If you’re an ecommerce seller, whether on Amazon or elsewhere, you are no doubt always looking to increase conversions for your listings. Driving traffic to your listings takes a lot of work and investment, so once your visitors are there, you want to make the most of it and make sure as many of your visitors as possible follow through and buy your products.
To grow your ecommerce business on Amazon involves two main elements: bringing more traffic to your site (particularly through ranking your product on Amazon), and increasing conversions. One greatly overlooked factor when it comes to conversions is keywords.
In this article, we will examine the role keywords in conversions, and how to effectively use keywords in your Amazon listing to drive more sales.
Keywords Aren’t Just For SEO
If you are involved in ecommerce, you probably already know that keywords are important for ranking your product on Amazon. Amazon works on an algorithm to rank its products, with one of the key ranking factors being search term relevance and keywords. Ranking your product on Amazon is of course essential because this is the number one way to drive more traffic to your site.
However, keyword usage on your Amazon listing is not only important for ranking, or even for traffic more generally. Keywords also come into play when looking to improve conversions. Having the right keywords in place mean that not only will you attract traffic to your listing, but more importantly, you will attract the right kind of traffic.
Using keywords to bring in customers who are actively seeking a product like yours means they are much more likely to buy. Implementing the right keywords in the right way throughout your listing will further drive these customers towards a purchase.
The Importance of Keyword Research
In order to use the right keywords, you need to find them first! This is where keyword research comes in. Keyword research helps you identify the search terms your target audience is using on Amazon to look for products like yours. A good Amazon keyword tool will let you not only conduct keyword research, but also track your keywords.
Through using a keyword research tool, you can see which keywords are ranking most highly for products like yours. You can enter keywords that relate to your product and check the search volumes – obviously you are looking for keywords with the highest search volumes. Good tools will also suggest other high ranking keywords you may not have thought of, and cover both short (one word) keywords and long-tail ones.
Source: https://amazonseoconsultant.com/amazon-seo/
It is also important to have certain foundations in place even before you start the process of keyword research. In order to determine the best keywords, you need to have a clear picture of your target audience. This will help you with many other aspects of your strategy, not just your keyword research. To know your audience, spend time identifying your target market and use this information to create buyer personas. These buyer personas should represent your ideal customers.
Some questions to ask when defining your target market and buyer personas:
- Which problems does your product solve?
- Who is likely to have these problems?
- What are the traits, passions, needs and habits of these people?
- What are their main pain points?
You can apply the answers to these problems to optimize many aspects of your business – from product development to marketing. When it comes to keyword research, your buyer personas’ pain points, needs and passions will tell you which keywords they are likely to search for, and therefore the keywords you may want to target.
How To Use Amazon Keyword Research Tools
Although the choice is more limited compared to the countless tools on the market for general SEO, there are a few Amazon keyword research tools which will be more than adequate to perform keyword research to help you create the perfect Amazon listing.
To get started, you will need to identify an initial set of possible keywords. You essentially do this in three ways:
1) Product Knowledge: What are the features and benefits of your product? What consumer need, desire or pain point do they address?
2) Competitor Analysis: What keywords do your top ranking competitors use in their product listings? What keywords are they ranking for?
3) Buyer Persona: What are the passions, needs and pain points of your target market and buyer personas? What keywords are they likely to search for?
From there, take each of these keywords and search for them using your Amazon keyword research tool. Performing this exercise will help you understand which of these words have the highest search volumes. Once you have a firm grasp on this, you can start to build your list of primary keywords. High volumes are one factor, but not the only aspect you should consider. It is also important to pay attention to relevance: your goal is to find keywords that are high in volume and relevant to your product and your customer. This means not only will your listing reach more customers, but the right kind of customer.
Next, look at suggestions for related, high-volume keywords. Good Amazon keyword tools will take the keywords you are looking at suggest other keywords that you may also be interested in. Assess these both in terms of relevance and search volume and add any more strong ones to your list of primary keywords.
Finally, depending on the tool you are using, you can reverse engineer keywords from competitors’ sites. KeyworX, for example, allows you to enter any Amazon URL and see which keywords this page is ranking for. You can then use any of these keywords for your own purposes, as appropriate. After all, why not benefit from their experiences, whether good or bad?
This process of assessing ranking keywords is great to see what your most successful competitors are doing which you can apply to your own listings. It is also useful for seeing what your own product listings are ranking for, and applying these lessons (again, good or bad) to your future listings.
Different Types of Keywords
When it comes to keywords, SEO, and Amazon SEO, there is a fair bit of terminology involved, and it can get fairly confusing. A keyword doesn’t necessarily mean just one word, for example.
The first thing to know is that there are three main types of keywords:
1) Head keywords: these are 1-2 words only, and have the highest search volume. For example “sneakers”.
2) Body keywords: these are generally phrases of 2-3 words, are more specific than head keywords, and have a lower search volume. For example “women’s lightweight sneakers”.
3) Long-tail keywords: these are longer phrases which have the lowest search volume but are very specific to your product.
This means that although head keywords will generate the highest number of search results, and therefore reach the highest number of potential customers, they might not necessarily be right for your target customers. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, will reach less people, are much more likely to target the right people.
There are also different types of keyword intent. This is important to understand because the intent of the customer using the keyword may indicate whether they are your target customer.
Just like types of keywords, there are three main types of user intent:
1) Informational intent: searches for general information, whether about products or something else. Low likelihood or conversion to a sale.
2) Investigational intent: comparing products or sellers. Higher probability of converting these searches into a sale.
3) Transactional intent: searchers where the user is intending to make a purchase now. Very valuable and the highest probability for conversion.
Using Keywords to Convert
There are many techniques you can use to get users to convert—like marketing psychology techniques such as social proof, for example. The text you use on your listing is important to convert your visitors and sell your product. However, very few visitors, even those who click the link and make it to your listing, read the entire listing text. Many visitors will barely glance over the bullet points and text on an Amazon listing.
Most potential customers make a purchasing decision based on three elements: the price, images, and the product title. Strong images not only increase your click through rate, but can convince customers to go through with their purchase. You also need to make sure that you have the optimal price point for your product through extensive market research and competitor analysis.
When it comes to the product title, keywords are critical. Your product title should contain as many of the relevant, high volume keywords you identified in your research as possible. This will tell your target customers that your product is what they are looking for, as well as supporting Amazon SEO and ranking your product.
This title is a good example of this:
It is important to avoid sacrificing good copy when you do this. Doing so can lead to a title that reads poorly or is simply unintelligible. Spend time creating a persuasive title that drives click-throughs and still contains as many main keywords as possible. Some tricks to do this include using pipes or dashes to break up your keywords, and using long-tail keywords.
You can see this approach applied here:
On-Page Optimization
Perhaps the most critical part in this process is on-page optimization. As soon as your product listing goes live, Amazon’s algorithm crawls it to check the contents and find out what you are selling. It will then take this information and synthesize with other signals to categorize and rank your listing. Like all search engines, Amazon essentially comes up with a scorecard for your listing which it uses to determine your ranking and connect the listing to relevant searches.
Amazon’s A9 algorithm differs from Google in that its main objective is to connect potential customers with the products they are most likely to buy. This means that the most important factor is not keywords or on-page optimization, but sales. However, on-page optimization should be a key focus because unlike sales and conversion rates, it is something which is entirely within your control. You should therefore ensure that your on-page optimization is consistently hitting 100%, in order to give your business the best chance of success.
Once you have completed your keyword research, you can start to put these keywords to work through on-page optimization. This process should be completed and fully optimized before your listing goes live, as this initial stage is when Amazon will first crawl your listing and is critical for your ranking.
We have already looked at how your product title can be optimized for conversions through a combination of the right keywords and persuasive copy. The title, along with images, is the most important element for on-page optimization. However, the bullet points and description or enhanced brand content also play a role and it is important to optimise these in terms of keywords and sales copy.
It is also important that your keywords are entered in the backend section of your listing, under the keywords tab.
This is what it looks like on the backend:
Because you can only enter 250 characters or so in this field, you should not double up on repetitive keywords (such as “speaker” and “Bluetooth speaker”) in this case. Instead, use descriptive long-tail keywords which contain other primary keywords, for example “portable Bluetooth speaker”.
Tracking Keywords
Once you have set up your listing, the keyword process doesn’t end there. You should use your keyword research tool to keep tracking your keywords and their performance over time. Things can change rapidly in the Amazon universe so it’s important to keep checking in to see if keyword rankings have shifted. If they have, it’s your job to then add, delete or swap out keywords on your listings as necessary.
Keyword tracking is arguably one of the most underestimated parts of conducting business on Amazon currently.
Having an Amazon keyword tool which can automatically track keyword rankings is incredibly valuable. Use a tool to monitor your keyword positions, and report back to you on daily keyword position changes. Due to the size and volatility of the Amazon marketplace, trends in keywords can change literally overnight, which means no matter how solid your keyword research, it may no longer be valid a month, or even a day later.
It is important to stay on top of keyword rankings and replace those keywords which are no longer performing with new, high ranking ones. To do this manually with any kind of frequency, let alone daily, would be extremely time consuming. Therefore, using a tool which tracks rankings automatically is incredibly value and will not only save you money, it will make money for you.
Wrapping Up
Keywords are an important weapon for any Amazon seller. They can help you drive traffic to your listing through Amazon SEO, make sure it is the right kind of traffic, and finally let you convert that traffic into sales. Effective keyword research, on-page optimization and keyword tracking can deliver incredible results for your business, not only in terms of increased traffic and sales, but truly exponential growth in revenue and targets.
