The title, main features or bullet points and the back end search terms are the most important factors in being found by the Amazon search algorithm. In this article we cover the top things you need to know for boosting your sales using search terms in the backend of your listing.
Use All The Characters
Amazon currently lets you input five sets of search terms that customers might use to find your product. Each one of these can include up to 1000 characters of text, though it can vary from category to category. You can include phrases, individual words, or strings of keywords in a row in each slot during the listing set up.
For example, if your main keywords are water bottle, BPA free bottle and non-BPA bottle you can include these one after the other in a string, such as water bottle BPA free bottle non-BPA bottle. But it is better to remove duplicate words so you can include as many relevant keywords as possible. In this case “water BPA free non-BPA bottle.”
It doesn’t hurt to add more keywords if they are still relevant to your product. You can use a gray hat tactic of adding in the main brand names of your top competitors – though Amazon does sometimes prevent you from doing so.
Order of The Keywords
Amazon software reads the text you include in the back end search terms from left to right.
If your keyword is BPA free water bottle, but you write this as BPA free bottle for water in the search terms, when Amazon scans this you’ll be less relevant for that keyword. Why? Because the water keyword is after the bottle keyword.
So when inserting all your keywords, you want to start with your most important first from left to right and make sure that the entire phrase is shown.
Keywords
The more keyword research you do, the more likely it is you’ll find all the top keywords for your particular niche.
Use Google keyword tool, the CashCowPro keyword suggester & also AMZ Tracker’s keyword suggestions in your listing. You can scan your competitions listings to build a complete list of possible keywords. There is more than enough room to include both highly relevant keywords and relevant keywords in the backend search terms.
Markets
Think of keywords as markets. For example, the keyword jump rope may have 100,000 searches. The keyword skipping rope may have 50,000 searches. If you only include one you are limiting the number of target customers your product could potentially be displayed to.
So every additional keyword you add is like having another market or channel. If you use both jump rope and skipping rope in your title your product could be seen by 150,000 people.
Even though both keywords are describing the same product, in some customers minds it’s a jump rope and in other customers minds it’s a skipping rope. So using both phrases allows you to target two different customer markets.
Impact
I have added in additional keywords to the search term section of my listing and ranked for those keywords on Page 1 of Amazon within a few hours. Sometimes it can take longer, because it all depends on the competition of a particular keyword. Either way, if you include it you will start to rank for those keywords.
If you use long tail keywords that few of your competition use – then you are most likely to rank for those words. That is why it is worth doing in depth research when creating your listing.
Outsource Keyword Research
Given the value of keywords both on the front end of your listing and the backend, you may consider outsourcing keyword research to an expert.
Be very careful about which freelancers you select to do this, because some make big claims but have little ability. Make sure they use at least 2 tools to collect the keywords – that way you will have keywords from a number of sources included in your listing.
