Overview
If you are reading this article, we are sure that you are among the thousands of sellers who are struggling to rank their products on Amazon and scratching their heads to find the possible way of organically ranking your products on the first page on this competitive yet rewarding marketplace.
I hate to break it to you but in today’s day and age, ranking your products on Page 1 through Amazon SEO is an uphill battle except in a few cases :
a. You enter into a virgin category with hardly any competition
b. You have a very competitive offering in terms of price along with other algorithm factors taken care of
c. You have a huge base of existing customers that are ready to buy your product on Amazon
99% of the sellers don’t have the above things going for them. In that case, you have to work on tons of other things apart from just Amazon SEO. Nevertheless, Amazon SEO is one of the most important parameters that needs to be checked in order to be successful on the Amazon marketplace.
The concept of Indexing
To understand Amazon SEO, you first need to understand the reason why we actually lay importance on this very hot topic in the industry today. Amazon SEO means placing keywords strategically across the listing content including but not limited to Title, Bullet points, Backend keywords, Description etc. When that happens you get a chance to be indexed on that particular keyword i.e whenever a customer puts an exact query in the search box and your listing includes that ‘exact’ keyword, Amazon will show your listing among the thousands of listings in the search results. Hence, you get a chance to appear on the search results page for that particular customer search query.
Take the example below for instance.
You can see that a search for “skincare” returns 20,000 results.
“Skin care” on the other hand, returns 50,000 results. That’s a significant increase in listings and more specifically, competition. Perhaps the biggest thing you can take from this is that you should be populating your listings with all relevant keyword variations. Once again, that does not mean keyword spamming.
Why is Indexing important?
Amazon Indexing, though it will not help you improve sales instantaneously but will act as a foot in the door in terms of getting your listing a placement on any of the Amazon pages to start with. From there on, it is your strategy and amalgamation of techniques around content, communication, amazon PPC, external traffic etc. that you deploy to outperform your competitors. But if the indexing doesn’t happen then you lose out on the opportunity to even appear on that particular keyword on any of the Amazon pages let alone rank on Page 1.
Amazon SEO Optimization Techniques
Now that you understand the exact reason for why Amazon SEO is important, let’s quickly jump to how we can implement the same to index your listings on the most important keywords.
Here keyword spamming is not the answer. Strategically positioning your keywords, however, could be the secret to increasing the visibility of your Amazon listings. When creating an Amazon listing, there are multiple opportunities for you to use these keywords :
1. Product title
Your product’s title is perhaps the most important part of your listing, not only because it holds the most weight when it comes to Amazon matching your product to the user’s search query, but also because it influences how many of these user’s actually click on it and view your listing.
This is extremely relevant for the simple reason that you shouldn’t be writing your title with the Amazon search engine in mind, instead you should be thinking about the customer and more specifically how you can convey the information they care about, in a format that they will likely click on.
Expert Tip: “The first 5 words in your product title are the most important. They are closest to the product image that displays on the search results page and will catch the viewer’s eye first after they are done viewing the primary image.
When people search for a product on Amazon, the search results are displayed in such a way that it is usually 5-10 words that are displayed on the results page, while the rest of the title may get cut off. You’re more likely to get skimmers click through to your product detail page when your first 5 words really capture their attention and let them know that you have exactly what they’re looking for.
It should come as no surprise that the keywords used in your product title have a greater influence on your Amazon search ranking. Makes sense right? It’s the first thing the customer sees and as such, it should be incredibly relevant to what the user has specifically searched for.
2. Key product features (bullet points)
Key product features are the bullet points displayed on the product detail page. Let’s face it, trying to include all of the relevant information into a 250 character limit, all the while trying to persuade potential buyer’s to purchase your product, isn’t always doable.
This is exactly why you should be taking advantage of these bullet points to convey additional information and make use of some of the longer-tail keywords you may have identified during your keyword research process. You do in fact have 1,000 characters available to use for this section and you should be aiming to use these across at least five bullet points.
3. Amazon product description
The product description is the perfect place to take advantage of the remaining long-tail keywords that you identified during your research.
Although you should include the key information within the key product features, you should also use this section to elaborate on these points and provide further relevant information. Keep in mind that the best Amazon product descriptions are those that tell a story about the product and really convince the buyer as to the reasons why they need to purchase, rather than just listing the product’s features – after all, this is what the bullet points are for.
4. Back-end search terms in Amazon Seller Central
This is where Amazon listing optimization gets a little bit more complex. As an Amazon seller you also have the option to provide the marketplace with additional information about your listings that isn’t visible to the customer.
These backend keywords serve a similar purpose to the use of meta tags on webpages, in that it helps the Amazon algorithm to understand the relevancy of your listing against a user’s search query.
Keep in mind that this isn’t an opportunity for you to spam it with unrelated keywords, in the hopes that you will appear higher in the search engine. Abusing the system won’t work and will do more harm than good.
The keyword limit for the backend keywords has dropped to just 250 characters, which is usually around 35 words. This means that you’ve really got to pick and choose the keywords you want in your backend of product listings. Amazon won’t index anything past 250 characters.
Boost Your Visibility On Amazon And Increase Your Sales
So, there you have it. A complete guide to how Amazon SEO works and what exactly you need to do to improve your listings and appear on the first page of Amazon search results.
Of course, there is much more expertise required to further rank your products on Amazon and make it the bestseller in your category or achieve the numbers you always wanted to. We at Upriver prime at exactly the same art and perfectly navigates your ship through the turbulent waters of Amazon.
If you liked reading this article, you will love reading Amazon Prime Day Prep 2022: The Complete Guide
