Exactly what goes into your listing copy on Amazon is of vital importance and it can make or break your products sales potential. What SEO on Amazon boils down to is using the most potent keywords in your listing copy that will be recognized and picked up by the Amazon A9 algorithm and proell your listing in the search results.
The exact intricacies of the A9 algorithm are a well kept secret, however, through the experience of selling on Amazon you can quickly pick up its main operating principles and adjust accordingly. The most important one being – RELEVANCE.
Sure, there are other factors that come into play when it comes to how high in the search results the algorithm will push your listing, such as your seller rating, the rating of your listing, your return rate etc…
However, relevance is the fundamental principle. In order to understand it better you should think of what it is designed to do.
When a shopper comes to Amazon, they will put in a string of words into the search bar and a full page of results will show up, a full page of results relevant to the search. What Amazon wants is that each shoppers finds what they are looking for and that they make a purchase. Amazon wants to maximize the percentage of searches ending in purchases, making sure that the platform can consistently show its capability to present the shoppers with choices that satisfy their search so that they keep coming back to Amazon for more purchases in the future.
Know that we know that, what does it mean to us as sellers?
It’s simple, we need to find a way to optimize our listings in such a way that we show up in as many searches that are relevant to our listing.
The first step in ensuring this is to make sure our listing is indexed on as many relevant keywords as possible, thus showing up in as many searches as possible.
What is indexing?
Getting your product indexed on a keyword basically means that if an Amazon customer searches uses a certain search term that contains a certain keyword and goes through the results, they will sooner or later find your listing in the search results.
The difference between a search term and a keyword is that the former represents the string of words that a customer types in the search bar, while a keyword is one or multiple words that is contained in the search. To put it more simply, you use keywords in your listing and the customers use search terms to find them.
How to get the best keywords you can include in your listing?
There is sort of a hard way and an easy way, you can sort of do it manually by searching for things yourself that make sense to you and seeing if you could see your product as a relevant result for the searches you make. This would take a long time and it would still be very intuitive.
An important thing to keep in mind is that what is relevant doesn’t necessarily have to be what makes sense to you personally. Granted, many of the keywords you can come up with on the top of your head should work if they describe your product, however, there is probably a lot more you wouldn’t think of yourself.
What is relevant in the eyes of the A9 algorithm is what shoppers decide it is. Every shoppers searching for something and making a purchase is a little “nudge” that says to the algorithm “This is what I’m looking for” and the algorithm will proceed to push your listing in the search results.
Taking all of this into the account, the most productive way to go about this is to try and find keywords that your main competitors are indexed on and use those, the only way to get that information is by using software. If you go on the first page of the results for “rolling pin”, we can use the AMZScout Pro Extension and “get keywords” from the best selling listing:
This way you don’t have to guess and you can get tried and true keywords that have already been established by probably hundreds of thousands of searches. If you are selling a rolling pin on Amazon, this is the best place to get the most relevant and the most potent keywords for your listing.
How to use those keywords?
Once you have identified your relevant keywords, you will need to find a way to include them into your listing copy in an appropriate manner. You need to keep in mind that your listing copy is not there just to serve as a data point for the algorithm, you also need to have a coherent narrative behind the listing. Finding the right balance between the 2 is crucial in order to create a polished listing.
It is also very important to know that different aspects of the listing have a different level of potency, meaning that you should prioritize a certain part of it over others, and shift the balance between the narrative of the copy and the keyword potency. These are the listing elements in order of potency:
The Title
The titles can be anywhere between 80 and 200 characters long, depending on the category you are in. The title should be mostly about keywords, make sure you include your most important and relevant keywords in the title. The narrative and cohesion should come second, if you take a look at any title on Amazon, you will see that all the good ones are optimized this way and customers don’t seem to mind. Make sure you use all the space you have available and make sure that you include your Brand name in the title. You want to be indexed on any search containing your brand name in the future.
The Bulletins
When it comes to bulletins you will have to be more cautious about striking that balance between a well written copy and a decent amount of keywords. Shoppers actually tend to read these. A good way of doing it would be to try and replicate the structure behind the bulletins of this vacuum cleaner listing:
The idea is that you start each of your bullet points with a short capitalized point and then proceed to explain it further. People do read the bullet points, but they might not read them all the way. So you can be free to put in more keywords in the latter portion of the bullet point, it still needs to be coherent, however, you will have plenty of space to construct your sentences around keywords and the long text box will not be as intimidating since you’ve already gotten your point across.
The product description
The product description has the least amount of potency when it comes to keyword and indexing prowess. In this section you should focus on having a quality copy that is captivating to your customers and that gives them the information they need. You should also take advantage of the space by educating them on your brand. You might think that the description doesn’t get seen a lot since it’s all the way at the bottom of the listing, however, it is very visible when viewed from a mobile device, so it definitely does matter. Just because you have a lot of space, doesn’t mean it should be too long, be precise and to the point.
Also, you can have a few options when it comes to the description, such as paragraphs and bold letters. You actually need to put in your description in HTML in the “edit” section of your listing. You can simply write it out in a common word file and find a free online converter to HTML and proceed to copy and paste it into the text box. It only takes a minute, you don’t need to learn how to code.
The backend keywords
In your edit section under “Keywords” you will find a “Search terms” box. This is your backend. You have exactly 250 characters including spaces to put in as many keywords as you can. The backend is not visible, therefore, it is 100% about SEO. You should use this space for the keywords that you have not managed to include in the rest of the listing copy, as well as keywords that would be out of place in the visible parts of the listing. Great keywords for the backend are misspellings of your main keywords, they can be very potent and relevant and yet including them in your visible listing copy would be considered sloppy.
Conclusion
The A9 algorithm runs on relevance before anything else. In order to satisfy its standard we need to find the most relevant keywords to put product and listing. The best keywords are those that your competitors are already indexed and organically ranked for. You can get those keywords using software tools when searching for a product to sell.
Once you have your keywords make sure you include them in your listing copy in such a way that you find a good balance between writing a compelling copy and populating it with the keywords. Once you do all of that you should have the best listing you can have that will facilitate your future growth and index you on as many as many searches as possible. Good luck seller!