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Amazon Product Listing Optimisation, SEO Tips For PRO Sellers

Amazon Product Listing Optimisation, SEO Tips For PRO Sellers

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Launching a new product on Amazon can be intimidating. In the past, Bindwise has provided an overview on ranking a new product, and even mentioned in our most popular article 3 common mistakes majority of Amazon sellers make.

It is worth taking a deep dive on what the best Amazon product descriptions look like, what needs to be included, and what are some important factors.

In this article we'll cover:

By the end, the importance of all these tasks will be clear, and how simple it is to complete, though it does take attention to detail and awareness of the market.

The optimisation is habits and a system. And if it’s not the right time for you to perform these additional efforts for your business, put this article away and come back later when you will be ready to build new habits which will bring your business to new heights.

Let’s get started.

Keyword research

Before you can be effective in your descriptions, title, and bullets you will need to be effective at keyword research first.

A great tool for this is Google Keyword Planner. For that you need to set up an account in Google Ads without ever paying, and this will give you specific search volumes for different phrases on Google.

The goal with the Keyword Planner is to identify the search volumes for phrases from your listing product details.

When you enter a keyword, it will spit out a full list of related keywords, and their search volumes. Obviously, this doesn’t translate perfectly to Amazon searches, but it is close enough to help you design your detail page to maximize your Amazon keyword ranking. Here is a screenshot with our garlic press as an example.

keyword-planner

You can see that best garlic press should be used, garlic crusher, and some other ideas in the related keywords. While this can be a great start, there are various tools that cater specifically to Amazon search volumes. This is also important given 72% of product searches start on Amazon.

Use common sense when evaluating keywords. Ranking highly for a keyword that is only loosely related will hurt your product in the long run, so be selective and intentional with your words.

Amazon title optimization

The title, along with your images, is the first thing consumers will see. It is important to be brief, be honest, and attentive with your title.

In the wild west of Amazon, titles were jumbles of keywords, stuffed with every potential keyword in hopes of gaming the system. The title is key to getting customers onto your detail page.

The Amazon search engine has evolved over the years, and customer’s sophistication level has grown with it. Typically, a successful title will now be more than a jumble of keywords.

Instead, use the title to accurately describe your product succinctly, while also naturally utilizing keywords.

To best show this, we will describe three methods of title writing, showing the benefits of each, and the drawbacks.

You will see that a balance between keyword stuffing and well written English will be the best tactic for sales.

For this exercise, let’s assume we are writing a title for Bob’s Brand Garlic Presses.
In this case, we will look at three styles. Much like the three bears, you will see that only one is ‘just right.’

Simple and Direct

The simplest, most direct title, would be as short as possible, with no descriptors or creative use of adjectives. In this case…

Garlic Press by Bob’s Brand

This title does describe the product, and avoids keyword stuffing. This is where the pros end. It is so short as to not in any way set it aside from competitors. It tells you nothing about the product besides its basest nature. The lack of adjectives or synonymous nouns limits the searches that this product will appear for.

The Keyword Stuffer

As a dismissive teenager may say, this is ‘so 2010.’ This was an effective and popular way of making titles in the earlier days of Amazon. It involved taking every possible important keyword, and putting them in the title, without regards to readability or coherence. This looks like…

Garlic Press Garlic Presser for Pressing Garlic and Mincing and Making Garlic Garlic Mincer Tool Garlic Tool Best Tool for Garlic Minced Garlic Maker Bob’s Garlic Press

The benefit to this style is getting every important keyword in the title.This can help start the ranking process for a variety of keywords. In a completely non-competitive niche, this may still work. The downside is that a jumble of words like this is aesthetically displeasing. Customers are drawn to the simple and well-worded, and this title is neither.

The Ideal

As Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in moderation, even moderation.” In this case, it means finding a delicate balance between directness and keywords. This can be achieved through careful use of grammar and punctuation. By properly punctuating your title, you can involve multiple keywords while still sounding natural.

We recommend using a template. This template is basic, and can be adjusted as needed.

Create a title as follows: Main Keyword - Define using another keyword, describe with a third keyword, list brand. In practice…

Garlic Press - Garlic Mincer for Dicing Garlic, by Bob’s Brand

As you can see, this title still reads well, and by using punctuation we have allowed three important keywords without seeming like a keyword stuffed title. The use of hyphens and commas breaks up the comma for natural reading and proper grammar, while allowing for multiple keywords. At times, commas can allow for a fourth of fifth keyword, but be careful to not lose fluidity in the title, or make it sound jumbled.

Amazon or your competitors randomly change titles and more from your product detail pages. Here at Bindwise we help Amazon FBA, FBM and private label sellers track their product listings and instantly notify of any changes allowing you to keep a pulse on your product detail pages.

This is what you get as real-time notification when your listings are silently modified by Amazon, competitors or malicious bots without you wanting it to.

bw-alert

Bullet points - each slot in the chamber matters

The bullet points and description serve a very different purpose from the title.

The title is the first impression, and a tool to get page views on the product page.

While important for search engine optimization as well, once they have clicked on your product, the title becomes less important as a conversion tool.

The bullet points and descriptions are what turns a potential customer into an actual customer.

The typical format for each bullet is up to 200 characters. This sometimes changes, and the formatting rules can be read in detail in Amazon’s style guide.

Each of these needs to be well written and to the point. It is important to consider both keywords, and customer perspective.

Let’s consider, again, the Garlic Press. If you read competitor reviews and see that durability is a big issue, you could make that one of the bullet points. For example…

DURABLE GARLIC PRESS - This garlic dicer is made of solid metal; Well-constructed for ongoing use, and repeated mincing of garlic for each and every family meal

Let’s break down that first bullet.

It uses several of the most important keywords: garlic press, garlic dicer, and mincing. It also manages to avoid sounding like a jumble of words.

Note that the first few words are capitalized; these are like the thesis of the bullet point.

Also, no periods are used. Amazon suggests using semicolons between phrases in product bullet points.

Typically, you will want to use the most important selling points and most important keywords as your first bullet point. This progresses all the way through your last bullet.

Use these bullets to both include important keywords, and to address customer concerns. This may include functionality, warranty information, things that set your product aside, etc. Look at you competitors, customer reviews, and consider any innovations unique to your product.

Product description - seal the deal

The product description is much longer than the title or bullet points.

If the customer has made it down to your product description, they have a genuine interest in your product.

The product description is where you get them to sign on the dotted line and purchase your product.

It is important to continue to keep the keywords and customer needs in mind while writing your product description.

The additional space also allows you to show off your product knowledge and expertise. Using industry and product related vocabulary signal to the customer that you are a knowledgeable seller.

The product description sentence is typically written in whole words and paragraphs. It is also one of the only areas where HTML is allowed.

While as a whole code is banned on product detail pages, you are allowed to use the <b> and <p> tags. These mean bold and paragraph respectively.

If you are totally unfamiliar with these tags they work as follows.

When you type <b> all words until </b> will be bold. With the paragraph, <p> starts a new paragraph, and </p> ends it. A quick example is below…

<b> Some sort of heading, </b> <p> This starts a new paragraph. </p> <p> This starts the second paragraph </p>

When type as above, it will appear as follows.

Some sort of heading,
This starts a new paragraph.
This starts the second paragraph

Using these simple HTML codes will allow you to sprinkle headings throughout your description.

The paragraphs will help you organize your description appropriately, and make your description flow.

It should go without saying, but using proper grammar and spelling is important in your product detail page. For those struggling with some of the basics, The Elements of Style is a revered books that is now in the public domain. It covers many important but simple errors that writers make, and how to correct and avoid them.

It is also worth noting that Enhanced Brand Content is another great way to optimize your product detail page. This is available to all registrants of Brand Registry 2.0, but can be complicated, and will be covered more deeply in future articles. You can learn more about Enhanced Brand Content from Amazon.

Customer centric process

We keep referencing customer needs and problems, but haven’t yet described how to be aware of those problems.

There are several steps you should be taking during this research phase, and ideally much of this research is done before you have ever purchased your product.

Reading reviews is one great way to get customer perspective. Spend time reading what customers say about your product.

This should start on Amazon, but should expand to include other information online. This can mean personal blogs, niche groups that have a use for the product, celebrities that have reviewed or used the product, YouTube pages, etc. Anywhere you can find customer reviews and experiences for your generalized product will be vital for understanding your consumer needs.

Again, using the example of a garlic press, if you learn that customers need it especially for large family dinners and efficiency and quickness are important, you can use that information in your bullets and descriptions. You know customers need a product that will help them quickly prepare garlic for large family gatherings, make sure your product conveys its effectiveness at those tasks.

Putting it all together

Quality keyword research, attentiveness to customer needs, and the formatting covered above will help you have a high quality product detail page. This should increase your conversion rate, and your clicks, which are all important parts of your Amazon sales rank, which Amazon admits has many factors.

A good detail page alone will not guarantee success, which is why Bindwise is available to monitor your detail pages after creation. Bindwise also has great information about getting product reviews, which will greatly help with your search relevance and conversion rate. Use all these tools to help create a great product detail page and get your sales rank rocketing up the charts, so you can make your next product a successful one!