Amazon is the largest ecommerce platform in the United States, making up 49% of the market in 2018. But standing out in such a crowded marketplace can be hard. Ecommerce companies that use Amazon to sell their products need to optimize their listings to show up for key phrases and drive more traffic.
Here are 4 ways to optimize your Amazon product listings for greater organic visibility:
Use relevant keywords in your product titles
Titles on Amazon help searchers find your products. You can improve your chances of being found by including relevant key terms and other useful information pertaining to your product.
Amazon recommends that you keep your titles around 60 characters and include the following information:
- Brand
- Product line
- Material or key feature
- Product type
- Color
- Size
- Packaging/quantity
By using descriptive product titles, you can increase the likelihood of showing up in Amazon search and give potential customers a better understanding of your product.
Here are a few examples of well-optimized product titles. (Click to enlarge.)
Remember to always review competing products and look at the top sellers in your category to understand what titles are working well for ranking and discoverability.
Have a well-written product description
Once you have your title defined you can expand on your product’s qualities with the product description. A well-written product description helps distinguish your product from others in its category, and explain why a buyer should choose it.
- Keep the product description “concise, honest, and friendly”
- Include an overview of the product’s main uses
- Describe the product’s features, benefits, and unique properties.
Going into detail and focusing on differentiators is especially important for resellers offering the same product as others. You will want to expand on the manufacturer’s default descriptions to help differentiate your listings from other resellers.
When deciding what to highlight, it can be helpful to think of your buyer persona’s pain points and how your product solves those problems. You can make your product look more attractive to potential buyers by speaking directly to these issues, whether you’re selling a memory foam mattress that helps relieve back pain or a purse with useful storage compartments.
As you write your product description you’ll also want to include keywords relevant to your product. You can identify the most effective keywords with an Amazon keyword research tool and work them into your product description in a way that sounds natural. Other keywords to describe the product can also be added to a hidden ASIN’s catalog data.
Tools like Ahrefs Keyword Explorer have an option to select Amazon when performing keyword research. (Click to enlarge.)
Use clear and attractive product images
They say pictures are worth a thousand words, and your images are an excellent opportunity to better highlight your product.
Amazon has guidelines for the types of images you can upload to your listing. The main product image must have the full product in frame, with a pure white background. Alternative view images, on the other hand, can include cropped or close-up photos with different backgrounds and text.
In both cases Amazon emphasizes the need for “professionally lit and photographed or scanned.” All of the images you include on your product listing should be clear and in focus. You will also want to make sure the images follow Amazon’s technical requirements for file formats, size, and file names.
Having accurate, up-to-date, and high-quality images on your product listings can increase the click-through rate to your item from Amazon search results. It can also increase the likelihood of someone adding that product to their cart, since they can see clearly the quality of what they’ll be buying.
Competitively price your products
With all of that in mind, even the most well-optimized product listing won’t matter if you aren’t reasonably priced. Amazon recommends you begin by determining your cost and overhead to create a pricing strategy that works for you, then conduct an in-depth competitor analysis to see if you can offer a better deal.
You will also want to make sure your price is appropriate for your target audience and adjusted for market fluctuations and other outside variables that can influence the popularity of your product.
You can learn more about Amazon pricing recommendations here.
Optimizing your Amazon product listings for higher rankings and more traffic
Amazon can be an excellent platform for ecommerce sellers, but you need to differentiate your products to help them stand out. Taking these four steps to Amazon optimization will help your products become more visible in searches and drive more traffic to your listings.
Our digital marketing experts are experienced at optimizing product listings for Amazon and organic search. Contact us today to learn more.
