Ultimate 5-Step Amazon SEO Guide
Part 3 of 4—This is the Amazon SEO Optimization Guide. It is the third part of a multi-step guide on optimizing product pages on Amazon. In this part, I will give you the ultimate Amazon SEO guide. Understanding how to optimize SEO is crucial for achieving a high ranking on Amazon’s platform. So you don't want to miss that. Honestly, you can't afford to miss it.
To succeed on Amazon, you need to drive traffic to your product pages, and a significant part of that effort is Amazon SEO. The work you do with SEO results in higher search rankings, which brings more traffic, and more traffic leads to increased sales.
In this Amazon SEO guide, I will cover the basics and also show you exactly how to proceed. By the end of this article, you will have a good understanding of how Amazon SEO works and the steps you need to take to succeed.
1. What is Amazon SEO?
On Amazon, SEO is about trying to get your products to appear earlier in the search results when a customer searches for a product. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It involves various ways of optimizing according to a search engine. Every time you search for something, a search engine uses algorithms to decide which results to show. Examples of platforms with search engines include Google, Zalando, YouTube, and of course, Amazon.
Different services' search engines work differently, and so does the SEO work. Amazon SEO means search engine optimization on Amazon, which is significantly different from working with SEO on Google.
Why Care About SEO on Amazon?
It’s easy to think that SEO isn’t that important and that the best products will always be the ones customers buy. Unfortunately, this is far from true. Customers buy the products they find, and the highest-ranked products account for the majority of sales. No matter how good your product is, if no one finds it, it won't get any sales.
SEO or Ads?
It’s important to distinguish between organic search results and ads. Organic search results are what Amazon’s search engine shows without you paying for your products to be displayed. With ads, you pay to show your product, and it costs money every time a customer clicks on your ad. While SEO can be influenced, it can’t be controlled exactly. Ads, however, simply require payment to display your products.
Amazon's A-9 Algorithm
When you read or talk about Amazon SEO, it’s not uncommon to come across Amazon’s A-9 algorithm. This is the name of the algorithm that Amazon uses in its search engine. That’s all there is to it.
Often, companies or individuals trying to sell something will mention the A-9 algorithm and how well their product or service is optimized for it. It’s just a sales trick, believe it or not. They try to boost their authority by mentioning the algorithm’s name. They often mention many other difficult names and abbreviations. Don’t worry about it; instead, turn to products and services that try to make it easy for you to understand.
2. How Amazon SEO Works
Amazon SEO works differently than on most other platforms. There are three main parameters that Amazon looks at:
- Relevance: Describes how relevant your product is to a specific search.
- Performance: Describes how well your product performs, such as in sales or views.
- Feedback: Customer satisfaction is incredibly important, regardless of how relevant your product is or how much it sells. Therefore, both reviews and returns will affect the ranking. The better the feedback, the better the ranking.
Relevance
If you sell blue toothbrushes and a customer searches for "toothbrush," your product is very relevant for that search. If the customer searches for "pink toothbrush" or "tooth cleaning," your product is still relevant, but not as much. The customer might still want to buy your product, but the chance is significantly lower. If the search is “iPhone,” your product's relevance is minimal.
The higher the relevance your product has for a specific search, the higher the chance your product will be shown. The relevance for specific keywords is influenced by factors like the category your product is in and the words you use on the product page. I will go through more on this later.
Performance
Beyond relevance, a product’s performance is also important. The more a product sells, the more clicks it gets, and the longer customers stay on the product page, the better the performance. There are many parameters you can focus on, but the most important ones are:
- Sales: The more a product sells, the more Amazon wants to show it. Amazon wants to make money, and since they get a commission on each sale, they are more inclined to showcase top sellers.
- Conversion Rate: Strongly linked to total sales, a higher conversion rate means more sales. This is something you want to optimize regardless of SEO since it directly increases your sales.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Conversion combined with traffic leads to higher sales. Good SEO makes Amazon display the product higher in the search results. But there is another crucial step, which is CTR. CTR is the number of customers who see your product and choose to click on it. Amazon doesn’t want to show products that don’t get clicks.
Feedback
Reviews and seller feedback were previously very important on Amazon, but their importance has decreased over time. Despite this, reviews and other feedback remain incredibly important. Why? Because this, in turn, affects sales, conversion, and CTR.
Relevance, Performance, and Feedback Together
In summary, relevance gives Amazon a reason to display your products. Good performance makes it more likely that Amazon will show your products over competitors' products. Feedback increases performance but also affects SEO on its own, even if the effect isn't huge.
There are other parameters sometimes discussed, but I don't think you need to worry about them. These other parameters are often closely linked to the parameters I've covered here, and it's hard to know what actually improves your SEO. Instead, it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Focus fully on these three parameters!
3 - Keyword Analysis for Amazon SEO
Previously, I discussed relevance and how it can affect Amazon SEO. I also mentioned that you can influence relevance by using the keywords that customers search for on your product page. But how do you know which keywords to use? You find out by conducting a keyword analysis.
A keyword analysis is exactly what it sounds like. By using various tools to analyze data on Amazon, you can determine which keywords customers are searching for, and from that, you know which keywords to use on your product page.
How to Conduct Keyword Analysis
When I started selling on Amazon, there were some tools available, but most were very approximate and worked so-so. Therefore, one often combined many different methods. But today, it's a completely different story. There are now numerous tools that are fantastic for keyword analysis and much more.
Instead of trying to explain how to do a keyword analysis in this text, I suggest you get one of these tools and follow their guides (see tool recommendations below). All tools work a little differently, and it's best to follow their own guides for the tools they've built. But if you still want a guide from me, there is a keyword research guide on the SellWaves blog that I wrote some time ago.
Tools for Keyword Analysis
There are many tools you can use for keyword analysis on Amazon. The good thing is that these are the same tools you will want (or rather need) to do many other things. Thus, this won't be an extra cost for you.
Despite the abundance of tools, I strongly recommend choosing one of the following two. These are the tools I find the best and are often the ones others are most satisfied with.
- Jungle Scout - This is one of the oldest tools and the one I use the most. It's simple, focuses on the essentials, and does what it's supposed to. Jungle Scout contains many smaller tools, and you can read more about their keyword tool here.
- Helium 10 - This is a newer tool than Jungle Scout, but don't underestimate Helium 10. With many more features and tools, Helium 10 has become a tool many sellers can't live without. You can read more about their keyword tool here.
What to Do with the Keywords?
Once you've started using one of the tools and conducted a keyword analysis, it's time to use the keywords. But how? Where should you write the keywords? How should you write them? And how many times?
I will now go through all of this step by step. I will explain it generally, but I will also give you clear steps on how to SEO-optimize all the different parts of a product page - title, bullet points, and product description.
4 - SEO for Amazon Product Pages
When you reach this step, I suggest you read on to get a good overview of everything. Then come back and follow this guide step by step as you write your SEO-optimized product text, and you should also have your keyword analysis ready. Below, I will describe how to SEO-optimize the different elements of the product page, but you should also know how to write good copy (see previous sections).
Images Affect SEO
Before we dive into the text-based parts of Amazon, I want to quickly mention images. Images also affect SEO to a large extent. Just like reviews, images are one of the strongest contributing factors to CTR and conversion. Therefore, make sure to put a lot of effort into your images. You can read more about how to optimize images for Amazon in the next part of this multi-step guide.
Product Title on Amazon
The title of your products should be short and concise. Present a product and highlight the most important aspects of it. You can also include one or a few of the most important keywords. But don't try to force in something that doesn't fit. The text should be simple and clear.
Some sellers try to write as long a title as possible to fit in more keywords. But I strongly advise against this. A long title doesn't look professional and can often deter customers. Try to keep it between 80 and 150 characters. I usually aim for about 100-110 characters.
Example of a Good Title
“Ozaka Cold Brew Coffee Maker - 1.5 Liter Glass Carafe with Stainless Steel Mesh Filter (multiple colors available)”
In this example, the seller included some of the most important keywords - Cold Brew and Cold Brew Coffee Maker. Additionally, the title quickly and easily addresses two of the most important questions or concerns a customer might have, namely size and filter. The seller also indicates that multiple colors are available (note: writing this out is against Amazon's rules), which can otherwise be difficult for the customer to know before clicking on the page. Finally, the title is clear, easy to read, and has no stuffed keywords that give an amateurish impression.
SEO for Bullet Points
Each product page has a section called bullet points. Bullet points are displayed very high on the product page, and this section is intended for you as a seller to showcase the product’s key features and benefits.
Here, it is important to try to incorporate several keywords. Again, it is important not to make the text look odd or artificial. It might seem difficult, but you will get better at it the more you practice. The recommended length is 120-250 characters. I suggest you do the following:
- Analyze: If it’s your first time writing on a product page, it’s good to first create your own impressions. Go on Amazon and search around a bit, preferably for some products that you are actually interested in. Create an impression of what you think are good bullet points.
- Write First, Keywords Later: It can be difficult to write good text that is keyword-optimized. My advice is to first write as good a text as you can and then work in the keywords. In some cases, it's easy, in others, you might need to make bigger corrections. The point is that if you write the text first, you know what you want to communicate without the keywords affecting it.
SEO-Optimize Product Description
The product description is the part of the product page where you can fit the most text. This also means that you can fit significantly more keywords here. The recommended length is 1200-2000 characters. Make sure to actively try to incorporate as many relevant keywords as possible. But of course, you should still keep the customer in focus.
If certain keywords are relevant but difficult to fit in naturally, a solution can be to create new subheadings. An example is “Gift.” In many categories, such as watches and clothes, customers often search for gift suggestions. The keywords could be along the lines of “Watch to give as a gift.” These keywords can be difficult to fit into a regular product text. But if you have a section called something like “The perfect gift,” you can easily include this type of keyword.
A+ Content
If you have done a Brand Registry on Amazon, you have the option to use a more graphical product description. This part is called A+ Content, and you can also work in keywords here. A+ Content corresponds to the product description, so you should try to include the same amount of keywords. With A+ Content, this is even easier because you can work with columns, other types of text modules, etc.
Be careful with texts in the form of images. Many companies use images that contain text instead of writing out the text. This is because they can completely control the style. Apple often works this way, for example, on their MacBook Air product page. But since this text cannot be read by Amazon’s search engine, it will not help with SEO. So try to include “real text” and actively work in keywords in it. You can also work with “alt text” on the images. This is text that you add in the background and is used if the image cannot be displayed for some reason. Amazon’s algorithms also read this text, so don't miss the opportunity to include keywords here.
Back-End Keywords
On Amazon, you have the option to add keywords in the system without writing them out on the product page. These keywords become something that Amazon associates your product with, but the customer never sees them. Here you can add keywords that you haven't managed to fit on the product page, but also keywords that you don’t want to display on the product page for various reasons.
If you, for example, sell a very cheap sweater, you might not want to write “cheap sweater” on the product page. But, you still want Amazon to show your product when a customer searches for “cheap sweater.” This is perfect for adding the keyword here. And there are many similar examples.
You will find back-end keywords where you edit the product page. You can add up to 250 bytes of data here. 250 bytes is not the same as 250 characters, but almost. Letters A to Z and numbers 1-9 are 1 byte per character, but special characters often require 2 bytes per character.
How Often Should You Use Keywords?
Some sellers on Amazon try to use the same keyword over and over again to increase the chance of ranking high for that keyword. My experience is that once is enough. The most important keywords will naturally be included multiple times. This is something that many of the best tools advise, and even Amazon themselves.
However, if you don't index on keywords that you find highly relevant, try to increase the number of times the exact keyword is mentioned in your listing.
How Many Keywords Should You Use?
This is a question without a specific answer. It all depends on how many keywords are relevant to your product and how much you can fit into the text in a good way. But we are not talking about 5 and not about 100. Rather somewhere between 20-50.
Additionally, you will always include keywords that you are unaware of. If you, for example, want to include the keywords “thin yoga mat,” you might write it in the following sentence: “blue thin yoga mat for adults.” Then you have also included the keywords “yoga mat,” “blue thin yoga mat,” and “yoga mat for adults.” Maybe these were not the keywords you planned to include, but they are there.
Which Keywords Should You Use?
After conducting a keyword analysis, you probably have a long list of keywords. But which ones should you use? It’s not easy to answer. First and foremost, the more relevant a keyword is to your product, the more important it is to use that keyword. The more relevant a keyword is, the better customers who searched for it will convert. Besides that, there are two important parameters to look at:
- Volume: How many people search for this keyword? The more who search, the more potential customers you can get.
- Competition: Different keywords have different levels of competition. The higher the competition, the harder it will be for your products to be seen.
Volume vs. Competition
When choosing between keywords, you should look at the volume of searches these keywords receive and how tough the competition is. There is no point in actively avoiding keywords with high competition, and keywords that have it are often short keywords that stick around whether you want them to or not. But sometimes you have to choose between using different keywords.
When you face such a choice, you should look at your product's performance (see step 2). The better your product performs compared to your competitors, the greater the chance you can compete. In step 5, I will go through how to check competitors' performance.
5. Sales are Fuel
Having the right keywords on the product page is essential for succeeding with Amazon SEO. But it’s not enough. Amazon wants to see that your products perform well to show them high up in the search results.
Previously, I mentioned sales, conversion, and click-through rate as the most important criteria, but the most important of these is sales. Why? Because sales are a result of the other two. High conversion and high CTR lead to high sales. We can also measure our competitors' sales to compare ourselves with them. This is not possible with conversion and CTR.
Sales
It's not uncommon to encounter sellers who invest heavily in advertising without making any direct profit from the advertising itself. Why? Because this leads to increased sales, which leads to better SEO, which leads to greater total sales and profit.
You can think of a product page's relevance as a car and its performance (especially sales) as fuel. It doesn’t matter if you have an old Volkswagen from 1990 or a brand-new Ferrari - without fuel, you won’t get anywhere. This is an analogy for the cart that needs to be pushed up the SEO hill.
How Much Do You Need to Sell?
Sales are incredibly important, but the question is how much you need to sell to compete with your SEO. The answer depends on how much your competitors are selling. Fortunately, there are tools to help you find this out. Previously, I mentioned the tools Jungle Scout and Helium 10 for keyword analysis, and in the post about market analysis, I also showed how to use these tools to see how much your competitors are selling.
Once you have the values for how much your competitors are selling, you can easily calculate how much you need to sell to match it. However, what you get is not an exact science, but it is a direction. As mentioned, CTR and conversion also influence, but the value you get above gives you at least an approximate target to aim for.
Spy on Competitors' Sales
How do you spy on competitors with Jungle Scout or Helium 10? Simple! You search for the keyword you think is relevant. Either search for a very general keyword if you want to see the competition among the majority of competitors, or a more specific keyword if you want to see the competition for that specific keyword.
Then start Jungle Scout’s or Helium 10’s Chrome Extension (they work almost the same). After that, you can easily get data on how much competitors are selling. You get values both on how many units they sell per day/month and how much they turnover. Go through a few (about 5-15) of the top sellers and form an impression of how tough the competition is.
Ads to boost SEO?
When you launch on Amazon, you easily get into a catch-22. Without good SEO, you don’t sell anything, and without selling, you don’t succeed with SEO. But fortunately, there are ads. With Amazon’s ad platform, you can use ads to kickstart sales and keep them at the levels you aim for.
As I mentioned above, you can use tools to retrieve values for how much your competitors are selling. You can then calculate backward how much advertising you would need to run to reach the same levels. Keep in mind that you will also start to get organic traffic and sales as you begin to rank in the organic results.
The ad platform not only provides you with a tool to increase sales but also a great tool to discover new keywords and measure conversion and CTR. You can then use the data you get to further increase your product’s performance and relevance.
Optimize SEO with External Traffic
There is an alternative way to get sales to fuel your SEO, and that is external traffic. External traffic means traffic (potential customers) that comes to Amazon from other platforms. It could be via email, Facebook, YouTube, or any other platform you can think of.
The advantage of external traffic is that this is something you can control completely. Amazon does not control this traffic as they do SEO and ads. External traffic can be the foundation for your entire SEO if your brand is well-known and sells itself (e.g., Nike, KitchenAid, Apple). But it can also be a very important tool for brand new companies.
Summary - Amazon SEO Guide
You should now have a thorough and clear understanding of Amazon SEO and the work that needs to be done. Together, we have now gone through what a keyword analysis is and which tools you can use, how to SEO-optimize a product page, and finally how sales affect your SEO. The big question for larger companies remains, and that is how to operationally work with SEO. There is no straightforward answer to that question, but I advise you to start by mapping out what needs to be done and by whom. Then you can build a more clear operational plan and strategy.
I hope you feel that you have a good understanding of it all and now know how to work with SEO. I want to emphasize again how important it is not to forget to keep the customer in focus. It’s easy to get carried away and SEO-optimize the texts to the point of degradation. But you must remember to keep the customer and their needs as the highest priority; only then will Amazon’s algorithms follow.
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