The prospect of striking it rich by selling on one of the world’s largest markets may be a modern-day gold rush. Data from Amazon shows that nearly 4,000 new sellers set out to strike jungle gold every single day. As much as many modern prospectors wish it to be true, there’s no easy road or fast-track to success on Amazon. How can an Amazon offering stand out from the pack and generate sales? Product Listing Optimization is one way to give a listing the boost it needs. Gain increased page views and more conversions by investing time to optimize your listing.
Listing optimization focuses on attaining a high rank on Amazon, which means satisfying Amazon’s A9 search algorithm. Amazon looks for a few specific details in each listing when determining its rank.
A Top Performing Listing Should Include:
- Relevant Text
- High Quality Images
- Good Reviews
- High Sales
- Available Stock
- Competitive Price
- Excellent Fulfillment Performance
- Advertising & Promotions
- Enhanced Content
Research the Right Keywords
Amazon Brand Analytics is a great free tool for basic keyword research, and is available to all Amazon sellers with a registered brand trademark. The tool is a great starting point since the data comes directly from Amazon.
Determining relevancy is more than just a gut feeling. Sellers perform competitor research to determine which features are important to customers and which are not. Seek to spot trends by taking note of types of listings that customers gravitate to, commonalities within a range of high performing listings, and customer feedback on those listings. You should discover features in your product that you wish to highlight, and perhaps weaknesses in your competition’s offerings that can be exploited. Searching through the list of top performing ASINs in the category you wish to enter is a good place to start your competitor research.
Listing Content
After finding keywords and analyzing competition you can start building your listing. The keywords that are most relevant to your product and have the highest search volume should go in the title. We have found that titles need to be longer than the Amazon recommended length of 50 characters. This provides ample room for keywords, while remaining concise, quick to read, and benefit-focused.
Bullet points may be the most important converting copy that consumers will read, and present substantial SEO value as well. Writing good bullet points can be a challenge; bullet points should contain a wealth of detail and keywords while remaining concise and natural sounding. Don’t write long-winded bullets just to take up space, but make sure to include plenty of relevant information in each one.
An optimized listing will have bullet points consisting of
- 5 bullet points
- Plenty of relevant keywords
- Bullet points shorter than 250 characters each
- Highlights of all important product benefits
- Simple language; now is not the time to be a poet
Commerce Rev has found that including a short summary prior to the main bullet copy makes it easier to skim while providing valuable room for keywords.
The product description isn’t as likely to be read by most consumers, but it is still of great importance to any listing. Rather than treating it as a place to dump keywords, the description should feature copy that is easy to read and natural sounding, focused on consumer benefits and unique selling propositions. The description needs to explain key benefits and allow customers a firm grasp of the product. Our writers craft sentences using an active voice that focuses on benefits first, and how customers will be able to use the product. Amazon allows up to 2,000 characters in a product description, but a listing doesn’t have to use all of them to be great.
An optimized product description should generally consist of at least 500 characters to ensure that it includes enough relevant information and keywords.
Ideal Product Images
Before a potential customer reads a single bullet they will see the main image on the search results page. If the image and title are provoking enough, customers will likely click through more pictures before reading all of the listing copy. Including optimized images makes a huge difference in conversion rate.
So what makes listing images optimized?
- Image size should be at least 1,000 pixels wide
- Listing should include 7 product images
- Primary image should be on a white background
- Images should be informative and show major product details
- Utilize lifestyle imagery that shows the product in use
Avoid these Common Listing Mistakes
1. Never copy a competitor's listing or use it as a sort of template
- Each listing should be unique to rank well and stand out on the results page
2. Don't over-stuff your content with keywords
- Make sure the sentences aren’t so full of keywords that they are unreadable or sound like click-bait; the writing should read like a natural conversation and use simple phrasing
3. Avoid superlative claims
- Avoid making superlative claims like “best,” “perfect,” or similar words; customers can smell the marketing spin from miles away
4. "All the Keywords" is not the answer
- Avoid using every keyword that is remotely related to your product, even if it has a high search-volume
- Customers will leave quickly if a product isn’t what they are looking for, and bounce rate factors highly into a product’s search ranking
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Amazon Product Listing Optimization Checklist
Download our Product Listing Optimization checklist to begin improving your Amazon listings now
