9 minute read
There are millions of sellers on Amazon, each of them competing for clicks and sales from the 300 million active Amazon shoppers. To make your product stand out, you need to optimize yours to rank as highly as possible in Amazon search results. But exactly how does Amazon’s product ranking algorithm work? While no one knows exactly how it works, there are certain factors that have been shown to play a significant part in how highly a product ranks. These factors include sales and reputation, as well as your product keywords, product features, description, and product title.
Clearly, certain factors like sales and feedback take more time on Amazon, but there are some more immediate wins available to you. In this post, we’ll look at the key parts of Amazon’s A9 Algorithm that you can tackle right now to help improve your ranking results, including keywords, product title, description, and bullets.
Primary vs. Backend Keywords on Amazon
Amazon search is engineered to provide shoppers with the best possible product results related to the search term a shopper entered. When returning results from an organic or PPC search, Amazon examines the product’s name, description, and features (bullet points). These are all places where you should use your primary keywords.
Apart from primary keywords, Amazon also allows you to enter backend or “hidden keywords” for your products. Your customers won’t be able to see the keywords, but Amazon uses them to rank your products. This is an ideal spot to enter keywords you don’t want to be displayed on your listing but that is still relevant to your product. This is the ideal place to use long-tail keywords or variations.
Getting the Most From Your Amazon Keyword Research
When doing keyword research for your Amazon product listing, you should start by researching the most popular keywords for the type of product you’re selling. Because these keywords tend to be very competitive, you’ll want to look for less competitive long-tail keywords that you can include in your product listing. There are different types of tools that can help you perform keyword research and identify the best keywords for your Amazon products, including:
- – Keyword index checker – Tracks which of your primary keywords are currently indexed on Amazon. This can help you save time by showing you which keywords you should focus on.
- – Keyword aggregator – This shows you the optimal keywords to use for your specific product. It works by analyzing your main keyword and providing you with other related keywords to use alongside it.
- – Reverse ASIN lookup – Allows you to look up any ASIN and check which keywords are ranking for that specific product.
Optimizing Your Amazon Product Title
Your Amazon product title is perhaps the most important part of your product listing in terms of ranking for the A9 algorithm, so be sure to focus extra effort to get it just right. Know that when it comes to product titles, Amazon has strict guidelines you’ll need to follow. Here’s an Amazon product checklist to make sure yours makes the grade:
– Start with the brand name
– Capitalize the first letter of each word
– Use numerals when writing numbers
– Include quantity if more than one
– Include size if relevant
– Include the color if your product comes in more than one color
DO NOT use the following in your product title:
– Price
– All caps
– Symbols such as !? or $
The Perfect Formula for Writing Amazon Product Titles
For many major types of products, Amazon also provides title formulas for certain product categories.
Try to incorporate your main keywords and phrases into the product title, it’s usually best somewhere after the brand name. Amazon allows you to use up to 250 characters in your product title – that translates to keeping your Amazon product title between about 10 to 20 words. Don’t try to stuff your product titles on Amazon with a large number of keywords. This is more like to hurt you in the long run.
Bonus tip for writing Amazon product titles: You may also want to explore how to get an Amazon’s Choice badge.
How To Optimize Amazon Product Features (Bullet Points)
Amazon gives you a total of five opportunities to call out your product’s features in the form of bullet points. Don’t underestimate the power of bullet points: Many shoppers will read these bullet points and skip most of the product descriptions!
Use the bullets section of your Amazon listing to briefly describe your product’s features and benefits. When writing bullet points, use relevant Amazon keywords that you haven’t had the chance to use in your product’s title. Try to use one keyword phrase per bullet point. Finally, make your bullet points short, clear and easy to read.
Amazon Bullet Point Guidelines
Amazon gives you a total of five opportunities to call out your product’s features in the form of bullet points. Don’t underestimate the power of bullet points: Many shoppers will read these bullet points and skip most of the product descriptions! Amazon provides guidelines on the proper way to write bullet points for your products, such as text length and limited punctuation. According to Amazon, all bullet points should be:
– Up to 256 characters in length
– Concise
– Representative of a single aspect of your product
– In sentence case without punctuation (or with as little punctuation as possible)
Amazon also offers recommendations on how to use each of the five bullet points.
Optimizing Amazon Product Descriptions
It’s crucial to write a compelling product description for each of your products. 30% of shoppers state that they abandon an online shopping cart when the product they’re looking at has a poor description.
When crafting your Amazon product description, it is important to write it in such a way that it compels shoppers to buy. Don’t make your product description boring or purely informative. Information rarely influences shoppers. Instead, try to actually persuade shoppers to buy the product.
To persuade the maximum number of shoppers, focus on benefits over features. Elaborate on how your product can help people solve a problem and improve their lives. Make sure to keep the description under Amazon’s limit of 2,000 characters. If you don’t know how to write persuasive copy, you might want to consider hiring a professional Amazon copywriter to help you.
When it comes to using keywords in your Amazon product description, try to add any keywords that you haven’t had the chance to use in the product title or bullet points section. Be careful to do it in a natural way. Above all else, keep your product description fun and easy to read!
Take Advantage of All the Opportunities to Rank Higher in Amazon’s A9 Algorithm
Due to the constantly changing nature of Amazon’s search algorithm, optimizing keywords for your products is a never-ending process.
Always be on the lookout for ways to better optimize your keywords to rank your products even higher in Amazon search. Make sure to use these tips to optimize your product listing and you will be ahead of the competition and well on your way to getting your products to the top of Amazon’s search results.
