Harrison’s Guide To Amazon Keyword Research and Listing Optimization

Amazon FBA keyword research

If you’re like most people, you hear words like “keyword research” and “listing optimization” and you want to gouge your eyes out!

Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

Although this can be one of the most cumbersome and tedious parts of selling on Amazon, it also one of the MOST IMPORTANT.

If your listing isn’t fully optimized with keyword rich, compelling copy then you are missing out on cold hard cash!

But don’t fret. I’m here today to break down everything keyword research related and show you how you can optimize your product listings like a pro! You’ll be laughing all the way to the bank in no time.

Keywords Drive Sales

A big mistake new sellers make is not doing enough keyword research or fully understanding how the Amazon algorithm works.

We’ll use “Joe” as our newbie seller example.

Joe finds a product using one main keyword. He runs a quick Jungle Scout or Viral Launch analysis and sees what every guru tells him is a great product idea! Cheap, low competition, high sales, and fits in a shoe box. Hooray! Joe eventually decides that this is the product he will sell…

Can you guess why this is a problem?

Let’s continue with Joe….

Joe finds a supplier on Alibaba and places his first order.

His product finally arrives in Amazon’s warehouses and he launches and what happens?

NO SALES.

Does this sound familiar?

Joe thinks, “what the hell! I’m even ranked and I’m not generating any sales…. How can this be?”

And the answer is:

JOE DIDN’T DO HIS KEYWORD RESEARCH PROPERLY!

Because Joe found this product and evaluated the market based on one keyword he thought he had found a home run…

The problem is, most of Joe’s competitors are ACTUALLY ranking for other much higher volume and much more competitive keyword terms that he didn’t even think to check.

While it was easy for him to get ranked for a keyword that only gets 500 exact impressions per month, most of his top selling competitors are ranked first page for a keyword that gets 20,000 exact impressions per month and probably a handful of other high volume search terms.

Check Search Volumes

Joe Newbie made a product selection decision based on some tool like Jungle Scout or Viral Launch without evaluating ALL of the relevant search terms and their corresponding search volumes.

And, to be honest, Joe is not alone. I was guilty of this too when I first started out.

On my first product I had no idea the amount of work that needs to go into keywords and simply launched on what I thought was the most descriptive term for my product.

Little did I know that there were hundreds of highly searched, relevant search terms that my product could rank for in addition to the one that I found…

And with this knowledge I got down to business and learned how to optimize my listings correctly.

How Do I Optimize My Listing?

Amazon listing optimization comes in two parts.

  1. Keyword Research
  2. Copywriting

Luckily, we now have incredibly powerful tools that allow us to do this work quite easily. I will explain exactly what I do to make this a seamless process below:

Step 1: Compile A List Of Your Most Relevant Competitors

Once you’ve done that, head over to Wordtree.io. This tool, in my opinion, is really a game changer. You simply add the 10 most relevant competitors and Wordtree.io and generate a report. This can take 1-2 hours but usually less.

wordtree.io listing optimization

Once it’s done you’ll get a nifty email telling you your report is complete which looks like this:

amazon keyword research report

This is great because you get to see the exact keywords from most relevant to least relevant AND give you the corresponding broad and exact search term volumes.

This information is so valuable and it truly gives you a leg up on the competition.

You might be surprised when you find out that the main keyword you were searching is really not the main keyword after all…

Step 2: Use Wordtree.io Listing Builder Tool To Create Your Listing

Now, this is the best part if you ask me.

In your dashboard click on the Listing Builder tool and you’ll see a huge list of keywords on the left as well as a progress bar above, and a field for your Title, Bullets, Description, and Backend search terms.

wordtree.io listing builder

This tool allows you to write your listing according to the most relevant and highly searched keyword terms. So in the title, you’d include all of the relevant keywords near the top of the list and then work your way through your bullets, description, and so on.

When you use a write a keyword in your listing, Wordtree.io will automatically cross that keyword out from the left column and you’ll see the progress bar up top increase. This is makes this process so much simpler and really easy to understand.

Step 3: Hire A Pro Copywriter Who Can Make Your Listing Convert

Now the caveat to all this is that not everyone can write engaging sales copy. In fact, if you’re not skilled in copywriting then you’d better not just try and cram all your keywords in some nonsensical manner.

Writing a listing is an art and science. You have to manage to use clunky sounding keywords in a way that a human would like to read and understand. It should be catchy, engaging, and ultimately elicit a response in your audience that compels them to hit “add to cart.”

Your best bet is to hire a pro. There are a number of competent copywriters out there who can get the job done.

Find someone who is a native speaker and has a track record of successful products.

I would stick to sites like Upwork.com, but this is a personal preference. Ask for examples of previous work and find someone that you can communicate with and who thoroughly understands your requirements, then go from there.

Listing is Key

At the end of the day, your product choice will have the biggest impact on whether you are successful or not. And many times that comes down to the preliminary keyword research and making sure that the product you are selecting has lots of relevant keywords with high search volumes and low to moderate competition.

If you can get that part right then it comes down to out listing your compeition with awesome photos and a fully optimized listing.

If you can do just this one thing then you are already doing better than 90% of sellers who have no idea what “optimization” even means.

I urge you to check out Wordtree.io and follow my steps. Put in your current listing and see what the progress bar says about your listing.

If you’re reading this and currently sell on Amazon, do this exercise right now. Comment down below with your current optimization percentage and we’ll see who has the best score!

I’d love to see if we can make some improvements and help generate more sales with these tips!

2 Comments
  • Reply Johnny

    August 28, 2018, 8:22 pm

    Hi Harrison. Thanks for the awesome tool. I’ve been following your blog for some time now. I started doing wholesale, but I’ve learned many things about private label from you. Hope to see you at the top someday.

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