Not sure how to find your character limits for your title or bullet points? Here’s a step-by-step instructional guide to finding your character count limits inside Seller Central.
To find your character limits, you must have an active Seller Central account and have set up the product(s) you are planning to list. Until you’re at this stage within Seller Central, your character count limits will not be visible.
Once in Seller Central, follow the navigation below:
Under the Inventory tab, select Manage Inventory.
On the far, right-hand side, click Edit for the product that the optimization is for.
In the Vital Info Tab, hover over the “i” icon beside Product Name to see your title character limit.
In the Description tab, hover over the “i” icon beside Key Product Features to see your bullet point character limit.
As shown in the above images, Amazon will provide your character count limits for you to use when crafting your listing copy.
Finding your character count limits is that easy! In just five easy steps, you can find your character count limits and optimize your listing accordingly.
With Amazon providing limited space for you to promote your product, we highly recommend maxing out your character counts without going over. While Amazon may allow you to enter more characters than your limit may say, going beyond your character count is against terms of service and may lead to a lack of indexation and decreased visibility.
Not sure what to write? Put yourself in the customer’s position! What do they want to know about your product and what specifics would you be looking for? Tell them all about the features of your product and the benefits they’ll realize upon purchase.
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.
If reviews are the currency of Amazon, then Amazon keywords are the lifeblood.
Without the right keywords in your listing, you miss out on thousands of potential sales each month. But by including your most relevant keywords, you can capture every possible impression driving thousands more in revenue each month.
Viral Launch Keyword Research, the most accurate Amazon keyword research tool on the market, provides you with a list of your product’s most relevant search terms. With one simple search, you can quickly find your most important keywords alongside search volume taken straight from Amazon.
Still not sure how to do keyword research for Amazon? Keyword Research provides all the keyword metrics you need to determine how to best use each term. You’ll see exact and broad search volume, search volume historical trends, CPC suggested bids, dominant categories, and threeimportant scores.
These scores include Relevancy Score, Priority Score, and Opportunity Score. Each of these metrics rates the keyword on a scale of 1 to 1,000 and will indicate, in different ways, how to best utilize the keyword for your product.
Amazon Keyword Metrics
Relevancy Score
Relevancy Score is what allows Keyword Research to provide the most relevant Amazon keywords for your product of any keyword tool on the market.
Relevancy Score is a scale between 0-1000 that rates how relevant each keyword is to your seed keyword. To determine relevancy, Keyword Research runs a massive Reverse Market Lookup. This is similar to a Reverse ASIN Lookup, but bigger and better.
Essentially, we’re looking at the top-selling listings across your entire product market to ensure we’re capturing all your most important Amazon keywords and running multiple reverse-ASIN lookups. This ensures you don’t miss any crucial keywords for your market. And as a result, we gather a large pool of hyper-relevant keywords for your product.
The downside to a Reverse ASIN Lookup, as opposed to a Reverse Market Lookup, is that it only finds indexed words for one single competitor. That means you could miss some really crucial words for your product. In contrast, a Reverse Market Lookup finds the most comprehensive list of indexed words from all of your top competitors.
Next, we take that comprehensive pool of keywords and run it through our sophisticated Market Relevance Calculation. This proprietary process weeds out irrelevant terms and gives you a list of hyper-relevant Amazon keywords. From that Market Relevance Calculation, we rate each term based on its importance.
For example, garbage cans has a fairly high Relevancy Score, meaning it is very closely related to the seed term according to our Market Relevance Calculation.
Using the Relevancy Score
Place highly relevant keywords in your title and/or bullet points
See which keywords most directly relate to your product
Determine which keywords your top competitors are using most frequently
Priority Score
Priority Score is a scale between 0-1000 that rates a keyword’s importance based on relevancy and search volume. To arrive at this score, we look at the term’s Relevancy Score and factor in the search volume. A highly relevant, highly searched term will have a high Priority Score. But a less relevant, less searched term will have a low Priority Score. The higher the Priority Score, the more important the keyword, when it comes to optimizing a listing.
For example, trash can has a high Priority Score, meaning it is highly relevant to the seed term coupled with relatively high search volume.
High priority words should be placed in a product’s title, whereas mid-priority keywords can be placed in the bullet points, description, or backend. When using Keyword Research to optimize your listing, we suggest sorting your resulting terms by Priority Score to ensure you’re seeing your product’s most important keywords first.
Using the Priority Score
Place high priority keywords in your title
See which keywords have the most sales potential with a good combination of relevancy and volume
Opportunity Score
Opportunity Score ranks Amazon keywords on a scale of 0-1000 to show you terms with low competition and high opportunity to rank. A high Opportunity Score means the term has not been integrated into the front end of the top performing listings that are ranking for that keyword. A low Opportunity Score means the term has been integrated into many of the top ranking listings.
For example, garbage cans and trash cans (both plural) have very high Opportunity Scores, meaning the top products are ranking for these two terms without even having the phrases in their title, bullet points or description. In other words, the top-ranking products for these keywords are neglecting this term, which will make it easier for you to rank with the keyword in your title or bullet points. And combined, there are over 15,000 searches per month up for grabs!
Trash can (singular) has a low Opportunity Score, meaning most of the top products are prioritizing this phrase by using it in their front end.
For high opportunity Amazon keywords, there is a lot of potential to rank by simply adding the word to your listing’s title or bullet points. For example, in a search for bluetooth headphones, you’ll find the term “audifonos headphones” with over 33,000 searches per month and an opportunity score of 1,000.
This means none of the top ranking listings for audifonos headphones actually have that term in their title, bullet points, or description. Your opportunity to rank here is high because the top ranking listings are not prioritizing this keyword at all. No other keyword tool offers this kind of strategic insight.
And as an added bonus, high opportunity Amazon keywords are less competitive, so these markets also tend to have lower quality listings. So if you’ve got great reviews and good photos, the addition of a single keyword could mean increased impressions and high conversion rates, bringing in thousands more dollars in sales every month.
You can also use Opportunity Score in conjunction with Suggested CPC Bids in order to find high opportunity, low-bid terms to target.
Using the Opportunity Score
Place high priority keywords in your title or bullet points for easy ranking
Find hidden-gem keywords that your competitors are neglecting to use
Bid on high opportunity, low-bid keywords with Sponsored ads for low competition
Prioritizing Your Amazon Keywords
Because keywords are the foundation for how your product is discovered by Amazon shoppers, it is crucial to include the right terms. On top of that, it’s important to know how to best prioritize them.
Your title is the most important element of your listing’s copy, so include highly-relevant, high-priority and high-opportunity keywords. With each sale, the words in your title are fair game for a ranking boost.
Your bullet points are secondary and should be used for your remaining important keywords, along with additional mid-level terms.
Your description and backend keywords are great places to include long-tail keywords so that you can be found for anything a shopper searches relating to your product.
Whether you’re researching a market in conjunction with the Viral Launch product research tools or you’re seeking relevant Amazon keywords for your current product, Keyword Research shows you all of your related terms with just one simple search. And with the keyword metrics, Relevancy, Priority, and Opportunity Scores, you can ensure you’ve got the most comprehensive understanding of your product’s Amazon keywords.
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.
