Your Simple Guide to Amazon SEO Best Practices

When it comes to SEO, businesses tend to focus on the two big search engine hitters: Google and Bing. They tailor their optimizations to work toward their products landing on the coveted first page of those search result pages. What companies often overlook when it comes to SEO is another well-known powerhouse: Amazon.

Amazon has taken the e-commerce world by storm, offering products at lower prices with customer-friendly features like 1-to-2-day shipping. Advertisers have also joined the race. With Amazon’s advertising capabilities improving, businesses are contributing larger sums of their marketing budget to their interfaces. But what about SEO?

As it turns out, Amazon has its own ranking algorithm, A9, with its own set of ranking factors and best practices. Keep reading to learn more about how your products can begin showing for relevant Amazon customer searches and start seeing your revenue increase.

How are your product rankings determined?

There are three important organic Amazon ranking factors.

1) Product titles

Your product title is the strongest ranking factor. Be sure to begin each title with the product’s brand name and include key information in the title. As opposed to Google or Bing, keyword stuffing (without being too spammy) is a strong tactic.

According to Amazon best practices, your product title should include elements like:

• Brand name
• Product line
• Material or key feature
• Product type
• Color
• Size

To keep product titles structured and legible, use dashes or pipes between different elements.

For example, a strong product title could be, "Perfect Search Media Logo T-Shirts | 100% Cotton, Breathable Grey V-Neck Short-Sleeve T-Shirts | Available in Sizes XS-XXL."

2) Search terms

Search terms, or backend keywords, aren’t visible to the customer; they’re only in your Amazon Seller Account and are used to tell the Amazon algorithm what your product listing is targeting.

These backend keywords are similar to the SEO meta keywords that used to be important a few years ago.

Backend keyword best practices include:

• Do include spelling variations
• Don’t need to include misspellings
• Keep the entire list of keywords under 250 characters; if you go over, Amazon will not include any of the search terms
• Don’t need to include commas
• Don’t need to include both singular and plural versions of a word
• Don’t repeat words
• Don’t use subjective claims like “best” or “cheapest’”
• Don’t include your brand or other brand names

Examples for the Perfect Search t-shirt backend keywords could include: “grey gray tee shirt t-shirt extra small medium large extra-large cotton soft stretchy breathable logo digital marketing advertising.”

3) Product descriptions

Like your product title, your product description should give your customer all the relevant information about your product they need to decide to purchase.

Product descriptions should:

• Be readable and natural
• Very detailed and persuasive
• Informational and helpful
• Include both romance copy as well as bullet points to allow users to quickly scan through product features and any unique value propositions that set your product apart from other competitors

A strong product description could read:

“Don’t sacrifice comfort for style! Our Perfect Search Media t-shirts are 100% cotton, extremely breathable, and available in a wide range of sizes. The heather grey short-sleeve shirt includes the Perfect Search Media logo, as well as their slogan ‘Your Search is Over’ across the back in a noticeable white font. Durable and long-lasting, our tees can withstand repeat washes for years to come.

• Heather grey, short-sleeve t-shirt
• Displays Perfect Search Logo with ‘Your Search is Over’ slogan on the back.
• Available in sizes XS-XXL
• 100% cotton and breathable
• Machine-washable”

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Ready to learn more about Amazon best practices? Check out our resources page.