Choosing the wrong keywords for your products can be catastrophic to your product visibility on Amazon. This is why keyword selection is so important. If shoppers can’t find your Amazon product listing keywords quickly and effectively the opportunity for a sale is lost. How do you prevent this from happening?
The first step is to optimize your keywords. In the following blog post, you’ll find tips on:
- How Amazon keywords work
- How to use Primary Amazon Keywords
- How to use Hidden (Title & Description) Keywords
How Amazon Keywords Work
Unlike Google, the Amazon search function can only display results that include all of the search terms the user entered into the search bar. This is why you want to include as many keyword variants in your title as possible.
Amazon has 2 different categories of keywords it uses to rank products:
- Primary (Title & Description) Keywords
- Hidden Keywords
What are Primary (Title & Description) Keywords?
Primary keywords are visible on Amazon. They exist within product titles and descriptions and should be chosen carefully. Ideally, they should reflect the primary way you think people will find your product. The following recommendations are from Amazon Seller Central to help you create better product titles.
Within your product title, use the following elements:
- Brand
- Product line
- Material or key feature
- Product type
- Color
- Size
- Packaging/Quantity
Tips to optimize your product listings
- Titles should be concise. We recommend fewer than 80 characters.
- Don’t use ALL CAPS.
- Capitalize the first letter of each word except for prepositions (in, on, over, with), conjunctions (and, or, for), or articles (the, a, an).
- Use numerals: “2” instead of “two”.
- Don’t use non-language ASCII characters such as Æ, ©, or ®.
- Titles should contain the minimal information needed to identify the item and nothing more.
- Don’t use subjective commentary, such as “Hot Item” or “Best Seller”.
- Titles can include necessary punctuation, like hyphens (-), forward slashes (/), commas (,), ampersands (&), and periods (.).
- Titles can abbreviate measurements, such as “cm”, “oz”, “in”, and “kg”.
- Don’t include your merchant name in titles.
- Size and color variations should be included in titles for child ASINs, not the main title (see below)
What are Amazon Hidden Keywords & Search Terms?
Hidden keywords exist within Amazon’s backend. They aren’t visible on Amazon and they don’t appear within the product listing on Amazon search. Hidden keywords can include different variations of your keywords or keyword phrases for search purposes. Slang words and synonyms keywords could be used in this area.
Best practices for Hidden Keywords used In Amazon searches
The following list includes advice from Amazon on how you should structure your keywords:
- Stay under the length limit.
- Include synonyms
- Include spelling variations, no need for misspellings
- Include abbreviations and alternative names
- You can use all lowercase
- You don’t need punctuation, such as: “;”, “:”, “-“
- Separate words with spaces
- Don’t repeat words within the Search Terms field
- Don’t include your brand or other brand names in Search Terms
- Don’t include ASINs in Search Terms
- No need for stop words, such as “a”, “an”, “and”, “by”, “for”, “of”, “the”, “with” and so on
- Use singular or plural, no need for both
- No temporary statements, such as “new” or “on sale now”
- Don’t use subjective claims such as “best,” “cheapest,” “amazing” and so on
- Don’t add abusive or offensive terms
Optimizing your keywords starts with how you optimize your product data for Amazon. Get the details on what you need to know about Amazon Product Listing Integration.