8 Tips to Boost Your Amazon SEO

By Nick Heethuis, Co-Founder of GrowthFire

To crack Amazon’s A9 algorithm, you’ll need to focus on three major elements of your Amazon marketing strategy. First, choose the right keywords for your product. Then, optimize your listing page. And finally, optimize the back end of your listing.

Follow these eight tips to crack Amazon’s A9 algorithm and improve your search engine optimization (SEO) results.

Keywords establish the foundation of your optimized Amazon listing. For shoppers to find your listing, you must use the exact words and phrases — the keywords — they are using to search for your product.

Here is how you can quickly identify the keywords your potential customers might be using.

1. Competitor Listings. Look at your top competitors’ listings. Pay close attention to the words they use in their titles, bullet points and product descriptions. If your competitors are doing well on Amazon, odds are that every word and phrase is there for a reason.

2. Customer Reviews. Customer reviews and Q&A pages are a gold mine for your research. This is where you’ll find the precise words that customers like yours are using to discuss and evaluate the product.

3. Software. Amazon keyword research software will help you understand the volume of particular search terms and offer suggestions about keywords you may have overlooked. There are dozens of these tools available. MerchantWords and Helium 10 are both great options. 

Now that you know exactly what terms shoppers are using to discover your product, build your listing using all of them.

Amazon’s A9 algorithm scans for keywords across the entire listing, so pay close attention to each of the following sections of your listing.

4. Product Title. The product title is highly indexed, so be sure to spend time here. Don’t make your title too long, or Amazon might suppress the listing. Be sure your title reads well, makes sense and uses your most important keywords.

5. Bullet Points. Your bullet points should be a list of the top five reasons customers should buy your product, with the most compelling reason listed first. Keep bullet points concise, and remember to incorporate keywords. Aim to use 300 bytes (characters + spaces) or less for each bullet. 

6. Product Description. Make your description benefits-oriented, highlighting why and how it will directly help the shopper. (Your product description may or may not be indexed, depending on the category.) 

7. A+ Content. If you have Brand Registry, you should focus on A+ Content instead of a text-based product description. Amazon does not index A+ Content, but the increased visual appeal can increase sales. 

The back end of every Amazon listing includes fields to add additional keywords. Customers never see these, but it’s a great place to get creative and expand the reach of your listing.

8. Back-End Search Terms. It’s unnecessary to repeat keywords on the back end. Capitalization doesn’t matter, and you can use either singular or plural versions of your keyword (it’s not necessary to use both). And remember, since the back-end keywords are invisible to shoppers, it’s a perfect place to add common misspellings of your keyword.

To be successful and stay competitive as an Amazon seller, it’s critical to understand and master Amazon SEO. Follow the eight tips listed above to make your product listings stand out from the crowd.

Nick Heethuis is Co-Founder of GrowthFire, a platform connecting brands with the most powerful Amazon Agencies and Freelancers.