Ranking on Amazon – What is Amazon SEO?
SEO = search engine optimization. An Amazon SEO strategy is the practice of optimizing the product listing in an effort to ensure that the listing appears at or near the top of Amazon’s search results (for relevant product keywords).
This is similar to the functionality of Google search. On Amazon, a buyer will enter a keyword and search for a product they want. And like in Google search, the searcher tends to focus on the highest-ranking results. In other words, buyers will not often venture to the second or third pages of the Amazon results if they find a suitable product on the first page.
For everyone selling products on Amazon, be that ‘green’ products or otherwise, it’s the Amazon product ranking that’s the most important factor in terms of success or failure. Basically, the higher in the Amazon results your product ranks, the more of that product you will sell.
How to Make Your Product Stand Out in Amazon’s Search Results
Upload six quality images – High-quality product listing images are a prerequisite. But it’s not enough to stop at just one or two. While Amazon permits a seller to upload as many as nine images, most professional sellers, as well as Amazon itself, advise six different image uploads as being optimal.
Optimizing your product’s title – For most categories, Amazon allows a maximum of 200 characters within the title. That’s inclusive of spaces. While there is no requirement to utilize the entire title character capacity, it is vital to invest time optimizing the title wording given that it’s one of the crucial elements that go into buyer click-through rate (CTR) on the results page.
Description – Your product’s description should be concise and it must be clear in providing an outline as to the workings of the product. While you can use up to 2,000 characters in the description, there are some key aspects to highlight, depending on your product.
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Similar to the title, the description should be clear, precise, and not overly lengthy.
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Highlight how your product can make the life of your ideal customer better or easier.
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Discuss the product’s features and functions.
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Mention warranty details if you offer a warranty.
Product features – The product’s features are among the key elements of every product listing. Typically, the features will be listed in bullet-point format. It’s advisable to limit bullet points to five. Each bullet point should highlight an important feature that distinguishes your product in some way.
Highlighting a socially responsible stance – Another way to help your product stand out and to attract sales is to highlight your socially responsible stance and how the product is part of this ethos. A recent study found that 76% of consumers prefer to know what brands do to address environmental and social issues. Therefore, you should always include information about your own social and/or environmental principles and how sales of your product will be of benefit.
Register With Amazon’s Brand Registry to Protect From Copycats and Unlock the A+ Content Feature on Seller Central
In a 2020 study conducted by Jungle Scout with more than 1,000 Amazon sellers taking part, almost all expressed confidence in continuing sales. However, many did voice concern about some risks, including:
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Knock-off or similar products being listed by ‘hijackers’
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Chinese suppliers selling a very similar product but at a greatly reduced price
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More competition which essentially drives prices down
How do Amazon sellers take a line of defense against such concerns? The best way is to register their brand’s trademark on Amazon’s Brand Registry.
Amazon’s Brand Registry, a program offered through Amazon, works to legitimize your brand. The program also provides special advantages for registered brands over non-registered brands.
Amazon says it best:
“For brand owners, enrolling in the Brand Registry provides access to powerful tools to help protect your trademarks, including proprietary text and image search and predictive automation.”
Among the key features of the Brand Registry is what is referred to as the Registry’s ‘A+ Content Manager.’
By using the A+ Content Manager you can enhance the content of your listings over and above a standard Amazon listing by adding more text and more images.
Ultimately, what this does is that it provides your listing with a far more professional appearance. This, in turn, enhances your potential for more sales.
How to Optimize Listings on Amazon for Search Results
Simple equation – the higher your listing ranks in Amazon’s search, the more you will sell.
But in order to rank higher you need to know and you need to understand how to optimize your listing.
Optimization Checklist
Product title
Do:
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Add relevant keywords in the title. Either use pipes (|) or dashes (-) to separate keywords.
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Add your brand name in the title.
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Capitalize first letters for each word within the title except for the following words – a, the, and, or, with, in, for.
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Write numbers in numeric form rather than words (eg. 3 and not ‘three’).
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Include quantity, product color, product size, series, model number (if relevant).
Don’t:
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Capitalize every word in the title.
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Use subjective adjectives eg. ‘great, awesome, fantastic,’ etc.
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Use any HTML tags or special characters eg. *
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Overstuff the title with keywords.
Product description
Do:
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Keep the description precise, short, and clear.
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Highlight the more important aspects of the product.
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Include the brand name, the model number, and also the series (if relevant).
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Include size, color, and information about compatibility (if relevant).
Don’t:
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Use subjective or time-sensitive terms such as ‘great value, hot selling this month’ etc.
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Use special characters, symbols, or HTML tags.
Product search terms
Do:
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Use primary keywords that are not in the product title.
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Add some secondary search terms.
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Use misspellings and abbreviations.
Don’t:
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Include any keywords already in the title.
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Use the brand name and the seller’s name.
Keyword Strategy – Amazon SEO Tools
Understanding (and implementing) the most popular Amazon keywords for your product really can be a complete game-changer. That’s because if you are not privy to this information, basically, you’ll be working in the dark.
If you know what the best keywords are, it helps you to choose products that are more popular and avoid those products that essentially are duds. You can also find out which keywords are best so you can then optimize your listing accordingly.
Here we check out two of the best Amazon keyword tools.
MerchantWords
MerchantWords stores over 170 million keywords in its database. It’s among the leaders in terms of Amazon-related keyword search tools.
MerchantWords is ideal for those that are less experienced as Amazon sellers. This is because it’s simplistic and straightforward to use. It’s merely a keyword research tool with no other functionality. But this is not to say the keyword tool is not powerful. It’s plenty powerful enough to provide you with a ton of relevant product-related keywords.
Unlike Helium 10 (see below) MerchantWords cannot be used free of charge. There is a choice of three plans, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Silver, which is more than adequate enough for most Amazon sellers, currently starts out at $29 per month (at the time of writing).
Helium 10
The creators of Helium 10 boast that it (the Amazon keyword research tool) is ‘insanely powerful.’ Indeed, that’s true. Helium 10 comes with all the bells and whistles – some of which you will utilize regularly, while others will likely go by the wayside.
There’s no doubt that Helium 10 is one of the most capable keyword tools for Amazon sellers.
This Amazon keyword tool is one of the most powerful tools available right now. It comes with all kinds of capabilities including direct keyword search, Reverse ASIN Lookup, Amazon Product Research, Amazon Trends Finder. The list goes on, and on…
If you wish to give Helium 10 a shot, the free plan provides you with up to 20 keyword searches daily and up to two ASIN searches daily, among other things. The paid plans, which are costly, obviously provide you with a lot more functionality.
Why Are Amazon Product Reviews so Important?
Amazon product reviews (from previous customers) are among the key ways to attract future customers to a particular listing. Basically, feedback allows the prospective customer to understand more about the product. Given that it’s not possible to physically handle the product when shopping online, product reviews provide a valid way to judge a particular item in a variety of ways.
Research carried out by Dimensional Research found that 90% of online consumers are swayed into purchasing (or otherwise) a product based on product reviews.
In fact, for many consumers, it’s a prerogative to have positive customer reviews before they actually buy. Particularly so for high-end, expensive products.
As such, it’s very important for the novice Amazon seller to understand that customer reviews can either have a make or break impact on their e-commerce-focused career.
