As an Amazon seller, you have a lot of things on your to-do list. From product sourcing, inventory management, and listing optimization to customer service and optimizing PPC campaigns. However, there’s one action item in this list that can make or break your eCommerce business – keyword search. Even the best product in a category will not generate sales unless the right customers can find its product page.
In this guide, we’ll discuss an actionable step-by-step approach to uncovering profitable keywords for Amazon ads. You’ll learn about:
- The importance of keyword relevance in Amazon’s A10 algorithm
- The crucial questions to answer during the keyword planning phase
- Why you should use long-tail high conversion keywords for sales success
- Keyword difficulty and how to master it
- How to identify market demand gap and accurately position your product
- The profitable keyword formula for success on Amazon
- The top sources to research profitable keywords for Amazon ads
Let’s get started.
Understanding Amazon’s A10 Algorithm
Much like Google, Amazon is a search engine, but for eCommerce. The purpose of its A10 algorithm is to decide how products rank in the search results by singals such as keywords, attributes, and Amazon prices.
70% of buyers do not browse past the first page of Amazon. The first three products on the search results page take up 64% of the click share. Achieving an organic search rank within the first three spots is difficult for both established and new sellers. So, if your products ranking is low, your marketing campaigns may not generate desired results.
Amazon’s A10 algorithm considers several factors when calculating product rankings. These include sales conversions, reviews, ratings, method of fulfillment, customer experience factors, inventory, and relevant keywords. Amazon wants shoppers to see the most relevant products for their search that are most likely to convert in a sale.
Remember, the higher the relevance, the greater the ranking in Amazon’s search results.
So, how can you find relevant and profitable keywords to drive more sales?
Answer the Right Questions About Your Product, Industry, and Category
To identify profitable keywords for Amazon ads, take a step back and answer some important questions about your business. Many people tend to skip this crucial step because they believe they already know what they want to rank for. However, you may not necessarily know what your target audience wants.
Let’s say you run an Amazon business selling handmade skincare products. Before you develop a list of keywords, answer the following questions about your product:
- Who uses your product?
- What are the uses of your product?
- What are the benefits of your product?
- How do the customers describe your product?
- What pain points does your product solve?
Analyze and Master Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty refers to how competitive it is to rank for a search term. Due to the nature of Amazon’s A10 algorithm having the right keywords in your product listings is not enough. You also need to have a proven track record of sales conversions. Analyzing keyword difficulty helps you understand whether a particular keyword is worth investing your time and efforts in.
Simply put, the higher the competition for a particular keyword, the more difficult it is to rank for it. Keyword difficulty comprises of the following factors:
- Listing Analysis: How optimized are your competitor’s product listings compared to your product listing? A quick and easy to find this out is by running your ASIN through Arch, our free Amazon listing analyzer. The tool provides a listing quality score and generates actionable insights to improve your product listing.
- Sales Data: How many units of the same product are your competitors selling? Let’s say the average sales of your competitors are 1,000 units. However, if you’re selling about 100 units, then ranking for that search term would be competitive.
- Customer Review: How many customer reviews do your competitors have? Let’s say, the top-ranking products for a given search term have 100+ reviews. In that case, it would be difficult to rank for that keyword if your review count is low.
- Price: What prices are your competitors charging for their products? Is your price too low or too high? What is the optimal product price on the digital shelf for that search term?
- Promotion: How many ads are present on the search results page for a given search term? If a search results page is packed with sponsored products ads and other Amazon advertisements, then it means that it is difficult to rank for that keyword.
Trellis’ Top Tip: Assess keyword difficulty search terms in real-time with Matrix, the free keyword research tool designed by Trellis. Matrix helps you explore high volume and low competition Amazon keywords. The tool analyzes customer ratings, pricing, method of fulfillment, promotion and other factors on a digital shelf to calculate the keyword difficulty score.
Matrix generates insights on how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword. With keyword difficulty scores, you can focus on targeting keywords that are worth spending your time and efforts on.
Identify Market Demand Gap for Accurate Product Positioning
While your competitors are battling over high competition keywords, focus on targeting high volume and low competition keywords. You can do this by identifying gaps in the market. Generally, keywords with low conversions represent a demand gap. This implies that while there are customer searches for that product, there are very few sellers offering that product.
Consider this example:
‘Coffee mugs’ is a popular search term with a saturated market. This implies that the product volume in that market has been maximized. Within the market of coffee mugs, you have ‘glass coffee mugs’ which has a narrower level of competition.
If you break down that segment further you’ll find ‘insulated glass coffee mug’. This search term has less competition as it is a niche category. Once you find your niche category, focus on building product listings and Amazon ads campaigns that speak to your target audience.
The Profitable Keyword Formula for Amazon Success
So, what’s the profitable keyword formula for success on Amazon? To summarize, the keywords in your list should:
- Be long-tail keywords that are specific to your niche
- Have a high search volume with low competition
- Closely represent your product to maximize keyword relevance
- Reflect consumer trends and changes in shopper search behavior
Top Sources to Research Keywords for Amazon
Personal Buying Experience
One of the ways to develop your list of keywords is to think like a buyer! Hop on to Amazon and pretend you’re searching for products as a prospective buyer. Through this approach, you can garner a lot of insight into how people are searching for products.
Secondly, browse through customer groups and communities on platforms such as Facebook, and Reddit. This will help you explore trends in your industry.
Google Ads Keyword Planner
The easy-to-use Google Ads Keyword Planner is a useful tool to develop a keyword list for Amazon. The tool can help you uncover the latest keyword trends and identify high-traffic keywords.
Amazon Auto Suggest
Amazon Auto Suggest is another source to identify profitable keywords. It provides keyword suggestions based on customer searches, purchases, and click-through rates. Using these keywords is a viable option because they tend to have high conversion rates.
Amazon Keyword Research Tools
As much as the strategies presented above are useful, we strongly recommend using keyword research tools to polish your keyword strategy. Amazon SEO can be complex. With the right tools at your disposal, you can easily uncover high-volume, low competition keywords that will generate more sales.
Here at Trellis, we have created a free keyword research tool to help businesses identify relevant keywords on Amazon. The tool examines the digital shelf for a given keyword and analyzes how competitive it is to rank for that keyword. This way, you can spend your time, money, and efforts to target keywords that generate the best results.
Competitor’s Keywords
Whether it’s marketing, product development, or keyword research, competitor research is important. Knowing what your competitors are doing helps you improve your business strategy. So, don’t forget to browse through competitors’ product listings to get a sense of the keywords they’re targeting. Create a list of repeated keywords and include them in your Amazon keyword list.
