When you finally identify your top keyword and have created an exact match-type campaign, what’s next? Do you stop creating phrase and broad match type campaigns?
Most Amazon PPC specialists will stop at this stage and go back to auto campaigns to search for their next top keyword. There’s actually a better way to search your next top keyword and it’s fail-proof!
Keyword Research Basics
For Amazon seller newbies, the easiest way to identify what keywords you should be targeting is to identify who your main competitors are and to know which products are similar to yours. It’s tempting to choose the keyword that we think fits your product but it might not generate the much-needed search volume traffic to convert into a sale.
Once you have identified your competition, get their ASIN and do a reverse ASIN search using Helium10 to find out what keywords are they targeting. If you don’t have access to Helium10 or similar Amazon research tools, you can check your competitor’s listing itself. You’ll know what keywords are they targeting because they are repeated and described synonymously in the title and bulletproof.
If you’re just starting, try to focus on up to 5 keywords when using PPC. Choose the keyword that best describes your product, has a good search volume, and good conversion rate. You can click here to know more about how to launch your product on Amazon.
Optimizing Your Main Keyword
After doing PPC on your target keywords, identify your Top 1 Keyword by downloading your Search Term Report. Your main keyword is the keyword with the highest sales & order. It might not be the lowest ACOS but it should be within your threshold. When you’ve identified your main keyword, we can now maximize its full potential.
When going through the Search Term Report, those search terms with high conversion and within ACOS threshold are transferred to become a Keyword. Then we add the keyword in either Exact, Phrase, or Broad Match Type campaigns.
For this strategy, we add the high converting search term to an Exact Match Type campaign so we can evaluate if the ‘new keyword’ will continue to convert well. If it converts after 2 months well and is still within ACOS threshold, then we can finally consider this as your main keyword.
When these terms are in the Exact campaigns, sometimes they don’t get any impressions, sales not converting as expected, or click-through rate (CTR) is high. So is it a wrong strategy?
Nope, you continue optimizing keywords and campaigns.
Now, it is normal if your main keyword is doing well this month and then not selling anything the next month. This just means you have to change your strategy like changing your keyword bids or increasing your impressions. This may increase your spending ACOS but it will have a positive effect on your BSR if done correctly. Don’t disregard or pause the campaign just because it’s not performing. This is the worst bid strategy when ranking keywords.
You can also try changing strategies like optimizing the listing including pricing. Remember, you want to rank to page 1 so you have to be consistent with your choice of top keyword even if it means increasing your ACOS.
Now once you’ve identified your top keyword in terms of sales conversion (make sure to check the lifetime value), create a one-keyword campaign in Broad and Phrase Match. If your listing is optimized correctly, the Broad and Phrase Match Type Campaigns will generate high-volume search terms that are relevant to your product.
The terms generated are usually long-tail keywords and these have lower CPC and can help add sales to your listings. The more related search terms generated by the keyword, the better the chances of gaining sales, which can impact your sales velocity, BSR, and organic rankings.
With this technique, your listing will be easily indexed to these keywords. It’s much better than the search terms generated through auto campaigns, random broad, and phrase campaigns. This will also help you get relevant long-tail keywords with low CPC. You won’t have to rely on Amazon to find what keywords they will index your listing but instead, you’re helping Amazon lead them to index your listing to relevant, high converting keywords!
