There are a number of approaches to identify high-value keywords:
Amazon autocomplete
When you start typing in the Amazon search bar, it begins to suggest relevant search terms that shoppers are frequently entering. Analysing these can help you build an effective keyword list.
Learn from the competition
Enter search terms you want to rank for and look at your competitors’ listings. How do they describe their products? What terms are they using to highlight the features and benefits? Learn what they’re doing… and do it better.
Learn from customers
Product reviews can help you understand terms that customers commonly use to describe your product. For example, you might refer to your product as ‘rose gold headphones’, whereas your customers might describe them as ‘pink’. This is a sign that you should include both descriptions in your listing to improve your chances of getting your product found.
Online tools
Products such as Helium 10, Jungle Scout and Sellics offer comprehensive keyword research tools that can help you get that competitive edge. However, you will need to invest a considerable amount of time to get the most from them.
Step Two: How to craft an amazing Amazon product listing
With your list of keywords in hand, the next step is ensuring that you put them in the right places in your listing.
Research shows that the number of times you include a keyword in a listing impacts positively on the ranking.
However, there is one factor that is as, if not more, important than keywords, and that’s readability.
Don’t be tempted to stuff keywords into your listing, for example, a great title would not read:
‘Wireless Headphones, Pink Headphones, Noise Cancelling Headphones, In-ear Headphones, Waterproof Headphones’
Text should flow, be localised to the market and be easy to digest. Your keywords should feel naturally integrated into the content, so a shopper in the Nordics can instantly understand the key features of your product and the benefits it offers without having to wade through reams of unnecessary, irrelevant ‘filler text’.
The anatomy of a product listing
Below, we describe the component parts of an Amazon product listing and how you can optimise them to help your product reach the right audience:
Product title
Getting the product title right is key to success.
Amazon title character limits vary between categories, so be sure to check Amazon’s Category-Specific Style Guides before you start writing.
There are a number of guidelines you should follow:
- Product titles should be under 200 characters including spaces
- Keep your title short and include only the most important information
- Avoid duplicating words in your title and keep it as simple as possible
- If you’re writing in English, the first letter of each word should be capitalised
- Use numerals instead of spelling out numbers
- Don’t use any special characters, symbols, trademarks or company type, e.g., Ltd
- Don’t use subjective commentary or verbiage such as “Great Holiday Gift” or “Best Seller”
- Don’t use guarantee phrases, or their variants, such as “Lifetime Guarantee” or “100% Quality Assurance”
- Don’t include pricing or promotional messaging like “Less than £10” or “Free Shipping” (instead manage discounts via Promotions)
Be aware that Amazon will shorten titles on mobile devices, so ensure that you include your primary keyword near the start of the title.
Bullet points
Bullet points are used to draw attention to the main selling points of your product.
First let’s look at the Amazon bullet point character limit:
Amazon recommends limiting bullet points to under 1,000 characters in total. It makes your content more readable and ensures every character (including your important keywords) is discoverable by the search algorithm.
To write effective Amazon bullet points, you need to keep a few things in mind:
- Keep the text short and focus on readability
- Stick to one feature per bullet point to make it easy to digest
- Make the first bullet points the most important (the list may be shortened on mobile devices, depending on the category)
- Describe the benefit of each feature, for example ‘These headphones are waterproof, so you can relax at the beach without worrying about getting them wet’)
Product description
Keep the shopper in mind when writing the product description.
Recognising the wants and needs of the shopper means your description will effectively highlight the most valuable features and benefits of the product.
The product description is a great place for those longer-tail search phrases, such as ‘wireless headphones for watching TV’, as you have more available characters to work them in naturally. However, readability is still king, so avoid writing ‘fluff’.
Shoppers are impatient – they expect to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.
One way to understand what your shoppers want is by reading reviews and customer questions & answers. They can give you clues about what information is most important to them.
Product descriptions are also discoverable by Google, so including high-quality keywords in your text is a must.
Amazon offers many tools to enhance the product description section of your product listing. We’ll talk about the options available to you a little later in this article.
Additional product fields
Some product categories let you add additional product information.
Complete as many of the available fields as you can, such as size and material, as it will help shoppers use filters to home in on your product.
Backend keywords
Backend keywords are a series of words and phrases that can be added to a listing but aren’t visible to the shopper.
Backend keywords, or search terms as Amazon refers to them, must be less than 250 bytes long.
