What’s in a word?

When it comes to keywords, quite a bit. Any online seller will tell you picking the right keywords to rank and sell for can be a make or break aspect of your listing. The question still lingers though: which keywords to choose?

Basically, pay attention to your RELEVANCY. Is it relevant? does it describe your product? Ideally, you want to rank for the most relevant keywords and keyphrases for your product.

Words With Tails

If you’re a new seller, you may still be stuck on your “core keyword“, or the word that best describes your product. This is an easy one. for instance, if you are selling Vitamin C Serum, your core keywords will be Vitamin C Serum. If you sell beard oil, it’s beard oil. If you sell underwear, you guessed it, your core keyword is underwear! Is it relevant to what your product is? Does it describe your product? If it meets that criteria, you’re probably in good shape.

Now, from here it can get a little trickier…

From your core keywords, the idea is to branch out into longer collections of words called LONGTAILS. For instance, let’s use vitamin C serum again. if your vitamin C serum is designed specifically for women you could use the LONGTAIL, Vitamin C Serum for Women. That would be the longtail for your core keyword. This extends to all keywords. The main difference between a short tail (CORE), medium, and longtail keyword is simply the amount of words strung together to create a relevant phrase. Simple right?

Truly, no matter what you sell, stay honest, and stay relevant, and you’ll be able to build from there.

It may take a little time to get into all of the keywords that are relevant to your product, but starting with your most relevant CORE KEYWORD should always be the foundation for your future research.

Getting Creative

A broad reach of relevant keywords will ultimately drive your sales, especially when it comes to promotions and PPC, but it’s not always the most searched keywords that will make the difference.

Oftentimes, longtails are not searched as often as the their more direct keyword counterparts. Basically, the longer the phrase overall, the lower the monthly search volume. This isn’t a perfect science, but for the most part will hold true.

However, when you target lower volume keywords (anything that has a search value of less than 10K per month) you may also be avoiding highly competitive keywords. The less competition, the less they cost to run ads to, which makes them great for those just starting out, or those with a tight budget.

How To Find Your Keywords

Besides using your noggin, there are a plethora of tools you can use. However, for this post, we’ll focus on Amazon itself. All you have to do is go up to the search bar from Amazon’s main page, and begin to type in your CORE KEYWORD. As you type, Amazon will attempt to auto-complete. Within those auto-completions, you should be able to find other keyphrases that are relevant to your product, whatever that might be.

Yes, this will take some time and due diligence on your end, but it’s free to do, and you’ll find plenty of results that will work for whatever product you are selling.

The Amazon algorithm is built on keyword relevancy, and as time goes on, they are getting better and better at honing in on quality keyword use.

“Listing Food”

Picture each part of your listing (title, bullets, description, backend, etc.) as a creature that needs to be fed. Starting with your title and working your way down your listing, feed your listing the very best keywords you can find. The more relevant the keywords, the higher priority they need to have in your listing. You should always try to put the most relevant keywords in your title, and then make sure you have plenty in your bullets and description. The title, however, is most important.

Again, it all boils down to RELEVANCY.

Stay as relevant as you can to whatever product you are selling. A good way to do this is to use Amazon and essentially let them do the work for you.

Let me explain.

Basically, you want to run an auto-campaign of sponsored ads on Amazon. Set the dollar amount between $5 and $10 daily, and just let it run. Amazon is going to auto-suggest and auto-bid on keywords it thinks are relevant to your listing. In other words, it will compile keywords that it thinks are relevant to what you are selling. During the campaign, you can go in and remove words that you don’t feel are as relevant as they should be, but the real benefit comes in at the end of your campaign. Make sure that no matter what, you run your campaign for a minimum of a month so you can get a clear idea of the data received.

A broad reach of relevant keywords will ultimately drive your sales, especially when it comes to promotions and PPC, but it’s not always the most searched keywords that will make the difference.

 

As the campaign draws to a close, you’ll get to see what keywords are working for you through clicks and (hopefully) sales. If you are garnering clicks on specific words, this will help inform you of your market and what they are looking for, and you can adjust accordingly as you grow. You’re essentially hiring Amazon for data, which in turn you can use to make more sales and work towards scaling your business and guiding your ad campaigns.

Don’t Forget Your Back-end!

The “back-end” or otherwise known as “product search terms” is a place where you can hit those keywords that are relevant, but may not have had a place in your copy on the “front-end” of your listing. The important thing here to remember, is that you have a limit of 200 CHARACTERS. Not 200 keywords (though that would be nice), but 200 CHARACTERS. No matter what keywords you put here, make sure you are in compliance with Amazon’s TOS! use this section to “fill in the blanks” and build upon your relevant keywords.

The Rules Are The Rules

The Amazon algorithm is built on keyword relevancy, and as time goes on, they are getting better and better at honing in on quality keyword use. Keywords are an amazingly useful way to get your product on the board, and help scale business, but ALWAYS stay within Amazon TOS. Don’t break your character limit, and don’t stuff keywords. Your Title shouldn’t sound like Amazon’s search bar with suggestions baked in, it should sound natural and sales-worthy. That can be said for your entire listing, actually. Find your balance between simply ranking for your relevant keywords, and actually selling on your relevant keywords, and you may find yourself selling more than you had planned on. “Feed” your listing good food, and reap the benefits of your care and attention to detail. Don’t complicate things. It’s really simple: if you’re selling underwear, stick with keywords that make you think “underwear”.

Truly, no matter what you sell, stay honest, and stay relevant, and you’ll be able to build from there.