are of the highest quality. Make certain your product looks great and has all of its features showcased front and center. This is going to help make your product stand out from a crowd of competitors, which will help boost your overall Amazon visibility.
To get high-quality images of your product you can either hire a professional photographer or utilize a wide range of online tools to create images yourself.
The Price is Right!
The price of your product can greatly influence its sales growth and conversion rates, which leads to better visibility. By researching your competitors, you can understand how to give your product a competitive price and make compelling price point adjustments along the way.
You can adjust your product’s pricing automatically through Amazon’s Automated Pricing page, without having to revisit the SKU every time you want to make a change. There are also other ways you can optimize your price point such as:
Take shipping costs into consideration. Offering free shipping is a great way to increase your sales. Be sure to clearly spell out your shipping policy and utilize Amazon’s Info & Policies page to adjust shipping settings.
Create a Competitive Buy rule or a Competitive Lower Price rule through Amazon’s Compare Prices page. This will allow you to automatically match your product’s competitive price which will increase your chance of being featured in the Buy Box.
Run A/B testing with different price points to see if it makes a difference in your sales.
Keep track of your product’s Brand Dashboard ranking and manage your product reviews. Positive reviews lead to a better search ranking, so be sure to follow the best practices for maintaining positive feedback/ratings.
In Closing
Congratulations again! In addition to having a soon to be bestselling Amazon product listing, you now have some helpful tips for getting it seen by the widest customer audience possible. Take some time to research the above suggestions and see what works best for your particular product. Remember, you have already laid out the groundwork by getting your listing up and running. Now is the time to finesse its finer points to give online customers a proper representation of how wonderful your product truly is!
Optimizing your product listing for keywords on Amazon can quickly skyrocket sales and unlock your product’s full potential.
There are plenty of ways to make money on Amazon, but for those who choose the FBA route, optimizing your listing for keywords on Amazon is a must regarding maximizing your opportunities for sales success.
Whether through organic search or the advertising route, understanding your product’s popular (and less popular) keywords is essential to reach customers searching for your product.
That’s why we created Keyword Manager, our comprehensive keyword tool that helps you stay on top of your keywords in every single way.
Quite simply, Keyword Manager is your go-to tool for all things keyword related. With stakes higher now than ever, it’s crucial to ensure your keywords are on-point during the hectic holiday season.
Keyword Manager includes nearly all the keyword data you could ask for, personalized for you.
Keyword Manager delivers an encyclopedic list of keywords for your product, along with various metrics to help you understand, track and strategize your keywords like never before, all in one easy-to-view spot.
Consider it a digital checklist for all your keyword needs no matter where you’re at in your Amazon selling journey.
Making sure your listing’s copy includes all of your product’s essential keywords, checking for indexation, finding organic and sponsored rank positioning, displaying badges such as Amazon’s Choice and presenting the search volume for these keywords are just a few of the handy things Keyword Manager does automatically for each and every one of your products listed on Amazon.
How does Keyword Manager identify your most valuable keywords on Amazon?
ARCS™ (ASIN Relevance and Conformity Semantics) programmatically determines the most relevant and important keywords for products on Amazon. Think of it like a reverse ASIN search on steroids.
The data science team at Viral Launch cooked up ARCS™ to evaluate up to 10,000 keywords and 500,000 products to determine the critical keywords for a given product.
This process plays an instrumental role in finding and sorting the keywords you should be most interested in regarding your product’s performance. Of course, you can also manually add any keywords in Keyword Manager to ensure every last one of the keywords you care about is displayed.
What are the Keyword Manager Dashboard Metrics?
Priority Score
Priority Score is a rating from 0-1000 that indicates a keyword’s importance based on search volume analysis. This score is based on our proprietary algorithms and is a good indicator for which words are most important to get into your listing. Of course, you want your highly-relevant, high-search-volume words in your listing.
Relevancy Score
Relevancy Score is a scale between 0-1000 that rates how relevant each keyword is to your seed keyword. To determine relevance, Keyword Research runs a massive Reverse Market Lookup. This is similar to a Reverse ASIN Lookup, but bigger and better.
Volume Estimate
The Volume Estimate metric showcases how often customers search for a given phrase on Amazon. Our search volume estimate numbers arrive via our Keyword Research tool and utilize a proprietary formula to determine search estimates over the past 30 days. When you click on the number, you’ll find historical search volume estimates, which come in handy regarding seasonality.
CPC Bid
A suggested keyword’s bid cost for Amazon’s Sponsored Ads, based on our tracking and recommended best practices.
Opportunity Score
Opportunity Score is a rating from 0 to 1000 that measures a keyword’s potential to rank based on a market analysis of each keyword’s top-selling products. A low score means most competitors are using the term in their listing and thus low opportunity. But a high opportunity score means that the top 10 listings don’t include the term (or some variation of that term) in their listing. Adding high-opportunity keywords to your listing is a quick and easy way to pick up some easy rankings with solid volume.
Used in Listing
It’s as simple as it sounds! Is this keyword in your listing? Our Listing Builder tool lets you cross off keywords as they’re added to your listing’s copy, but this aspect of Keyword Manager works for already-written listings to ensure your listing is fully optimized for search.
Indexed?
Contrary to popular belief, utilizing a keyword phrase in your listing doesn’t guarantee that it will index for the keyword in question. While it’s most likely you will index for those keywords, there are exceptions. This column helps prevent blind spots for keywords in your listing that you’re not indexing for, allowing you to move keywords into higher-priority places to achieve indexation and become eligible to rank.
Organic Rank
Where is your product ranking for this particular keyword? You can sort this column by your highest-ranking keywords to get a feel for where your products are the most visible without advertising. Also, an arrow pointing up or down may accompany the number in this column if applicable, indicating whether you’re trending upwards or downwards lately. You can click into this number to see your ranking over time as well for a longer view into your trajectory.
Sponsored Rank
Running PPC ads? This column shows where your product is being displayed on search pages, so you can see how much bang you’re getting for your buck and easily see how positioning impacts sales.
Never miss a beat when tracking keywords
During the busiest sales days of the year, Keyword Manager’s keyword-tracking capabilities should be your best friend.
Of course, tracking keywords all year round should be on all Amazon sellers’ radar, but the holidays and signature sales events raise the stakes substantially. Tracking keywords allows you to monitor your performance and manage your visibility virtually in real-time. By doing this, you can quickly limit the amount of ground lost when you drop in rank and optimize your offering while ascending.
It’s as easy as 1-2-3 to start tracking keywords in Keyword Manager. Simply tick the box next to Rank Change Notifications for the desired keyword and customize your notifications in the following pop-up. Boom!
If you’re not constantly checking your inbox, you can always customize your email app settings to ensure you receive Viral Launch emails as push notifications to ensure you’re primed to act on these changes as quickly as you’d like to.
Since visibility is king on Amazon, this element is a no-brainer to stay on top of your game all year round, but especially during the busiest times of the year when things can change rapidly and have resounding repercussions.
Wrapping it up
Regarding tracking keywords on Amazon, nobody does it better than Viral Launch’s Keyword Manager. Within the software suite, you can easily discover new insights, track performance, and take swift action to supercharge your Amazon business for peak performance.
During this holiday season and beyond, beef up your keyword game with the all-encompassing Keyword Manager to always be on top of your game. Once you’ve added your product to Keyword Manager, it’s like adding a high-powered, mastery-level assistant to your team with handy tips for improving your business.
Get started today and make the most out of this holiday season and ride into 2023 on a wave of sales!
In the pursuit of maximum visibility, too many sellers neglect keyword optimizing their product listing.
You’ve performed product research and found the perfect product to sell. You found the right manufacturer. You’ve created your Seller Central account and are ready to start your FBA career. Next up: Product Listing Optimization.
It’s time to get down to business on your Amazon marketing strategy! That begins with making sure your product listing is set up for maximum visibility and able to convert shoppers to buyers.
We consider your product images and copy to be the foundation of a successful Amazon marketing plan. Every aspect of your selling experience will benefit from high-quality images and sales-inducing copy optimized for search.
Want the latest Amazon news and updates sent to your inbox? Sign up below!
Although many don’t think of Amazon as a search engine, that’s precisely what it is.
Is your listing optimized to take advantage of this humongous audience?
Sellers who don’t optimize their listing to reach all the customers for their product are not only leaving sales on the table; they’re encouraging customers to buy from competitors, resulting in ranking changes that further minimize your visibility. Whether creating a new listing or enhancing your existing listing, Viral Launch’s Keyword Research tools are all you need to maximize visibility, increase exposure, and most importantly — boost sales.
STEP 1: Find your seed keyword
First, we’ll need to determine our seed keyword. In the Amazon world, this would be the most relevant keyword that has the highest search volume. In other words, the most popular term that customers are using to find your product on Amazon.
Think about the product you want to sell. If you were a customer, what would I search for my product to show up as a result?
For some products, this is as simple as it sounds. But for others, it can be trickier than you’d think.
Consider soft drinks. Is it soda, pop, or are you like me and use “Coke” as a catch-all for every fizzy beverage? Without a doubt, this likely depends on where you’re from or where you currently live.
From this example, you can see how colloquial language can change depending on geography and how the same product may have a few different primary keywords.
Finding the right seed keyword is one of many reasons why Viral Launch’s Keyword Research tool is a must-have for writing your listing. Filled with years of search volume data, Keyword Research makes the process of finding a seed keyword and knowing your primary keywords a simple one.
For the remainder of our SEO exercise, Keyword Research plays a huge role not only regarding what keywords we use but where we place them. The proprietary keyword metrics such as Priority Score, Relevancy Score, and Opportunity Score provide valuable insights for us to draw from and prioritize our keywords.
Dig around with keyword research before deciding upon your seed keyword. You may be surprised at what keywords fetch the most searches for your product.
Step 2: Find Relevant High-Volume Keywords
Filter out keywords that aren’t relevant to your product. Use the filters to customize your keyword list, removing competitor brand names and any keywords that don’t apply to your product.
After you’ve found the right seed keyword, you’ll have a comprehensive list of related keywords along with helpful data points such as Viral Launch’s exclusive Priority Score and Relevancy Score. We recommend sorting by search volume estimates, as these are going to be where much of the traffic via search.
Sort this list by search volume estimates to get an idea of what keywords or phrases people are using to find your product. Since search volume estimates are an incredibly powerful indicator of consumer demand on Amazon, we can quickly see which keywords are being used to find your product and the depth of the market.
Ensuring that your product is indexed for the majority or all of your keywords are the first step in making sure your listing shows up for customers. Without indexing for these keywords, achieving sustainable sales is an uphill battle, to say the least.
As you filter through your list, you’ll find keywords that don’t apply to your product, such as competitor brand names. Unless you’re selling one of these brand names, it’s best to remove them entirely from your keyword list.
How to Filter
We recommend using the “Keyword Excludes” filter to take irrelevant or inapplicable keywords for maximum efficiency. Due to Amazon’s robust size, it’s impossible for a machine to automatically pull a keyword list ONLY related to your product. But the “Keyword Excludes” filter allows you to take out keywords that do not apply to your product. Once completed, you’ll have a keyword list made exclusively for your product.
In the image listed for this step, you’ll see I’m filtering out “La Croix” since that is a competing brand. Further down the list, this brand name is mentioned multiple times. Filtering it out just once will get rid of all mentions of “La Croix” with that exact spelling.
For the same reasons we remove results with competitor names, you’ll want to eliminate other results that aren’t relevant to your product, such as size, color, dosage, or product specifications that don’t apply to your product.
Once you’ve finished filtering, put these keywords into action by adding them into your listing’s copy. You can do this yourself OR use a tool like Listing Builder to make the process much more streamlined.
STEP 3: Piece It All Together
The beauty of Listing Builder is that it allows for experimentation with your listing’s copy and enables real-time feedback for you to see how each change affects your listing.
Creating a listing can feel a lot like putting a puzzle together, and Listing Builder empowers you to move the pieces around to see what works.
You’ll see your filtered-down list of keywords, sortable by search volume estimate, priority score, and opportunity score. On the right, you’ll see the fields for an Amazon listing that you can use without affecting your actual listing.
As you type each keyword in, you’ll notice that each keyword will be crossed off your list. This feature assists you to be as space-efficient as possible with your listing. Likewise, Amazon doesn’t place extra weight on keywords for repeated use, so once you’ve used it once, there’s no need to add it again for SEO.
Know your (character) limits
Your product listing has a character limit for title and bullet points, typically between 50 and 200 characters for each. Your limit depends on what category Amazon recognizes your product as, and this can play an enormous impact on how you execute your strategy.
If you include your brand name in your title to align with Amazon’s style guide, 50 characters become even less. Product listings with 50 character titles will have to be more “meat and potatoes” while extended character limits allow more room for sales-inducing, descriptive language.
Across all listings (except for listings with EBC), you will have up to 2000 characters to use at your discretion.
HOOK CUSTOMERS IN WITH YOUR TITLE
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and your title is the first impression on the shopper. A thoughtfully crafted title and a professional main product image are a recipe for you to get customers to choose your product over the other search results.
Amazon recommends starting your title with your brand name. We always recommend meeting their style guidelines to ensure you don’t get your listing suppressed.
Staying within their guidelines can be a pain and stand in the way of the keyword or phrase you’re just dying to fit within your limits. But we must remember this is only part of doing business since not following the guidelines can defeat the purpose of optimizing the copy in the first place.
DON’T BE A BOT
A common mistake that sellers make is keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing describes including as many keywords as possible without regard for readability or sense. Not only is keyword stuffing against Amazon-style guidelines, but it’s also not shopper-friendly.
Nobody wants to read your keyword list, so don’t make it your product listing! All too often, sellers use various keyword stuffing methods and see great optimization scores, but wonder why their product isn’t selling.
Writing a keyword-optimized listing is both an art and a science. It requires the science of search data with the art of integrating these keywords into your listing in sales-inducing language.
Ideally, your listing is indexed for each and every keyword on your list. Depending on character limits and how many keywords are relevant for your product, this might not be possible. But don’t panic! This underlines the importance of being strategic with which keywords get left on the cutting room floor.
Our end goal is to increase rank, which occurs when you achieve sales through searches for keywords that you’re indexing for. Don’t get too caught up writing to the algorithm! Remember the goal is to inform and market to the reader you’re trying to convert to a customer!
MAKE SURE YOUR BULLET POINTS HAVE BITE
Once your title has been expertly crafted, the bullet points should be next up on your order of operations. This is where customers get to know your product. What’s unique about it? What sets it apart from the competition?
The bullet points are an excellent place to boast selling points and add keywords that couldn’t be squeezed into the title. Most listings will include five bullets, so think about 5–7 selling points of your product. Prioritize them, and place them in a way that makes the most sense.
Sticking with our fictional soda example, let’s highlight a few of the selling points to start it off.
TASTE THE TROPICS: Quench your thirst with a can of our refreshingly sweet, all-natural orange soda
Within 100 characters, we caught the shopper’s attention with a catchy slogan, informed the customer it comes in a can, and highlighted two major selling points for our fictional orange soda: it’s refreshing and completely natural.
We’re answering customer questions while addressing a few primary benefits of this particular soda. We’ve used a few crucial keywords as well, all without appearing to stuff them unnaturally.
CLOSE THE DEAL WITH A KILLER PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
The customer found your product and liked what they saw with your title and header image. They saw your bullet points, and they haven’t left looking for competitor products. You’ve got this customer on the hook.
Now close the deal.
Psychologically, the customer is looking for a final reason to buy or not buy your product. Answer any potential questions they may have. Show and tell the customer why your product is superior to others on the market.
Your product description likely has a 2000 character limit and offers minimal indexing weight. But do not make the mistake of ignoring this section because it won’t increase your visibility.
The longer character limit and lack of indexing weight make this area ideal for describing your product’s selling points.
Take on the mentality of a customer. What’s in this product? How is it made? What sets it apart from Competitor X? How does this product make my life better?
Answering these questions could be the difference between a customer adding to cart or starting their search over again.
DON’T SKIP THE BACK-END SEARCH TERMS
Sellers frequently make the mistake of leaving their back-end search term areas blank! Just because customers can’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t have value.
The backend search term fields are a terrific way to grab “low-hanging fruit” in the form of relevant search terms containing common misspellings or search queries made in foreign languages. Toss those lower relevance keywords that you weren’t able to squeeze into the title or bullet points here.
The backend search-term field is a lifesaver for including keywords that wouldn’t make sense to include in a product listing such as common misspellings and Spanish phrases.
Importantly, leaving this area blank willingly misses out on thousands of searches each month and the sales that come with them.
Also, you’ll see optional areas to fill out, such as Intended Use, Target Audience, Other Attributes, and Subject Matter as backend fields. While we have found no significant correlation between these fields, Amazon occasionally tweaks its algorithm.
Despite the lack of tangible benefits, we recommend filling these fields in case these fields come into play later.
In Conclusion
An expertly crafted, keyword-optimized product listing makes you more likely to land you on the coveted Page One of results. Of course, this comes after sales trickle through via the keywords you’re indexing for. Then, you’ll see your rank improve so you can start receiving
Both inexperienced and veterans sellers should optimize their product listings for maximum performance. Optimizing your product listing by keyword is a tactic that rookie and experienced sellers alike should be doing. Trends change, so it’s worth monitoring your keyword performance and optimization score every few months. Monitoring keywords keeps you on top of your game and give your product detail page an edge over the competition.
With Keyword Research and Listing Builder, it’s never been easier for sellers to create their keyword-optimized product listing. If you have any questions about Amazon’s guidelines, their product page style guide comes in handy.
Additionally, our customer support team is always willing to help provide clarity. Sign up today and select a plan that includes our listing optimization software bundle to maximize your listing today
If you have had any degree of success on Amazon, you know how important keywords are. And if you are one of the elite sellers who have made millions on Amazon, then you know keywords are everything! “Everything” is a pretty bold statement, and of course having a great product, an appealing price point, and a significant review quantity are all crucial to success, but all of those would amount to nothing if prospective customers were unable to find your product in the search results. Your Amazon keyword rank tracker is imperative to success in your business.
In this guide, we’ll talk about how you can use Viral Launch’s powerful new keyword tracker and manager to simplify Amazon keyword tracking and stay on top of all of your most crucial metrics in real-time to maximize your Amazon sales. There are six key ways in which our tracker is unlike any others, so that your Amazon sales can be unlike any others.
The Viral Launch Amazon Keyword Tracker is a feature within our Keyword Manager tool only available through our Pro package.
Sponsored Ads Placement Tracking
One of the biggest mistakes sellers make when running Amazon Sponsored Product ads is not paying attention to how rank position impacts every single thing. Your ad’s position has an impact on your click through rate, conversion rate, impressions, clicks, cost per click, and ultimately your ACoS (profitability).
To put it simply, ad position significantly impacts the amount of sales you can drive with Sponsored Products and how profitable those ads are.
Uhh….so then why is no one paying attention to ad position?! Let’s just say, we think there is a lot of opportunity for increased sophistication of other Amazon tools. And that is why we are so excited to bring this tracking to you inside Keyword Manager!
For each keyword you decide to track, we will automatically begin showing you where your sponsored ad is positioned, both currently and historically. If your product is not showing at all within sponsored ads, we will show a “-”.
Access to this level of insight for thousands of keywords is extremely powerful for your business! Data is critical to being able to make smart decisions, and we want to make sure you have more access to data around your keywords than you can get anywhere else in the world.
Rank Notifications
Keeping track of where your product is showing up in the search results at just a glance is extremely helpful. But, rankings can change at the drop of a hat. Occasionally, a keyword will fluctuate a position or two throughout the day, but sometimes it can fall dramatically and have a major impact on your revenue. The same is true for your product’s placement within Sponsored Ads, where exact position can be even more volatile.
The whole point of an Amazon keyword tracker is to automate the process of keeping track of where your product is showing in the organic and paid results. But in order to make sure you are going to hit your sales goals for the day, you find yourself logging in multiple times throughout the day to make sure you haven’t dropped in the rankings.
To give you peace of mind and to automate checking your ranking results constantly throughout the day, we’ve built a notification system that automatically tells you when your product’s rank changes in the organic and/or sponsored ad results. Now you can rest assured knowing that your product is maintaining its rank position without even logging in! If there is a change in keyword ranking or ad position, you will receive an email from us letting you know it’s time to take action.
We’ve built our notification system to be extremely flexible, allowing you to fine tune your notification triggers based on:
Organic and/or Sponsored Ads
Drop or increase in position
Number of spots moved (example: drop in at least 3 positions
Hour-by-Hour Amazon Keyword Tracking
Imagine one of your best products is ranking in the top 5 for some of your biggest keywords, and the sales are just pouring in. You check your ranking first thing in the morning to make sure none of your competitors have propelled past you overnight. But then, just hours later, a couple competitors jump ahead of you in the search results, pushing your product out of the top 5. Ouch.
This is critical, and the sooner you know, the sooner you can boost your ranking and take those sales back. If you are only checking your rankings once per day, it’ll be almost an entire day before you notice that you’ve dropped in ranking, meaning a day of lower sales. Keyword Manager allows you to track your most important keywords hourly. Paired with notifications, this allows you to rest easy throughout the day knowing that if there are any significant changes in your keyword ranking for your most important keywords, you’ll know right away.
Being able to track sponsored ad rank position hourly is a game changer when you are focused on maximizing PPC sales. Imagine getting notified within just an hour of a competitor out-bidding you for top ad positions for some of your largest revenue-driving keywords. The beauty of being alerted in near-real-time is that you can take immediate action to control placement and profitability.
Hourly tracking paired with notifications will be your biggest sigh of relief, giving you the confidence that your revenue streams are being monitored constantly. I hope it also gives you plenty of time back in your day so you don’t feel the need to check your keyword ranking constantly. Focus on the big picture for your Amazon business, while we do the tedious monitoring.
*Important to note, that hourly tracking only checks the rankings for the first two pages for each keyword as anything important that happens that quickly, will happen in the first two pages!
Digital Shelf Mapping
In retail, brands pay for specific shelf placement. The better the shelf position, the more shopper’s eyeballs on your product, and the more likely customers are to purchase. But the better the positioning, the more that shelf placement is going to cost. The same is true for sponsored ads.
Where your sponsored ad shows in the search results is critical. For some searches, having the third ad position means your product is showing above the fold on desktop, meaning your product has a better chance of driving more traffic.
For other searches, having the third ad position means you are buried in the middle of the search results, and that results in less eyeballs and lower sales potential.
Knowing exactly where and how your product is being presented to customers is critical to building out your best PPC campaigns. With our Digital Shelf Mapping icons inside Keyword Manager, you can see exactly which of Amazon’s digital shelves your product is on and in which position for each keyword.
In this example, the sponsored ad is currently being shown on Amazon’s first page (denoted by the top icon with the number one), the second row of sponsored results (denoted by the blue middle horizontal bar), and in the first ad position on that row (denoted by the first of three boxes being filled in as blue)
Make sure when managing your sponsored ad campaigns, you know exactly which shelf you are paying for, because as in retail, which digital shelf your product is being displayed on has an impact on your product’s performance!
Ranking to Sales Correlation
At the end of the day, we care about keyword ranking because ranking well in the search results for a specific keyword, should help to improve our bottom line. We wanted to make it incredibly easy for you to identify correlations in sales improvements with increases in keyword ranking (and hopefully never in your case, declines in ranking and drops and sales).
As a quick option to monitoring changes in sales within the context of changes in keyword rankings, we’ve given you the ability to overlay your product’s historical and real-time BSR with your keyword ranking. This will allow you to see just how big of an impact a change in rank has had with a change in your product’s sales!
Organic keyword ranking for this term has trended down, as has the product’s Best Seller Rank (sales)
Instant Historical Keyword Tracking
Automating how you monitor keyword ranking for thousands of keywords across your catalog is an absolute must in today’s hyper-competitive Amazon landscape. Not tracking your organic keyword rank is like not cashing in a lucrative check. If you are still manually doing your Amazon keyword tracking in an incognito window of Google Chrome, it’s time to reassess your priorities and your ability to scale!
If you already use a keyword tool, it can be hard to switch to a new one with more data and features. One of the worst parts of moving to a new keyword tool is that you usually have to start over completely. You have no historical data, so it takes a while to build up its value. And if there is any significant rank change, you have no idea by how much they have increased or decreased. We understand this pain completely, and we wanted to make sure it was not an issue with our Keyword Manager.
Here at Viral Launch, we view ourselves as a data company. We track everything! So, there is an extremely high chance that we’ve already been tracking your product for your main keywords, and we give you access to that data right off the bat. That means when you begin tracking your products, we’ll show you all the historical rank trend data we have for that product even though you’ve never used our keyword manager before! It’s extremely refreshing to log in and see all that historical data immediately upon entering a keyword into our Amazon keyword tracker.
Conclusion
At Viral Launch, it is our mission to provide you with the software you need to become increasingly successful on Amazon. With access to the world’s most powerful Amazon keyword tracker and digital shelf mapping tool, you’re more prepared than ever to save time and increase revenue. It’s important to mention that, as with any tool, it is only as great you use it. It’s up to you to take action, and there’s no better time like the present! I want to encourage you to go and take action now!
And additionally, while all of the data and automation provided in our Keyword Manager is incredible, knowing how to use and appropriate that data is crucial! Feel free to chat with a member of our customer success team or check out our other available resources to learn more.
Comment with questions down below! Have you used our tool for Amazon keyword tracking? Any additional feature requests? What do you think of the concept of “digital shelf mapping”?
Looking for an Amazon competitive advantage for your FBA business? You’ve got to focus on the unlikely and underappreciated aspect of your products: their keywords.
Keywords are crucial to a successful Amazon product listing, Amazon search optimization, and ultimately the number of sales you’re able to make. They help shoppers locate your product in a sea of competition, power your sponsored ads, and significantly sway your product’s maximum sales potential.
You have to make sure you’re not missing out on essential keywords that shoppers are using to search for your product. But how can you do that while figuring out which keywords to prioritize for Amazon search optimization? Which keywords should you place in your title and which should you place in your backend search terms? Search volume is an important metric, but will your listing be able to compete in a big market? And how can you use keywords as your Amazon competitive advantage?
Keyword Research is Your Amazon Competitive Advantage
By using Keyword Research, the new keyword research tool from Viral Launch, you can find those crucial keywords that no other tool can help you find. Easily make smarter strategic decisions to improve your approach in regard to Amazon search optimization. You’ll find an exhaustive list of customer search terms related to your seed keyword with Reverse Market Lookup, a master reverse-ASIN query that considers top competitors across all of your Amazon markets. You’ll get Broad and Exact Match search volume for each keyword based on search volume from Amazon. And that’s just for starters.
Download our new ebook The Competitive Advantage of Keyword Research to get the inside scoop on how this game-changing software works as your Amazon competitive advantage. Keyword Research shows you the most accurate, up-to-date keyword data to optimize your listing and maximize your revenue.
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.
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.
Having the right keywords in your listing is absolutely essential to being successful on Amazon, and that means keyword research is a crucial aspect of your strategy. Whether you are just dipping your toes into the Amazon marketplace with your first product or are a veteran seller expanding your brand with new items, you can’t afford to get the keyword part of the success equation wrong. Keywords are a huge factor in the visibility of your product. The keywords in your listing index your product within Amazon’s catalog. Then once sales are applied, your listing can attain keyword ranking. In this way, keywords are responsible for getting your product in front of as many potential customers as possible. If your product isn’t visible in search results when customers are looking for it, they won’t buy it. Most listings don’t feature critical keywords that can collectively cost sellers thousands of dollars in missed sales. The problem is that until now there hasn’t been a proper tool to help you easily determine which keywords are most relevant for your product. Existing tools provide pages of keywords that take hours to comb through and field results like “Baby reading glasses (19,500)” and “High heels for dogs (52,500).”
You could take a chance with those tools and miss important keywords, or you could use the newest Viral Launch tool, Keyword Research.
We’re excited to announce the launch of Keyword Research, our latest software tool, and the best Amazon keyword research tool in the galaxy.
Using an extremely sophisticated set of algorithms, Keyword Research delivers a panoramic, comprehensive list of your market’s most relevant search terms with accurate search volume estimates based only on actual Amazon data.
Keyword Research
Keyword Research for Amazon helps you easily decide which keywords and keyword phrases to place in your title, bullet points, description, backend search terms, and sponsored ads. It allows you to see the most relevant keywords, accurate search volume data, and historical search volume trends. You can also access an Opportunity Score and Exact CPC to identify keywords with high relevance and low competition.
No more time wasted on bad keyword results, no more fear of missing out on crucial keywords, no more doubt about keyword relevance, no more missing potential sales and revenue.
How do we do it?
Relevancy
We start off by scouring the deep reaches of Amazon for an exhaustive list of customer search terms related to your keywords by running a Reverse Market Lookup. Think of it as a master reverse-ASIN lookup that reaches across all your Amazon markets, taking all your top competitors into consideration instead of just one listing.
The result is an enormous pool of keywords related to your product, including horizontal keywords. Horizontal keywords represent your seed keyword without overlapping it, providing exponential advantage to your listing.
For instance, “strainer” is a horizontal keyword phrase for “collander.” In order to ensure that each result is relevant for your product, we use our Market Relevancy Calculation which is a sophisticated set of algorithms that determine the relevancy of each keyword we’ve come across in our reverse-market lookup. You can easily sort by Relevancy Score to see your product’s most relevant keywords first.
Search Volume Based Only On Actual Amazon Data
Keyword Research utilizes our industry-leading search volume estimates based only on actual Amazon data. Estimates are updated multiple times a week so you see fresh numbers every time you search. We also provide exact and broad match data to show you the potential impact of a keyword.
You get a list of the most relevant, high volume keyword searches on Amazon for a bird’s eye view of your keyword’s market footprint.
Historical Search Volume Trends
When researching keywords and choosing the right ones to promote your specific product, it’s important to know where those keywords are in the market and where they’ve been. Keyword Research allows you to see the full market context around a keyword so that you can get a feel for how that keyword’s performance could ebb and flow in the months to come.
Look at exact match and broad match historical search trend graphs to see if a keyword is growing or declining in popularity. Historical data gives you yet another edge over your competition.
Advanced Features
If you’re looking to really increase your competitive edge, you might want to consider the Advanced subscription, which includes Opportunity Score and Sponsored Ad Bids. Opportunity Score ranks keywords on a scale of 0-1000 to show you markets where the exact keyword phrase has not been integrated into the front end of the top performing listings. Essentially, you can conduct keyword popularity research just by sorting by Opportunity Score.
Because high opportunity keywords are less competitive, these markets also tend to have lower quality listings. If you’ve got great reviews and good photos, the addition of a single keyword could bring in thousands more dollars in sales every month. Sponsored Ad Bids allows you to see bid costs so you can better understand competition level for every keyword on your list.
Both features help you target keywords that have an established, positive performance record in your market and pass on keywords that have been volatile. You’ll spot high-opportunity, low bid, and trending keywords to put your product on the cutting edge of customer search.
Integration with All Viral Launch Subscriptions
Keyword Research seamlessly integrates with Market Intelligence and Product Discovery so you can see keyword insights no matter what Viral Launch tool you’re working with.
Product Discovery, the best product finder in the galaxy, lets you input your dream product’s sales revenue and review metrics to get a customized list of the potential products that fit your business aspirations. Filter to find markets that receive many searches but few sales. With the integration of Keyword Research, you can filter your results by Search Volume when searching for products via Keyword.
Market Intelligence, the most sophisticated Amazon product research tool and sourcing software in the galaxy, helps you validate product ideas so you source only money-making products. With the most accurate sales data estimates and product trends, Market Intelligence now also provides you with search volume for the market you’re exploring.
See Keyword Research in Action
Keyword Research brings you our industry-leading search volume estimates no matter which Viral Launch tool you’re using, so you can put your product on the cutting edge of customer search and beat out the competition.
Whether you’re just starting to research products, already have your product sourced and ready to go, or are coming up with your next money-making product idea, the Viral Launch suite of tools is here to serve you.
Never miss another keyword. Target the exact phrases customers are typing into the Amazon search bar, and get the most comprehensive and accurate keyword report in the galaxy when you subscribe to Keyword Research.
Keywords are what set your listing up to rank well and sell well, but there’s a catch. People also need to understand what your product is and what it does from your copy. How can you inform shoppers and do Amazon search optimization at the same time? Join hosts Cameron Yoder and CEO Casey Gauss for this conversation with Viral Launch Lead Copywriter Yale Schalk. And find out how to set up the best possible listing with these 3 Amazon SEO tips.
Looking for an expert Amazon copywriter? Yale and the Viral Launch team would love to help you improve your Amazon search optimization. See pricing here!
CAMERON YODER:
Contrary to common belief, getting ranking on Amazon is not about lowering your BSR. It’s about getting sales attributed to a keyword. Keywords are what set your listing up to rank well and sell well, but there’s a catch. People also need to understand what your product is and what it does from your copy. How can you inform shoppers and capture all your product’s keywords at the same time?
I’m Cameron Yoder, your host for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success. In this show we leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 30,000 product launches and our experience working with 6500 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and, more importantly, the best practices for success as an Amazon seller.
In today’s episode I sit down with our Lead Listing Specialist, Yale Schalk, to talk about the best practices for writing an Amazon listing. We’ll talk about the keyword research, writing for Amazon SEO and how to convert shoppers. Let’s jump in.
So okay, we have Yale in with us today. Casey’s also sitting in on this.
CASEY GAUSS:
What’s up, guys?
CAMERON YODER:
So we’re talking to Yale today about listing optimizations. First, Yale, thank you so much for coming in on the show. How are you feeling about being on the podcast?
YALE SCHALK:
Awesome. Awesome, Cam. Really, really excited to debut on our expertly-produced podcast, which by the way I just want to say that everyone should be subscribed to, and you know, every morning you wake up just find your nearest rooftop and shout it and tell everyone. But yeah, excited for that and really excited to kind of jump into some key information that I really know is going to help a lot of people out there.
CAMERON YODER:
Yale is also already on the ball with recommending the podcast, which is great. I love it. Yale is our Lead Listing Specialist, okay? And he’s been a veteran writer with 10 years of experience writing about retail products. So he’s written for brands like Nike, Adidas and Reebok and is known in the office for his excellent taste in sneakers, okay? So actually Yale, what is your favorite pair of sneakers?
YALE SCHALK:
Oh, wow, that’s – it’s literally an impossible thing to answer. You know, obviously, I was raised on Michael Jordan and Air Jordan sneakers, so I can at least narrow it down to that, but from there it’s all bets are off. There’s just too many.
CAMERON YODER:
Well, all that being said, Yale is definitely deserving to be on this podcast talking about listing optimization when it comes to Amazon specifically. But before we dive into Amazon-specific SEO and Amazon-specific listing ops, I want Yale – Yale, can you touch on just SEO in general, SEO as a practice?
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely, for sure. So you know, when people think of, you know, the term SEO or, you know, properly search engine optimization, you know they think of Google, right? They think of, you know, their minds go right to Google because Google is this ubiquitous thing that is just out there. So but SEO is not confined to Google. You know, it’s like if you’ve ever seen the movie The Matrix, you know at the end when Neo sees everything in just this digital rain, and it’s just like streaming lines of green code everywhere, you know, I like to think of SEO like that. I think it’s, you know, it’s very much in the fiber of anything that you search on the internet, and it’s necessary, you know, any time that you type something into a search bar.
CASEY GAUSS:
Well put.
CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, The Matrix.
CASEY GAUSS:
I love that analogy. If you haven’t seen The Matrix you just missed out on a great analogy.
CAMERON YODER:
Watch The Matrix, buy some sneakers, and then you’ll be set. So that’s general SEO, right? So can you move further maybe into like, I don’t know, Amazon or Google specifically?
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely. So the way it works is basically that, you know, the input for a search is almost always language, and then the search algorithm uses that language to return a set of results, and then to get your content in that results list you have to give the algorithm basically what it wants. So then that begs the question, okay, so what does the algorithm want? In terms of Google SEO, that’s about proving credibility with, you know, relevant headings and meta-descriptions and links, and of course language for Amazon. It’s different from the standard SEO set up in that the results exist within Amazon’s platform. You know, for example, you don’t navigate to a different domain when you click on a result. So Google looks for site credibility with links and traffic, while Amazon looks for language, you know, or specifically keywords. So it’s really important for everyone to keep in mind that Amazon is really its own ecosystem when it comes to how searches are conducted and how those searches help determine the results you get when you or, you know, your potential customer, is looking for something.
CASEY GAUSS:
And I think it’s important to mention that – I think this is a stat from either 2016 or 2017, but over I think it’s like 55% of product searches begin on Amazon. So when it comes to king of search engines, when it comes to product searches, I think Amazon takes the crown.
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely.
CAMERON YODER:
And that’s something I don’t think a lot of people think of, simply put, Amazon as a search engine. But in fact, like you said, it is, and listings in a sense really are all about SEO when it comes to Amazon specifically. So Yale, would you be able to introduce to us just some tips, maybe three basic tips that you have for everyone when it comes to listing optimization and keyword optimization on Amazon?
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely, for sure. And you know, I think the good set up for this is like, you know, obviously everyone wants the highest visibility for their product. You know, ideally that’s page one. That’s what everyone wants to be on Amazon. So you really cannot afford to overlook the importance of keywords when assembling your product listing. You know you can have, and you know I never tire of saying this, but like you can have breathtaking photos, and you can have the most exquisite product description, but you know, without the proper keywords and the correct placement of those keywords in the listing, you know you’re basically – you know you’ve got a Ferrari with no engine. You know, it’s looking amazing, but it’s not going anywhere. So I just really want to emphasize, you know, first off that, you know, you can’t just throw information together and hope something happens. You know, I can tell you that it won’t. It doesn’t work that way. So it’s vital to get that keyword foundation in place.
So I would say for the first tip is plurals, plurals of words. So Amazon says that they account for plurals of words. So if you search swaddle blanket, you know, you’ll get different results than if you search swaddle blankets. So some listings will have, you know, both the plural and the singular form of the keyword while others won’t. So when someone searches blankets it’s, you know, hard for the algorithm to determine, you know, what exactly that person is expecting. So the algorithm is very smart, but it has its blind spots, and so one of the blind spots is it doesn’t know, you know, for example for this example that, you know, if you’re looking for multi-packs of swaddle blankets or if they’re looking for all the swaddle blankets on Amazon, so having both forms of the word, you know, or multiple forms of those words, those keywords, is really important for you to show up in any search related to your main search terms.
CAMERON YODER:
So tip number one, overall is suggesting to use both the singular and plural form of your primary keyword, or how many keywords do you think this would apply to?
YALE SCHALK:
I would say as long as you’re starting with your root keyword you want to kind of work in maybe the most common – and this is something that you’ll be able to kind of see in your keyword research, but and you’ll be able to notice patterns of what people are searching for, but usually you’ll just find like those simple little variations, those little, like little degrees of that root word, you know, just plurals and just different tenses of the word that people might throw in there when they’re searching for products.
CASEY GAUSS:
I think it’s important to mention also, I think one common mistake, and I don’t know if this is one of the tips, but you know, people always want to know am I indexed for this word. So just because you’re indexing for a word does not mean that you’re driving the same amount of keyword power or keyword juice, however you want to refer to it, to those words. So this is an important concept, and you’ll hear more about it.
YALE SCHALK:
For sure.
CAMERON YODER:
Let’s go on to tip number two.
YALE SCHALK:
Tip number two. Tip number two is keyword stuff the title. Yeah, you heard that right. Keyword stuff the title. So there’s been – this has always sort of been a philosophical debate on, you know, are you going to be rewarded if you keyword stuff? Are you going to be penalized if you keyword stuff? But I can tell you in the case of Amazon, in the Amazon world you’re going to be rewarded. So the title is definitely the most important, you know, real estate in your listing in terms of SEO. So you should really use as many keywords as you can fit, you know, without compromising quality or under-serving your character limit or overstepping that. I mean when you overstep that’s definitely something you’ll be penalized for, but so you know, what do I mean by compromising quality? So you know you have to make sure that you’re showing shoppers the information they’re looking for, like you know, things like ounces or fluid ounces might be important to consider, you know, if they’re considering price, or you know, certain features like dimensions or certifications like organic are there to include. So you know, this tip is really about just including as many super relevant keywords, you know, while leaving just enough space for those important, you know, product tidbits that people are looking for.
CASEY GAUSS:
And I always like to say, you know, I would much rather have, you know, a 3% lower click through rate because my title isn’t as beautiful but rank for, you know, twice as many keywords or three times as many keywords simply because I’m putting them in the title versus having that super short, you know, elegant, you know, four-word title that has like my brand name and just a few other words. Let’s say it’s a frying pan, so brand, you know, stainless steel frying pan. There are so many additional words that you need to be including in your title to maximize the position and total volume of keywords that you can rank for; well, rank well for. And so yeah, I would much rather have this longer title, rank for so many more keywords than you have this beautiful title that may drive slightly higher click through rates.
CAMERON YODER:
Yale, what’s your opinion on having the brand name in a title?
YALE SCHALK:
It’s awesome that you mentioned that because I was just going to follow up on that point. Yeah, a thing that I really want to talk about for a second is not insisting on including brand names in titles. I empathize with, you know, every seller that, you know, wants to do that. I mean, everyone wants to have the competitive advantage and get their brand out there, but I would say that you have to apply a pass/fail in terms of your brand name. So look at it this way. You just have to treat it as another keyword, and if there aren’t a ton of people searching for your brand name, then it’s always a good rule of thumb to substitute in an actual, you know, high-volume search term instead of your brand name. And I know that there might be a conception out there that, you know, people aren’t going to see your brand and you know, that’s something like that’s going to be a disadvantage for you, but you know, don’t worry. It will show up – you know, your brand is going to show up in the subheading. You just want to make sure that you make the most use of the title.
CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, to summarize it, people, you know, aren’t searching your brand name. If they are searching your brand name they’re going to see it in the search results. It says, you know, by brand in most categories. And even if not, if they’re searching for your brand name they should know what your packaging looks like because you should have cohesive labels or packaging or whatever in your photos. They will recognize your brand. You should not be concerned about them recognizing or not recognizing your brand. And by including that brand name in your title you’re just wasting super, super valuable character space.
CAMERON YODER:
I think the question should be what more valuable words you can put into your title that would take the place of your brand name.
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely.
CAMERON YODER:
Yale, what is tip number three?
YALE SCHALK:
Tip three, prioritize keywords and then write your copy. Yeah, this is another thing that I’ve seen a lot where maybe sellers get focused on, you know, really fleshing out their copy, their listing, and they’re focused on, you know, stuffing as much information and even sort of messaging, you know, that they’ve come up with into the listing. But I would say that, as we’ve said, you know keyword is king, and you really have to sort of like lay that foundation first and then, you know, work in your copy from there. You know, again, it seems to make a lot of sense to look at your listing from your sort of branding ideas and everything like that. But you’ve got to get the keywords right, and then you know, then you can provide the insight and wrap everything around that.
CASEY GAUSS:
I think this fits well, actually, with your second tip, which was keyword stuffing the title. In a lot of cases I think people have a rough time picturing where – and correct me if I’m wrong, Yale, but people have a tough time picturing where to get started with keywords, and so maybe they’ll write – they’ll try to eloquently put together like a string of words that connect well, maybe have some keywords in, and then they’ll try to like piece together other keywords that they want to put into the sentence that they’ve developed.
YALE SCHALK:
Right.
CASEY GAUSS:
When in this case you’re saying like no, start with the foundation, like with your title. Let’s say with your title. Start with the foundation of as many keywords of like a bunch of high-end keywords, keywords that are going to convert or have a lot of traffic leading to them. Start with that foundation of all those keywords, and then maybe piece them together. Is that what you’re saying?
YALE SCHALK:
Oh, for sure, for sure. I mean you really do, like we said, with the title you really have to get the right keywords up there upfront and you know obviously try to assemble those in, you know, the most beautiful way that you can and sort of balance, you know, walk that line of getting the keywords and getting the product information up there for people, and then from there it’s really just a matter of prioritizing.
CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, and this is what I was kind of alluding to earlier that I didn’t want to go into because I didn’t want to steal Yale’s thunder, but just because you are indexed for a word does not mean you are driving the same amount of ranking power. So what this means is just because you have, you know, keyword XYZ in your description that yes, you – or a bullet point or whatever – yes, you will be indexing for that, but just because you are indexing because the word is in a bullet point doesn’t mean you’re driving the optimal amount of power, and you’ll drive that optimal amount of power by having it in the title, preferably the highest volume keywords at the beginning.
CAMERON YODER:
Yale, can you touch on just a little bit about how much energy people should be putting into their bullets, into their descriptions or their backend keywords? I think a lot of people tend to freak out about the bullets as much as they do the title. And you already mentioned that the title is going to be your primary keyword ranking driver, but where are the other aspects of a listing when coming into this?
YALE SCHALK:
Oh wow, yeah, so you the – yeah, of course, like we said, the title is obviously the most important part, and you know, where the keywords are really prioritized there. But from there I think the most important point for crafting your listing is to keep in mind that buyers by and large are on Amazon to basically scan information. They’re not there to, you know, read novel length listings, and a lot of the times yes, you know, obviously your product information is obviously helpful when they’re, you know, comparing products and trying to make a decision. But a lot of the time they’re just scanning that information, and they need it very succinctly. They need it very concisely, and that’s really going to a lot of times be the difference between, you know, someone adding your product to cart and checking out and, you know, maybe passing over and going with someone else. So yeah, definitely keep that in mind. You know, think of it in terms of a priority list. So the title is the number one priority, then the bullets number two, product description three, and so on. So yeah, definitely assemble your information accordingly.
CAMERON YODER:
Yale, is there anything else that you’d want people listening to know, even if it’s just in general, about listing ops or if you’d want to summarize in any way? What more, what else do people need to know?
YALE SCHALK:
I would say, you know, I think the thing that comes to mind most for me is that each segment of the Amazon selling process is so important. And you know, that’s really why Viral Launch exists. You know, we exist to help you get that right. You know, so I would say use our software. Get in touch with us to do your product photography. Get in touch with us to do your listings. You know, we really have – we’ve really refined and really perfected the entire process. So you know, we really are here to help you be successful.
CAMERON YODER:
That’s great. Casey, do you have anything to add?
CASEY GAUSS:
No, Yale’s just been killing it. You know I think that too many people – you know, I’ve definitely seen plenty of people say, you know, I don’t have time for keyword research. I don’t have time to put into my listing so I just threw something up, and I’m moving on. Essentially people just look at it as just another box to check, and the thing is like Yale mentioned at the very beginning of the listing, or sorry, the podcast, the listing is absolutely critical to achieving success on Amazon, especially as you continue to enter more and more competitive markets. The greater the level of competition, the greater your listing needs to be from a, you know, keyword structure standpoint. So if this is not on point it’s going to be so much more difficult for you to drive rankings, to sustain rankings and to drive sales. And so if you aren’t willing to take the time to invest in this listing, you know, I think your Amazon FBA journey is going to be pretty difficult.
CAMERON YODER:
This is one of those – it’s another one of those no-brainers. It goes with photos. Like why would you not have the best photos possible? Why would you not have the best listing optimization possible? If you don’t optimize this, if you don’t put energy or effort into it, then you’re not going to get the results that you could if you would have put that time or those resources into it.
CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, it’s just another corner that people like to cut that really ends up biting them, you know, later.
CAMERON YODER:
Don’t cut corners. In this case one of those corners is listing optimization. So do not cut listing optimization.
CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, I got good feedback from somebody at a conference that I spoke at this weekend, and they loved the – you know, everybody’s looking for that silver bullet. And we say you don’t need a silver bullet. You need an arsenal. And one of those weapons in your armory needs to be an amazing listing.
CAMERON YODER:
Well thank you so much, Yale, for joining us and for providing so much valuable information on listing ops.
YALE SCHALK:
Absolutely.
CAMERON YODER:
Well, that is all for this week. Thank you so much for listening to Follow the Data. For more insights and reliable information about how to succeed on Amazon, subscribe to the podcast and check us out on YouTube. For those of you who are looking for your next great product I have a series of product discovery walk-throughs videos on our YouTube channel that show you really how to leverage the tool. Just search Viral Launch on YouTube, go to our page and look for my face in one of the videos. Don’t forget to leave us a review and let us know what you think of the show. And if you really like the show and you like what we’re doing here at Viral Launch, tell your fellow Amazon sellers about us. We want to be a resource for sellers and the information source in this space. So please tell your friends, spread the word and share the show with other Amazon sellers.
Thank you, again, so much for listening. Feel absolutely free to hit us up on Facebook or tweet at us if you have any questions or feedback. And if you want to be featured on the show or have an Amazon related question or an idea for an episode, feel free to leave us a voicemail. Our number is 317-721-6590. Also feel free to just hit us up on Facebook or tweet at us if you want to be featured on the show, too. We can always take those questions and feature them on the show if you don’t want to call in. Until next time, remember, the data is out there.
Amazon is an incredibly vast and complex machine. While intimidating to some who have yet to find their footing, to others the complexity creates an immense frontier waiting to be explored and conquered. It seems that every day some frontiersman discovers a new trick or topic that somehow changes the Amazon private label community’s mindset or selling practices.
The brilliant Viral Launch Team made an interesting discovery over the holiday season. Have you ever been curious how Amazon decides which words to place in a product’s Canonical URL? Do you know how to influence the words that Amazon places in the canonical?
We’ve cracked the code and uncovered some key truths to keep in mind when building your listing’s title. With this understanding, you can dictate to Amazon which keywords should be in your product’s canonical URL.
What Is An Amazon Canonical URL?
A Canonical URL is a direct link to a product’s detail page that contains keywords pulled by Amazon, seemingly arbitrarily, from the product’s title and separated by hyphens. In the SEO world, this is generally referred to as the URL slug.
To find a product’s canonical URL you can either visit the product’s page through a search result or you can inspect the page elements using your browser’s developer tools: search the word “canonical” using Command + F (or Control + F for PC users), and copy the given Canonical URL. Side Note: the only reason I mention inspecting the page elements is because we have seen discrepancies in the canonical URL that shows in the address bar and the canonical that shows in the page’s code. We’ve found the inline canonical to be the “true” canonical.
The Benefit of Keywords In Your Amazon Canonical URL
Google SEO
The canonical URL is the Amazon product URL that Google indexes for search results. Run a search for “iphone scratch resistant case amazon”, and you’ll see the URLs they are indexing.
As you can see from this screenshot, Google is highlighting the keywords from the search that are found within the product’s canonical URL. We have done our fair share of Google SEO, and the Canonical URL is one element of an Amazon product listing that is ripe for leveraging ranking!
Amazon SEO
Unfortunately we don’t have a definitive answer as to whether or not the keywords in a listing’s canonical URL have impact on keyword ranking within Amazon. There have been rumors without any supporting evidence that it does. However, it is very difficult to discern with much confidence.
The reason it is so hard to properly attribute keyword ranking to the content in the canonical is that the same keywords are also found in the title, which has major influence on keyword ranking. Discerning where the keyword ranking attribution is derived from is next to impossible.
We are working to leverage our keyword data to help find any potential evidence, and we’ll let you know if we make a discovery. If you have more definitive data, we would love to hear it! Please, shoot us an email or leave a comment down below.
