An another opportunity to attain success in e-commerce is SEO(Search Engine Optimization). Every time someone does a search, the search engine must decide which of the results has to be displayed from hundreds of thousands of possible products. It’s up to the search engine algorithms to determine the best and most relevant matches for every single search. This is why it’s so important to choose your keywords carefully, so that the search engines can match and display your products in the search results to the most relevant keywords searches.
Before jumping on to other details, lets understand the meaning of “keywords”
Keywords – A keyword, in the context of search engine optimization, is a particular word/Phrase describing the content of the product from a particular seller. It act as shortcuts to sum up the content of a product.
Now, let’s discuss about the simplest tools for generating traffic on your product via keywords.
- One of the simplest tools is Amazon’s own suggestion feature. To see some of the best suggestions, simply do a amazon search and scroll to the bottom of the page and look at the related suggestions.
- Get inside of the searcher’s head and ask yourself:“If I were looking for this product, how would I be searching for it online?”
SEO changes, search engine algorithms change and the terms your customers use will change, so make sure you routinely go through your keyword research to make sure it is up-to-date and accurate.
- Google has a Keyword search tool that you can use to discover what search terms people around the world are using and what is most popular. For each search term, Google will recommend load more options. Look through the list and write down anything else with a high number of searches.
- Tittle = Keywords. Many people believe that they must put the keywords in the space for keyword in sheet and also in their product name/title. But this isn’t true.
According to Amazon: 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 in case of Amazon.
But, 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.
- 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.
According to Amazon:
Few of the important Do’s and Don’t’s are as follows:
| Do’s | Don’t’ s |
| When entering several words as a search term, put them in the most logical order. A customer is more likely to search for big stuffed teddy bears than for teddy stuffed bears. | Don’t provide inaccurate, misleading, or irrelevant information such as competitor product, brand or author name, wrong gender etc. Providing misleading or irrelevant information is against Amazon policy; your listing will be removed and your account will be suspended . Moreover, your product might end up in a wrong browse node and your sales might get affected. |
| Use a single space to separate keywords. No commas, semicolons, carets are required. | Don’t provide excessively long content. Providing overly long content can violate Amazon selling platform policy. Respect the limits that are set for different fields. |
| Abbreviations, alternate names, topic (for books etc.), and key character (for books, movies etc.) could be included as keywords. | Don’t provide redundant information that is already captured in other fields such as title, author, product description, bullet points, brand etc. It won’t improve your product placement in search results. |
| Don’t include promotional terms in the title. e.g., “new,” “on sale,” “available now”. | |
| Don’t include terms such as amazing, good quality etc. as most customers don’t use subjective terms in their queries. | |
| Don’t include common misspellings of the product name. Amazon’s search engine compensates for common customer misspellings and also offers corrective suggestions. | |
| Don’t provide variants of spacing, punctuation, capitalisation, and pluralisation (“80GB” and “80 GB”, “computer” and “computers”, etc.). Our search engine automatically includes different case forms, word forms and spelling variants for searching. | |
| Don’t include terms that are abusive or offensivein nature. |
Courtesy:Sellerscentral.amazon.in
| Product | Unacceptable keywords | Reason |
| Diamond Flower 14k White Gold Ring | Gold, ring | The keywords provide duplicate information that is already covered in the product name. |
| Nike running shoes | Adidas, puma | The keywords provide Inaccurate information. |
| Popcorn Maker | Ice cream, cones, bakery, obama etc. | Keywords contain irrelevant or unrelated popular terms. |
| Ray Ban Wayfarer Sunglasses Green Frame | amazing, good quality, trendy fashion 2014, best seller etc. | Keywords contain subjective information. |
| Colours of India | Colour, colour, Colours, colours etc. | Different word forms that search engine automatically accounts for. |
| MS-305S Portable Mini-Speaker | MS-305-S, MS305S etc. | Search engine automatically accounts for punctuation variants. |
Here are some examples of good keywords:
| Product | Acceptable keywords | Reason |
| Lord of the Rings | lotr | Customers might use famous abbreviations to search for books, movies etc. |
| Stanley Claw Hammer Steel Shaft (Black and Chrome) | nail pounder, nail puller, ripping tool, hammer | Customers might use alternate names to search for products. |
| Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows | Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley | Customers search by key characters to find books, movies etc. |
| 2015 Fox Racing 180 Pants | Racewear, motocross gear | Customers might use alternate names to search for products. |
| The Shadow Beast (An Adventure in Time) | Time travel | Customers search by topic to find relevant books etc. |
Tips: For figuring out the best keywords relevant for your product here are some best practices:
- Try to create a sponsored ads campaign for the targeted products. Amazon platform suggests the best suited keywords for your products. You can use them.
- There are free tools like Google keyword planner which suggests the related keywords to the product you are trying to sell. (https://adwords.google.com/home/resources/using-google-adwords-keyword-planner.html)