How to Fix Common Amazon Keyword Mistakes You Don't Know Are Killing Your Sales

William Ferrer
Feb 12, 2019
6 min read

Updated: Mar 6, 2019

GUIDE OUTLINE

Step #1: Optimize the title
Step #2: Optimize the bullet points
Step #3: Optimize the description
Step #4: Optimize the back end section

INTRODUCTION

The main cause of most keyword mistakes is from unknowing sellers assuming that Amazon's search engine operates the same as Google's.

This wrong assumption leads to common mistakes such as overstuffing listings with keywords and needlessly repeating phrases over and over again to the point where listings become confusing and unappealing to customers.

What you need to know:

Amazon's search engine operates vastly differently from Google's.

Amazon's search engine was built to look for relevant products to sell while Google's search engine was built to look for relevant information.

According to Marc Delingat, Amazon's Head of Search:

"Once we determine which items are good matches to the customer's query, our ranking algorithms score them to present the most relevant results to the user."

Amazon is a marketplace so the primary goal of its search engine is to maximize sales through presenting relevant products to customers.

Even if you are familiar with traditional SEO strategies and tactics, you will need to learn how Amazon's search engine operates to properly optimize your listing. Otherwise, you may unknowingly commit common SEO mistakes which kill your sales.

Here are 2 major mistakes you need to be aware of and avoid:

Keyword Stuffing
High Bounce Rates

Keyword stuffing: Trying to cram as many keywords you can think of into the title, bullet points, product description, and search term section of your listing.

Keyword stuffing is problematic because there is no regard to how the writing sounds and looks like to customers. A listing stuffed with keywords may be good for the search engine, but it's going to be horrible for customers.

Also, Amazon imposes character limits so you need to make sure every character counts by only using relevant keywords and avoid wasting characters on irrelevant keywords.

Bounce: When a customer clicks on your listing and then quickly exits because your product isn't what they thought it would be.

This happens when you use irrelevant keywords, or in other words, any and every keyword you can think of that loosely relates to your product.

Unknowing sellers use irrelevant keywords in the hopes of appearing in more search queries. What they don't know is that this strategy can backfire and cause their rank to drop.

What you need to know:

Amazon tracks how customers interact with your listing—including bounces.

When lots of customers bounce from your listing, Amazon will see that and will drop your search rank because bounces tell Amazon's algorithm that your product isn't appealing or relevant to customers.

Now that you're aware of the major mistakes you need to avoid, let's move on to how to fix them!

What you need to know:

Amazon's search engine is primarily based on sales numbers and sales performance metrics, keywords play a secondary role.

Since Amazon's search engine is primarily based on sales, persuasive sales copy should be your number one priority over everything else!

In other words, you need to optimize for customer appeal first and then optimize for the search engine second.

Here's how you do so.

STEP #1: OPTIMIZE THE TITLE

Imagine yourself as a customer shopping for a product. Let's take power banks as an example. Just by looking at the title, which one of these two listings looks interesting to you and one you would actually click on?

Portable Power Bank by company – Compatible with Apple iPhone, iPad, Android, and Smartphones and Tablets – High Capacity 20000 mah battery – Powerful 5.8A Output Charger – 300g Light Weight

Company Power Bank iPhone Charger Android Charger Samsung Galaxy Charger Samsung Note Charger Smartphone Charger Tablet Charger Cellphone Battery Ipad Samsung Tablet Outside Office School Travelling Car Airplane Train Subway Bus Commuting

The answer is obvious, you would pick A!

What you need to know:

Amazon searches titles using individual words, not search phrases. Also, words in the title are searchable in any order.

For example, this listing would still appear for the query ‘iPhone charger' even though the keywords in the title aren't written in the exact same order.

Portable Power Bank by company – Compatible with Apple iPhone, iPad, Android, and Smartphones and Tablets – High Capacity 20000 mah battery – Powerful 5.8A Output Charger – 300g Light Weight

Common mistake:

Repeating search variations over and over again.

Bad Title Example:

This is a bad title because it clearly repeats the same variations of search phrases over and over again which leads to a title that's unnecessarily long, overly repetitive, and nonsensical.

The customer's perspective was completely ignored when this title was written.

How to fix:

Since words are searchable in any order, there's no need to repeat search phrases and duplicate words over and over again.

Good Title Example:

Portable Power Bank by company – Compatible with Apple iPhone, iPad, Android, and Smartphones and Tablets – High Capacity 20000 mah battery – Powerful 5.8A Output Charger – 300g Light Weight

This is a good title because it's concise and integrates keywords naturally.

The title provides a clear description of the product along with interesting value propositions which persuade customers to click on the listing.

Here's a breakdown of the interesting information customers will see in the title:

compatible with Apple and Android Devices
high capacity 20,000mah battery
powerful 5.8A charger
lightweight

Also, you'll notice how words and phrases aren't needlessly repeated.

This Is the general formula I use to craft an optimized title:

[Name of the Product] by [brand name] – [1 to 3 High Search Volume Keywords] – [USP or benefits] – [style/size/quantity/material if applicable]

STEP #2: OPTIMIZE THE BULLET POINTS

The main purpose of your bullet points is to provide a concise description of your product.

The second purpose is to provide another place to insert keywords.

A common mistake I see a lot of novice sellers make is, they see the bullet points section as another place to cram more keywords with little to no regard for the customer experience.

They needlessly use multiple variations of search terms and repeat keywords over and over again.

For example, a bullet point overstuffed with keywords would look something like this:

Comfortable women's sweater. Fashionable sweater for women. Sophisticated sweater for the stylish woman.

Keyword: women's, sweater

You'll notice how the keyword ‘sweater' is repeated multiple times and how variations of the term ‘women' are forced into the writing.

This is problematic because it leads to a description that's repetitive and nonsensical.

What you need to know:

Keyword density and keyword variation do not apply to Amazon listings.

Keyword density: The percentage a keyword or phrase appears on a page compared to the total number of words on the page.

Keyword variation: Using variations of terms such as singular and plural forms, misspellings, etc.

What you need to know:

Amazon's search engine is able to index variations of keywords so there's no need to use variations of terms in the copy.

Example: The keyword ‘women' will also be indexed for its variations ‘woman' and ‘women's.'

Keyword Density or the repetition of keywords will not increase your search rank. You only need to use a keyword once.

A better bullet point would look something like this:

Warm and comfortable sweater for women featuring a stylish and sophisticated design.

It's concise and clear, just how customers want. It also naturally integrates the use of keywords.

Tip: Include as many keywords as you can in your bullet points while prioritizing customer appeal first. If you can't naturally fit in keywords into your copy, don't force it! You can always insert any unused keywords in the backend section of your listing.

STEP #3: OPTIMIZE THE DESCRIPTION

Again, a common mistake I notice novice sellers commit is, they see descriptions as another section to cram keywords.

What you need to know:

Keywords placed in the product description have little to no effect on search rank.

Tip: Since keywords placed in the description section have little to no effect on search rank, it would be more productive to use the product description section to focus solely on providing a persuasive explanation of your product.

STEP #4: OPTIMIZE THE BACKEND SECTION

The main purpose of the back end section is to provide a place to add more keywords.

The second purpose is to provide a place to insert keywords you couldn't naturally fit into your copy.

What you need to know:

Amazon imposes a strict character limit of 250 characters TOTAL (50 characters per field) for the back end section.

A common mistake I see novice sellers commit is the repetition of keywords and the use of commas for division.

Mistake: Repetition of Keywords

Since Amazon imposes a strict character limit, the repetition of keywords will only result in the waste of characters as they do nothing to improve your search rank.

Fix: Don't use any keywords you've already used in the title and bullet points section of your listing.

Fix: Don't repeat words (example: light power bank, portable power bank).

Only use keywords once in your listing to make effective use of your character limit.

Mistake: The Use of Commas

The use of commas to separate each keyword which uses up valuable characters.

The Fix: Only use spaces to separate each keyword as spaces do not count against your character limit.

And this concludes our short and simple Amazon listing optimization guide.

If you could only take one lesson away from this guide, it should be this:

You must optimize for the customer experience first, and then optimize for the search engine second.

Why you ask? Because customers are the ones with the credit cards, not the search engine!

Since the number of sales is the biggest factor of Amazon's search algorithm, it's imperative you prioritize the customer experience first before anything else.

This concludes our short and simple Amazon listing optimization guide.

WORK WITH ME, CLICK THE LINK: https://www.fiverr.com/share/ER7DY

To learn more, read my other guide “How to Optimize Your Amazon Listing in 11 Simple Steps to Increase Your Sales.” <-- CLICK THE LINK.

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