While selling on Amazon, there’s a plethora of things you need to do in order to be successful. Prior to selling, you need to conduct product research, market research, keyword research, where to source products from, etc.
Once you start your selling operations, you will have to engage in Amazon advertising to promote your products and gain enough exposure to drive sales. You will also need to optimize your listings for Amazon SEO and manage your inventory well.
What is Amazon keyword research?
Keywords are described as the terms or words used by people to search for things on the internet. Similar to searching on Google, on Amazon as well customers enter keywords into the search box while looking for a specific product. Keywords are search terms or queries that people use. They can be long-tail or short-tail keywords.
On Amazon, it is important to use keywords in your product listings and PPC campaigns because it is the only way you can optimize your content for Amazon SEO. Keyword Research is the process of finding keywords to use in your listings according to what customers are entering into the search box on Amazon.
Your keywords should describe your product well and also be in tandem with how customers search for products. Using the right keywords helps the Amazon algorithm find and display your products to potential customers.
One can always use the Google Keyword Planner, but what works better is to have an Amazon keyword research tool that only gives the stats of what buyers are searching for on Amazon’s search box. You can easily discover some of the most searched keywords on Amazon in just a few clicks.
Use these tools to find potential keywords that suit the product that you are selling. You can even track keywords a few related or competitor products. Once you decided what keywords you want to target, the next step is to optimize your listing.
How to go about researching keywords?
1. Amazon auto-complete
This is the first and foremost step in conducting keyword research. It is also the most economical, easy and effective way to do it because it costs nothing. Go to Amazon’s search box and quickly type in what you think buyers would probably enter while searching for your product and as you type, the Amazon PPC Agency will start suggesting potential keyword combinations.
As soon as you start typing into the search box, some letters or words will appear and this is the list from which you should take suggestions. This auto-complete feature isn’t generated arbitrarily, rather, Amazon displays the terms that people actually to search the most. The autocomplete feature provides you with a set of valid or authentic keywords.
2. Competitor Analysis
Analyzing and studying the competition is important in any case. Firstly think about who your target audience is and the keywords that they would be typing into the search box to find your products. Put yourself in their shoes. Gauge what your target audience would think about while searching for or trying to find your product. Depending on that, you can determine whether to use seed, long-tail, or broad keywords.
Take into consideration the products that complement yours. You would have noticed the “Frequently bought together” option on Amazon. Your listing descriptions should target or include products that complement yours so that your products can achieve higher visibility. This can be done with the use of hidden keywords and by analyzing the listings of your competitors. You can easily uncover competitor keywords and include them to improve your listings using Reverse ASIN.
An effective way to increase your market share is to target your competitors with your ads. If you are trying to boost your sales of an existing or newly launched product, you can target competitors’ keywords and high-performing products to capture a part of their market share.
3. Keyword Research for PPC campaigns
While conducting keyword research for PPC, begin with running automatic campaigns to identify potential keywords for your product. Running automatic campaigns is a great way to discover new keywords. Depending on your product niche, Amazon’s algorithms will scour for potential keywords. Therefore, ensure you adequately optimize your listings well ahead.
The main goal in creating a full-funnel keyword structure is to identify keywords depending on the customer journey phase. This works towards giving you more control over your ad spend and campaigns.
Backend Keywords and Reverse ASIN
Backend keywords are those that are not displayed to customers but are still crucial to optimizing your product listings. Amazon Seller Central has a provision to list your backend search terms with a character limit of 250.
To understand this better, let’s say you sell water bottles. Your backend search terms have to be relevant but not specific. You can enter keywords related to regular water bottles in the backend search term field. Spend some time on researching the appropriate backend keywords.
Reverse ASIN is the process of uncovering high-converting keywords that competitors are using. It will aid you in finding out your competitors’ keywords that you would never have thought of including. You can then focus on how to use these keywords to rank higher than your competitors on Amazon SERPs.
Conclusion:
There are varied approaches to keyword research and it is an ongoing process that a seller has to keep doing throughout his seller journey. There are always new keywords to add and different strategies to adopt so that you are well optimized for Amazon SEO. The above-mentioned points are meant to help you get started and guide you through the right path.
Author’s Bio:
Arishekar N, Sr. Director of Marketing & Growth at SellerApp, is a specialist in digital marketing, in addition to website keyword optimization for search engines. His areas of expertise include enhancing the organic & paid ranking of web pages on search engines with innovative SEO & SEM strategies and online promotions.