Keyword Research on Amazon in 2021
We found that as of 2018, there were over 4 billion products listed on Amazon. That number is sure to grow exponentially as time goes by and sellers continue to flock to Amazon’s platform in droves.
As an ecommerce seller it’s important that you stay up-to-date with changes like these so you can make more informed decisions about your product listings.
With this guide, we hope that you are better equipped than ever before when it comes to finding the best keywords for your product listing. Although it can be challenging, you will need to do the basics of Amazon keyword research if you want your FBA products in 2021 to succeed.
Here are some of the most important Amazon keyword guidelines to remember.
What are Keywords and Why They Are Important on Amazon?
Keywords are only a part of the equation when it comes to creating your product listing. They help to drive more traffic to your products, but keywords aren’t the end all be all when it comes to success on Amazon.
You might be wondering what some of the best keyword research tips actually mean for you as an FBA seller.
One of these engines is called A9, which is the part of Amazon that calculates the relevancy of your product listing based on its keywords and other factors. It also uses it as a way for shoppers to find products featured in sponsored search results.
How to use Amazon’s keyword research and product relevance
What is product relevance?
With the goal of making your product listing more relevant to customers, Amazon has made a number of changes. One such change is that they no longer show your product title in Search results on desktop. Now, the first three lines of your product description will determine how much relevance you have towards a customer’s search query. If used correctly, this can be a powerful tool for increasing your organic traffic.
Also, if your keywords are used correctly in the bullet points or description you can use this to rank higher on Amazon’s internal search function as well as Google and other sites that allow searches from Amazon’s product listings.
Not only is it important to use the right keywords in your product listing, it is also important that you have a high relevancy factor. This means that whatever main keywords you choose to use in your product description should be included throughout the rest of the content as well.
Amazon’s A9 algorithm for keyword searches
Amazon is purely a search engine, like Google. Unlike Google, whose search engine is intended for information, news, images and videos as well as shopping, Amazon’s only goal is to sell products.
Amazon’s search engine A9 is designed with the goal of helping customers find products quickly.
So how does a product win an Amazon A9 search? Relevance.
Here are three factors that we believe affect Amazon keyword research and product relevance:
- Searchable Buyer Intent Keyword
- Relevance in relation to the product you are offering
- Competition
When a customer performs an Amazon search, they are most interested in finding related products.Rather than listing the product on the first page, A9 wants to ensure that you find what you’re looking for in your search results within two or three results.
The more content customers scroll through, the less likely they are to purchase.
Why is keyword relevance important for Amazon sellers?
Product relevance is dependent on many factors, but it’s important to know a few things about what those are. Understanding what affects product relevance can help you leverage it.
Amazon’s ranking algorithm is an unknown variable to many outside Amazon, and it remains hard for outsiders to tell which keywords translate into higher conversion rates. Amazon is well aware that it would lead to total chaos if they revealed any information about how its search engine works.
What are the key metrics that Amazon considers?
Amazon offers their customers a number of keyword research and product relevance features to be leveraged when deciding on the products they would like to purchase.
People who buy products online often want to purchase those with the highest number of sales and reviews. Amazon uses two metrics to determine what people want: conversion rate and sales velocity.
- Amazon’s conversion rates
- Sales velocity
What is an Amazon conversion rate?
Amazon’s Conversion Rate is a business metric that measures the likelihood someone will purchase a product.
Visitors to a particular product page often have one of three responses: they buy it, they add the product to their cart, or they “immediately” start browsing for other products.
Across most industries, the average conversion rate is around 2.35%. But top sites convert at 5.31% or higher. Moreover, Amazon’s conversion rate hovers around a comparatively-massive 13%.
Where do you check your overall conversion rate?
When you login to your Amazon seller central dashboard:
- Navigate to Reports > Business Reports.
- Navigate to by ASIN and Detail Page Sales and Traffic.
- Apply your desired date range on the top right
- Pay attention to the “Unit Session Percentage” is the column with the conversion rate.
How is this calculated?
Amazon Conversion Rate = Total Orders Divided By Sessions
A session is defined by Amazon as “visits to your offer pages for a selected time period.” Unlike page views, which are the number of times people view your product catalog during the date range you select, sessions count instances in which someone has visited at least one of your offer pages throughout that date range.
If a customer arrives at your page and returns to it after browsing elsewhere, that customer is counted as visiting only once not twice.
Factors That Affect Conversion Rates
There are a few factors that affect conversion rates, and I’ll address the most important ones below:
Choice of Keywords
One of the most important aspects of increasing your conversion rate on Amazon is choosing a good keyword. Sellers should think about both the advantages and disadvantages before selecting an appropriate word in their listings.
A customer who is window shopping may not know what product they are looking for, which can result in low sales velocity.
What does this do to your conversion rate?
Because of additional visitors to your Amazon listing, you are increasing the total volume without corresponding sales. This is lowering the conversion rate in comparison with simply selling more products.
Number of Reviews
Reviews on Amazon are incredibly powerful. Reviews should be encouraged because of the uptick in sales they bring to small businesses.
Amazon reviews are an important factor that affects how well a product sells. The number of good reviews is essential because the majority of them come from buyers who have firsthand experience with the item.
Amazon is the perfect venue to generate pre-launch buzz.
Quality Of Listings
With limited real estate on Amazon, you need to optimize your product description and upload high quality images so that your listing stands out.
What is the meaning of sales velocity?
Meanwhile, sales velocity is a bit more complicated.
Essentially, sales velocity on Amazon equals the number of opportunities (page impressions) multiplied by the average sale, with conversion rate and length cycle taken into account.
In order to reduce confusion, here’s an example of how sales velocity is calculated:
- Your product page has 3,000 impressions per month.
- The average sale is $35
- Your conversion rate is 15%.
- And the sales length cycle is 30 days.
In this case, your sales velocity is : 3000 Impressions x $35 = 105,000 x 15% conversion = 15750/30 days = $525
Other ranking signals by Amazon
Product title
The product title is an important part of the selling process. According to Amazon, for example, 85% of buyers never get past the first 2 search results pages that consist mainly of titles.
Every product on Amazon gets a title. Amazon’s A9 search engine uses these titles to find products, which means they need to do more than just tell potential customers what you sell.
For example, Amazon does not categorize your book until you start receiving sales, using its title and a few details from the product listing.
That’s why it is critical that you do proper Amazon keyword research before listing your product and title.
Key product Features (aka Bullet Points)
Similar to your title, the bullet points are important when it comes to search engine optimization on Amazon. You can include a number of highly relevant keywords in your five points that you couldn’t fit into the title.Bullet points enable your customer to learn more about the features and benefits of your product. Make them succinct and easy to understand, without including keywords or unnecessary text.
Product Description
Scroll down to find the product’s description.
Not as important as the title, but a product description on Amazon can help your customers make buying decisions. When it comes to product descriptions, you want to make sure your final closing point is concise and clear.
If your customer has scrolled down to the description, they’re probably still undecided about whether or not to purchase. That’s why it’s important for the description to be dramatically striking enough for them to complete the sale.
The description is a good spot for keywords you couldn’t fit in the title and bullet points.
Other possible ranking signals
The A9 algorithm is complicated.
Though the most important factors Amazon uses for ranking are unlikely to be the only ones, they’re probably the most significant.
Amazon is presumably considering reviews, back end keywords, promotions, and more when ranking products.
Furthermore, Amazon may alter their processes days later. Therefore, what might work today could affect your position drastically tomorrow.
Keywords for Your Amazon Listings
Amazon keyword research is a difficult and time consuming process but an important art for the success of your business.Furthermore, listing a product on Amazon is one of the more challenging tasks any e-commerce business can undertake. The only ways to get your products seen are if
Amazon likes the product and reviews it or if other shoppers see it and decide to buy it.
Ultimately, as I showed above, Amazon’s search engine is a result of relevance. And once you know the basics of keyword research on their site, making your product relevant is simple.
Amazon keyword research: long tail vs short tail
TL;DR: long tail is good, short tail is bad
Keyword research on Amazon can be broken down into two categories, which are short tail and long tail keywords.
Keyword Research on Amazon can be broken down into two categories: Short Tail Keywords – shorter keyword phrases with less than three words, while Long Tail Keywords – are longer keyword phrases with at least three words
As you do keyword research, you’ll want to be aware of the “long tail” and the “short tail.”
Here is an example of the difference between long tail and short tail.
Short tail: Water Bottle = 100,000 searches a month; relevant but is a window shopper.
Long tail: Blue 1 Liter Water Bottle = 500 searches a month; wants exactly what you’re selling.
So, while there are always short-term opportunities with low costs, long-tail keywords tend to yield better returns.However, if you’re conversion rates are low with long-tail phrases, add more so your sales will go up.
Optimizing for lower qualified but necessary keywords is important.
Amazon keyword research strategies
Now that you understand the types of keywords to be looking for, it is time to actually find some.
Run Amazon PPC campaigns
When advertising on Amazon PPC, you have two options:
Amazon PPC Manual Campaigns
These are the Amazon campaigns where you choose the keywords. You’ll want to identify good keywords, but it can be difficult if you’re unsure of what to rank for.
Amazon PPC Automatic Campaigns
With this campaign Amazon picks the keywords, close to 100%, to promote your product. It investigates which keywords are most effective and continues with those that generate best placement. Amazon will refine or alter those less successful when necessary.
Automatic Amazon PPC campaigns are a vital part of keyword research.
How to find the keywords that Amazon are targeting me for in an Automatic Campaign?
Two options:
- Run a report
- Inside Amazon’s Advertising Dashboard
Option 1 : Run a Report – After about a week of advertising, run a report for your keyword search terms (under Reports > Advertising) and sort the spreadsheet by best-converting keywords. This is Amazon’s way of telling you which keywords you should aim for given your conversion rate.
Option 2 : Amazons Advertising Dashvboard – Amazon helps you monitor your advertising by showing which keywords they’re targeting. To see the search terms in your ad group, navigate to Automatic Campaigns -> Ad Group -> Search Terms.
A very simple optimization can help you here in two easy steps.
- Take converting keywords from your Amazon campaign and put them into a Manual Exact + Broad/Phrase campaign
- Put irrelevant keywords and/or irrlevant ASINs into Negative Targeting inside your Automatic Campaign
Advertising listings once may be enough for jumps in rankings, but to sustain these rises through the challenges of organic search competition, sellers must continuously optimize their keywords.
Identify your successful competitor’s keywords
Helium10 is undoubteldy the market leader in Amazon apps. And their Cerebro tool allows you to check what keywords your competitors are ranking for in their listings.
How to Use It to Beat Your Competition
Simply login to Helium10 after signing up, and head over to Cerebro. Inside the tool, copy your competitors ASIN(s) then Click on “Get Keywords”. And now – you’ll see what they’re ranking for.
You can assume that the top 10 rankings (1 being the best, 10 being an average) are responsible for 95% of your total revenue.
Helium 10 Cerebro IQ Score
The Helium 10 Cerebro IQ Score shows you the potential of a specific keyword.
For example, suppose a phrase has only 50 monthly search queries and 20,000 competing products. The Quality Score will probably be low in this case because there are so many other options for customers.
But if a product receives 3000 searches and has about 100 competing products, it will have an unbelievably high IQ score.
What Can Cerebro Do For You?
- Improve your listing by leveraging the keyword ranking strategy of your competitors.
- Given a product and some background about the industry, determine what words will be most effective when used to classify it.
- If you have an idea for a new type of cooking utensil that would require an accompanying kitchen tool, come up with keywords related to your product before listing anything on e-commerce websites.
- Successfully launch new products and grow your brand’s awareness.
- Optimizing your product listing will increase the probability of a sale.
Learn from your competitors’ keyword strategy.
Cerebro is a great tool for seeing what keywords are driving your competitors’ performance. This is an opportunity to learn more about your market and best practices from other successful sellers, so you can have more confidence in your own marketing strategy. Enter up to 10 ASINs per search, and Cerebro will show you the estimated Amazon keyword search volume.
Helium 10 Cerebro Pricing
Helium 10 Cerebro can be used within all Helium 10 plans.
Platinum Plan = $97 a month
Diamond Plan = $197 a month
If you sign up for one of these plans, you will have 20 more tools that help you to build and grow your Amazon business.
Helium 10 is by far the best, most innovative, and advanced Amazon seller tool on the market today.
Conclusion
Amazon keyword research is not a one time process. To succeed on Amazon, you need to edit your keywords constantly. Fortunately, with the tricks outlined in this article, you’ll be able to conduct keyword research in less than a few hours each week.
If you have any tips to share, feel free to post them in the comments!
