Lately I feel like a broken record. It seems the more people I talk with, the more times I hear, “I didn’t know that” when it comes to keyword-related facts about Amazon product listings. Most people are making this way harder than it has to be. In fact, many are seriously wasting space by not following what Amazon clearly lays out in the Seller Central Help section. Let’s take a few minutes to go over some specifics from Amazon so you can start benefiting from the right way to use keywords.
Not using keywords correctly in your product listing copy and not having them formatted the right way in your keyword fields can cost you both traffic and sales.
1. Amazon (Basically) Counts The Title As A Keyword Field
Many people believe that they must put the keywords in the keyword fields and also in their product name/title. Not true. According to Amazon:
In essence, Amazon’s internal search engine works by exactly matching individual words (not phrases) that the customer types into the search box with the individual keywords you put into your product title and keyword fields.
2. The Title And The Keyword Fields Hold Equal Weight
I think the belief that the title holds more weight than the keyword fields comes from people who are flooded with information about ranking well on Google. Title tags hold more weight with Google so, therefore, most people assume the same is true about Amazon. Incorrect.
Amazon specifically tells us not to “waste space” by repeating words across certain fields because they are all included when a shopper conducts a search.
3. You Should Not Enter Entire Keyphrases Into The Keyword Fields
Amazon’s search engine works by combining individual words, not by looking to match entire phrases. There is no need to waste valuable keyword space by entering:
USB computer speaker, USB Bluetooth speaker, USB iPhone speaker, etc.
Instead, remove the repeated words and put them into a logical order.
You end up with a much more compact list of terms that allows more space for relevant search words. Here’s what you end up with after removing the repetitive words:
USB computer speaker Bluetooth iPhone
So, instead of using 63 characters with the original list, now you’ve only used 37, leaving you a lot more room for additional keywords.
4. Amazon Accounts For Stemming, Plurals & Commas
Another common debate is whether you should use commas and plurals in your keyword fields. Seller Central outlines this clearly as well.
Stemming is taking a root word and adding various endings to it. For example:
• diet
• diets
• dieting
• dietary
• dietitian
• etc.
As you see below, Amazon can handle “basic” stemming. I have not found a definition of “basic” but my interpretation is plurals and common other endings such as “ing.” Anything beyond that I would consider adding as another search term.
No commas are needed in your keyword fields. In fact, as stated in the next screen capture, you don’t need any type of punctuation. Amazon’s system ignores commas … all you need is a space between the terms.
5. You Should Not Add Competitor Brands To Your Keyword Fields
There is a common practice of putting other brands into your keyword fields. The assumption is that this is a good way to get more traffic to your page. Actually, putting irrelevant keywords into your fields (including brand names that aren’t yours) is a good way to have your listing removed. Amazon classifies this as keyword bombing and makes it known that your product listing could be deleted from the category it is in if you’re found guilty of using irrelevant keywords to drive traffic.
Having the correct keywords in place and having your keyword fields set up the way Amazon suggests will play a big role in boosting the visibility of your products to qualified customers who are ready to purchase. It isn’t hard to do once you understand the way Amazon works best.
In my ebook, “Amazon Advantage: Product Listing Strategies to Boost Your Sales,” I go through the exact step-by-step process my team and I use when creating product listing copy for clients. After having written Amazon descriptions for years, the Marketing Words team has become experts in what Amazon will and will not allow, and how to develop listings that rank well and convert shoppers into buyers.
You can also download a free cheat sheet with 5 product listing secrets for Amazon sellers.
hi karon, great article!
question on keywords. so if title is included in backend keywords, is it separated out andn paired for relevant multi-keyword matches with other keywords in backend keywords field?
example: title – Incredibly Edible Chocolate
keywords- dark, milk
will that automatically parse out milk chocolate and dark chocolate because chocolate is in title or does chocolate need to be repeated to have the pairing?
thanks.
No repeating. That wastes space and is unnecessary in Amazon’s internal search engine.
As stated in Seller Central:
Amazon’s search engine is nothing like Google’s. Never assume that, if you do it optimize a web page for Google, that you should do it for Amazon pages, too.
you are awesome karon. i felt compelled enough to come back from gmail after reading response just to say thanks!
Just received this as a response to question. Seems to countradict everything I have seen and read…
“Greetings from Amazon Seller Support,
Hi I am Diego, thank you for contacting us. After reviewing your case we do not add a sub category to items, the seller can have their items rank in multiple subcategories by assigning different search terms that relate the item to the desired sub category. I can see that you have several search terms in your manage inventory screen. I must recommend to separate them by a comma, but have in mind that there can only be three terms per line, so that means a total of 15 terms that are divided by a comma. Each term can have up to 2 words. Another thing to do is include the desired search terms within the description, bullet points or title.
I hope the information provided was helpful and your questions were successfully answered and please don’t hesitate to contact us again if you need help in the future. Feedback is key to letting us know how we’re doing. Can I ask you to take the brief survey below and share your feedback with us?”
Mark, as you can see above in the blog post, I’ve got snippets directly from Seller Central. I have no idea where this support agent is getting his info, but I’d ask him to provide quotes and links to these details in Seller Central to back up what he is telling you.
If you have all your keywords run together (word1word2word3word4) with nothing in between then yes, you’d either need a space OR a comma (not both). Otherwise, Amazon would view then entire string as one word.
He’s using terms/words as a guide while Seller Support uses characters. All categories say you have a total of 250 characters (50 characters per line for 5 lines) for Search Terms.
Very strange. The first time I’ve ever seen a response like this. I’d ask for documented proof.
Hi Karon,
Thanks for posting this information in your blog. I undertand the stemming point, and I know it is different, but do we have to include in our backend things like: an with almost her me you also…?
Thanks.
Robert
Hi… If those are parts of phrases that you’ve researched; yes include those words.